So Many Little Pieces of Trilobites (and Crinoids, and Horn Corals!)

 

Will has been loving the geology unit of the Earth Sciences class she's been taking at our local community college this semester, and one day recently it inspired us to drag out our HUGE collection of rocks, fossils, and shells to admire. 

Will has always been interested in rocks and fossils, in particular, and we've collected them together as long as we've been homeschooling, but rarely have we had the attention span to really sit down to clean, organize, identify, and display them. Oops!

Fortunately, our current mania has lasted long enough for us to get the entire collection organized, much of it loosely identified, and our favorites set aside for display. We've been filling up several Riker mounts that I bought way back in 2015 (so I'm also stoked to have a good chunk of closet space freed up!), and are DIYing display cases for our larger specimens.

I have one entire Riker mount reserved solely for my favorite finds from our two family trips to Penn Dixie in 2010 and 2018. I spent an episode of Double Love carefully cleaning them in the bathroom sink with an old toothbrush, and once they were all spiffed up and pretty, I took their pictures!

This is my favorite specimen. It's part of a trilobite's cephalon!

Here's an excellent horn coral.

I think this is part of a trilobite's axis?

Check out my crinoid crown! I am so proud of this fossil because I own zillions of crinoid stem fossils from hunting here in Indiana, but this is one of my only crowns.

I've got almost the entire trilobite in this fossil mold!

Here are some crinoid stems to go with my crown!

I really like the combination of the trilobite and brachiopod fossils here.

I think this is a Bryzoan!

I love my trilobite faces.

Here's my finished Penn Dixie Riker mount:

I've got a handful of fossils that I want to keep but not display (so much for reclaiming ALL that closet space!), a couple of matrices that I want to investigate further, and a few fossils that I might try putting in my Pumpkin+Bear etsy shop to see if the same people who are interested in rainbow candles and mathematical quilts might also be interested in fossils.

And if Will and I are planning our list of colleges to visit around nearby sites for rock and fossil collecting, that's nobody's business but the homeschoolers'!