small things

Fossil Hunting in a Box and Some Tips for Getting Started {giveaway}


My kids carried five gallon buckets on our recent fossil hunting trip, and filled them full of fossil dirt from the pungo piles in the parking lot at the Aurora Fossil Festival.  They will slowly pour through the dirt, searching for fossils, over the next few months.  When I saw buckets full of fossil dirt for sale at the Aurora Fossil Museum, I knew I wanted to bring a bucket home to give away.  I picked up a few little visual guides to help with identification as well.


Jonny built a small set of nesting sifters to go with the bucket of dirt.


The sifter with 1/4 inch mesh nests into the sifter lined with window screen.


Fossil dirt can be sifted through the screens (about a cup at a time,) and the larger fossils will be caught by the 1/4 inch screen, while the tiny ones are caught be the window screen below.  Water is poured over the dirt to aid the sifting process and make the fossils easier to see.


These are some of the fossilized sharks’ teeth and other fossils that Seth found while digging through the fossil dirt in Aurora.


Since arriving home, he has found countless tiny little shark’s teeth in his bucket of fossil dirt.  You really have to look closely so that you don’t miss any.  It’s a nice slow process that requires some concentration.


If you look really closely, you will even find teeny tiny fossilized fish vertebrae in the dirt.


If you would like to win this “fossil hunt in a box” leave a comment on this post.

Because shipping would be prohibitively expensive (the dirt if heavy!) this giveaway is only open to my U.S. readers.  Thanks for understanding!  I’ll use random number generator to select a winner this weekend, and announce the winner within this post.

Comments are closed and the winner is Jess:  “WOW!!! My boys would love this!! They both already love to hunt for arrowheads, and this would be a great addition to their explorations. It would be even better to win this on my sons 7th Birthday today!!!! Keeping our fingers crossed!!!”

And now, here are a few links to help you get started if you or someone you know would like to start hunting for fossils in your own area!

First and most importantly, this site (fossilsites.com) includes a list of fossil sites in the U.S. and Canada.  The U.S. is divided by state, and Canada by province and territory.  After clicking on the area you are interested in, you will find a chart with information about each specific location including the types of fossils found there (Of course there are tons of different types of fossils out there, we just live in a region that is rich in fossilized sharks’ teeth.)  In order to find more specific information than what is given, you will want to Google search the sites your are interested in.  So for instance, if I click on “Virginia” on the main list, one of the fossil sites that pops up is “Carmel Church.”  I then search “carmel church fossil hunting” on Google and a list of informative sites pops up, and hopefully I can figure out where exactly to go in order to hunt fossils there.

Seth’s favorite fossil site is Black River Fossils.  The site is dedicated to fossils and artifacts and is full of photographs and “trip reports” which are essentially descriptions of people’s fossil hunting trips including videos, photos, and more.  The trip reports are organized by state, and quite a few states are included.

A couple other websites dedicated to fossils, but more heavily weighted to the East Coast where we live are FossilGuy.com (lots of great photos there,) Phatfossils (click through the trip reports for photos and videos,) and The Fossil Forum.

Finally, here is a link to a tutorial on how to build a sifter for fossil hunting in water.

p.s.  The knitting in my previous post:  Knitting for bunny, not baby!

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Such a brilliant idea born out of such simplicity! I love it, and I know my son would love it. I’ve already asked if he would like to go fossil hunting after reading your previous post, especially since we live in NC and the creek would be close to us.
    Thanks you!

  4. Oops! Sorry, I know you are Ginny, not Lori — can you tell it’s a little late at night? 🙂

  5. Hi Lori,

    I can’t resist this give-away. Back when our kids were kids, we were avid fossil hunters on Topsail Beach and Bear Island (we highly recommend the ferry ride over to Hammock’s Beach State Park).

  8. Woohoo! This would make a great project for a get-together with the kids and their cousins. The links look great, too. We’re transplants to Seattle, so I have no idea what kind of fossils we might find here. I’m following some links over now!

    Also, have you thought about pouring the contents of the bucket into a flat rate box for shipping? I reckon it’ll be a lot less expensive that way:)

  9. Oh! We would love to win this… Your giveaway + three kids = tons of fun!

    Thanks for all the great information! 🙂

  11. Oh this would make my daughter so happy! She is only 4 but already such a little animal scientist, she loves seeing all the photos of your children fossil hunting, we really need to take her sometime soon 🙂

  14. I went ahead and shared this on my twitter too. thank you for the chance. best wishes.

  17. This is beyond awesome!! Our family of six camped at Westmoreland last summer and we were happy to come away with four or five teeth! What an inspiration to put this together! The sluice boxes look beautiful!

  18. We recently did “mobile mining” and got to sift through enriched soil for gem stones. The kids loved it. I would love to get them into fossil hunting!

  22. my grandkids would LOVE this!!!! we did a little gem washing around Mammouth Caves last summer and I never thought we’d get them to leave! Thanks for the great links. I’m on it!!!!

  24. This is so neat! And you made it look so easy! Even if I don’t win, I plan on making a set for my boys! They LOVE digging in the dirt for “treasures”!

  25. what an amazing get away. we are hoping to plan a fossil hunting expedition one of these summers. My boys go crazy for all the fossil pictures on your blog.

  28. I would love to win this giveaway–it would be perfect for my nephew who has a birthday coming up.

  29. Have three youngins who would love this! Thanks so much for the giveaway!

  32. Thank you so much for this opportunity. We are all big on history and geology and the like. When we find a fossil (very rare thing) we like to talk about what the area would have been like at the time and how it became a fossil. We like to do the same with sea glass found on the beach.

  33. Oh, how my 3 would love one of these kits. Their favorite book this summer is a encyclopedia of fossils!

  34. Sounds like a lot of fun! I would love to be able to share this with my kids.

  35. This would be soso amazing for my children who love to explore and discover nature’s treasures!

  36. Thanks so much for the giveaway! That looks like so much fun! I thought your boys might like this note from my Dad to my daughter. They had found a large rock covered with fossils in 2009. This spring my daughter participated in a homeschool science fair and wanted to show off the rock but neither of us could remember anything about it! Poppa to the rescue. Here is what he said: We found the fossil rock in the Partridge Run Wildlife Management Area which is near the top of the Helderburg Escarpment. The area is loaded with those little shell fossils. They were formed at the shallow bottom of an ancient lake that covered a huge area eons ago. Back at the turn of the last century many families moved up on the escarpment to try making a living off the hardscrabble land. It was a tough time for those people and as the depression era came to a close most of them moved back down to the cities. The interesting thing is the road system through the area. Much of the ground is clay making a lousy road surface. People mined the abundant shale in the area and “paved” the roads for a better surface. Interesting that the roads were paved with accent fossils!

  37. I would love to win this. My brother is obsessed with fossilized sharks teeth and would love to go dug through the dirt!

  40. This would be an awesome addition to our homeschool. My 11, 8, and 4 year olds would never want to stop!

  41. I have researched where to fossil hunt in Georgia and haven’t been able to find any good places so far. Maybe the website you shared will give us some ideas!

  42. What a wonderful giveaway. I thoroughly enjoyed your photos from you fossil hunting expedition. Also, thank-you for the fossil links; I’m hoping to make this an outing for my three this summer.

  43. Living in the Middle West, I think it would be fun to hunt for shark’s teeth – something we don’t see around here!

  45. This looks like so much fun! I’d love to be able to share this with my niece.

  50. Our family is excited about fossil hunting too! We would love to be entered in the giveaway. Thank you for this and for all of the helpful information about this activity.