MAZON CREEK FOSSIL HUNT Sunday, September 26, 2004 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Photo Page

It was a picture perfect morning for our class and field trip to Mazon Creek. 36 people met at the Hinsdale Public Library where Dave Dolak, our instructor and field guide from Columbia College and the Field Museum of Natural History, began with a discussion about the geological history of Illinois that dates back to the Pennsylvannian Period - 300 million years ago. He discussed how to distinguish a potential fossil from an ordinary rock, what its tell-tale signs are, what glacier scratched rock looks like, and some information about our state fossil - the "Tully Monster".

On site, at Mazon Creek, the class climbed up into the trenches between the mounds where this area was once used for strip mining. There, in the low, dug out locations are the self-contained, brown packaged fossils - waiting for someone with a good eye to recover them. Back at the base, everyone tried their hand at chiseling open the potential treasures in the hope of exposing long buried seed pod, bark, jelly fish, or fern. Before the trip ends, everyone had their own 300 million year old fossils in-hand!

For more information about Mazon Creek visit:
Illinois State Museum – www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/mazon_creek
Berkeley – www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/carboniferous/mazon.html
Yale – www.yale.edu/ypmip/locations/mazon.html

This program was co-sponsored by
the Hinsdale Public Library and the Hinsdale Public Library Foundation. www.hplfoundation.org