What's up Hive!
I noticed it has been a while since I posted, I might stop by and say hi and a quick update. I wasn't sue with the appropriate inappropriate clickbaity non-clickbaity title I could find for this thing, I was stuck between the above or getting my rocks off. Winter has been weird, chinooks are here and now all the snow is gone...We're gonna pay for it later. Otherwise, I got all worded out with my last posts and figured I would refill the word bank and read a few books. Not sure if I'll post on them, maybe later. Be patient #silvergoldstackers, there is some gold silver porn scattered and hidden in between all the beach rocks like some visual pirate treasure hunt.
For now, I thought I would give you a display of one of my other side hobbies you might not know about since I'm multifaceted. This hobby requires me to hunt things so dead they have turned to stone. FOSSIL COLLECTING. Even under my ladybug account, some were asking for it. I suppose now is as good as any to share. I just don't like taking photos of it because it's hard so I keep delaying.
I don't think this ammonite fossil is from Alberta, it was bought in a trinket shop in Drumheller and they have many fossils from Morocco and other fossil rich land. It was ok priced, $90 cad but that was a decade ago. This thing is huge, it weights a few pounds but manageable. I liked it for affordability and size even tho it's not the most coveted quality, it has a unique charm of it's own
Most think you have to be rich to own fossils but that couldn't be further from the truth. Well maybe if you want a high quality show piece, you might be better off just buying it but for a fun thing to do on a hot summer day sitting by the river, Alberta has a wealth of history hidden within it's banks. This post will be a bit of both with a few stories with how I found my loot. Spending days by the riverside turning over rocks looking for hidden gems most people would unknowingly step on, I see value in strange things.
Anything found in rivers and crown or authorized by the owner on private property is ok to keep but it has to be identified and approved by a museum or other related officials before it can be sold or taken out of province in case it's anything rare that can add a piece to the pre-historic puzzle. I never got any of mine checked out but they are common small seashells and unique to collect nonetheless especially since I found them myself and I live in Alberta. Any items purchased in authorized shops are already vetted for sale and to take away.
Obviously the color on this photo has been messed with for a more abstract fun with rocks. This strangely might make a good deco art print
One of Alberta's landmarks is of course the Royal Tyrell Museum located in Drumheller. It's one of the largest fossil collection held in the world, the only competition being China. Both countries have an exchange program where they exchange fossils to display to even more people in both locations. Why is it one of the largest bank? Alberta used to be an ancient seabed and also has a lot of dinosaur history associated with tar sand mining and tar pits. Visiting the shops around the small town in the badlands has a few shops where a few prehistoric keepsakes can be found.
This one cost a bit more and much smaller, also from one of the shops surrounding the museum purchased quite some time ago. This one has an anomaly, why I bought it. You see that thin line that follows around the shell, it's not supposed to fossilize. It's made up of organic material and generally decomposes and fills like the rest of the shell leaving no trace of having been there.
This isn't the gem form with the radiant shell on the outside so I didn't spend much time getting the back side, it's pretty blah. With that being said, in my last Rockies post, I shared about Korite and the gem that looks like northern lights, it's the same type of fossil but different ground conditions as each create it's own signature on the fossils. To get a whole ammonite of this quality is a pretty penny, making the finished jewelry an option to own a small piece of it instead but this would still be museum quality material that has been found in pieces and can't be displayed hole. The gem forms on the backside, the shell side not on the inside. Here is a finished gem quality piece of ammonite mined and crafted in Lethbridge Alberta. The same creature 3 ways all preserved differently based on it's location
I suppose that's it for my top shelf collection, sorry it's not that big! Doesn't mean the show is over, I just probably shouldn't quit my day job and become Indiana Jones, lets put it this way! 😆As a child, we learned in school about dino's getting trapped in pools of tar and dying creating oil. Is it how oil is created? I'm not geologist but lets go with probably. I'll go with whatever science says on that. Regardless, as a kid, it sounded funny and I didn't think it was real until I moved out here and started to work on various jobsites and saw it for myself, sort of.
The darkened part of the rock is bithumen, both the leaky pocket and the black sandy stripe in the middle. Raw unprocessed Canadian petrol right out of the ground. I kept that piece because it has a few small common seashell fossils imbedded in it, the pictures were bad so I'll spare you.
This series, I found at work strangely enough. I will not name where. Of course it was up north, I'll give you this much because well, tar sands give it away anyway. The photo above is a chunk of tarsand unprocessed, it gets crushed and goes thru a lengthy process using a lot of steam and equipment to separate the sand from the bitumen. There is a lot of controversy around the industry and it's impact on the environment. Things could be done better but that's not what this post is about. This area of Alberta is one big natural oil spill and as you can see in the photo, pockets of bitumen form pores and leak out in the warmer months and this naturally ends up in our rivers. What to do , what to do? Ethically? Clean it up? Leave it?
Cute-to-me only story, it was the first snow of the year and I was working in the laydown yard where much of our equipment was being prepped to later be transported and assembled to prevent congestion of equipment on the actual work site. I was using an electric grinder to clean metal tubes and since there was snow on the ground, I had a piece of fire blanket to lay the grinder down when not in use to prevent it from getting wet.
Every time I moved spots, it would leave a square of melted snow from the blanket mixed with the heat of the tool. I wasn't paying attention too much at first to the rocks but one caught my eye, it had weird ridges on it so I picked it up to inspect it and it was a small seashell fossil with little gemmies growing out of it, probably quartz. I started paying attention every time I moved my blanket and kept finding more and more. Once again, nothing significant but it was a nice little treasure. I kept some, by the end of the day, I had a pocket full of rocks and the word got out. I handed some of the doubles out. Jobsite gems.
Probably no relevance to the post besides later in the post, I used this Canadian Toonie to scale size and I thought it looked cool and got carried away, it's not silver but every little while Royal Canadian Mint issues a series of commemorative limited issue circulation coins, to get an uncirculated version during issue time, going to most banks and ask to buy a roll. It doesn't have the fancy collector wrapping but you pay face value for a roll. The colorized coins tend to hold a good premium a few years later on the collector market. Not silver, this one was a fake out...still a nice coin for you to spy with your pirate eye.
One is coincidently enough a 4th ammonite style encased in limestone. I left it in because it's small and low grade, not worth cleaning up but I FOUND IT MYSELF so It's still a keepsakes. Some mega projects got temporarily shut down while they excavated a rare well preserved specimen of larger dinosaurs at several locations so it's not our everyday but part of our sensitivity training to be on the lookout in case of significant finds. When work and pre-history collide.
https://www.cbc.ca/strombo/news/surprise-alberta-pipeline-crew-accidentally-discovers-dinosaur-tail
When I'm not doing an impromptu fossil search as I move my work station around, I like to cool off by the river on the superhot summer days. It can get over 30 degrees celcius in the summer and staying in the house is gross and there isn't enough fans in the world to make the problem go away, best way to cool off is sitting on the edge of the river waist deep Indiana Jones-ing away flipping rocks with ridges as the sun reflection helps to highlight the surface anomalies. It's actually that freaking easy.
It was hard to take a good pic, it's a small clam turned into solid grey rock with hardened sand in the opening, it's about thumb size.
Background photo tips. I see some struggling with what to use for background on their close ups , for those looking for tips, I used a beach towel, given the aquatic theme, I thought a pretend watery display was fit. There you have it, go to Walmart and get colorful tea, hand or bath towels . I take my photos in natural light in front of a window, I still use them as towels as intended so cheap background idea and easily changeable, sometimes I use blankets too. The fibers or patterns in the fabric helps add texture to simple images to fill the empty or plain space.
Alberta was an ancient sea bed that was pushed up with tectonic plate collisions that forever altered the landscape changing water flow along with pushing the earth's crust exposing all the layers of sediment that took millions of years to build up that we now call the Canadian Rockies, a violent event that created a natural masterpiece.
What is this? I have no idea, is it a fossilized small bird? Is it a matrix of sea plants and corals? Not sure. There is a gross way to identify a fossilized bone from a plain rock. Lick it and if you tongue sticks to it like a kitty tongue, it's bone. If it's slippery, it's just a rock. Yes, I shamefully lucked it and it was weird so likely fossilized bone. How am I still alive? 😅 I just added a whole new layer to not knowing where that mouth has been! 🤣 For scale, this specimen is palm sized.
It's possible to find mountains to visit with entire matrixes visible on the mountainside especially early on the B-C side near the border that separates the two provinces. Harvesting is not allowed in National Parks so don't do it. It probably has a hefty fine. This is the stuff that comes loose during spring melts and gets washed away slowly via erosion, once it finds it's way to the river network to crown land, it's for keeps if kept within Alberta. Anything that has to bedug up needs proper mining permits. More significant finds like actual dino bones have to be reported in case it's a new species or a better specimen than what is in the official provincial fossil library in Drumheller held at the museum. rules are loose enough to have fun but not too much, there is still some heavy government regulations around the topic!
This is a muscle, not a shell but fossilized, it was significant erosion on the shell from it's underwater journey. Below is a poor excuse of a large clam, it looks rough and it was hard to make it look like a clam with the camera but it was a solid effort, it sorta looks like one.
The North Saskatchewan has a strong spring flow when the snow melts and every spring new stock gets unearthed and gets washed along the river, as the sediment settles over the summer months and the water levels go down, all these little treasures are just sitting at the bottom scattered all around for the keen eye and patient mind. There has been pieces of dino bones found randomly in rivers as well, generally smaller fragments, not whole bones. Looking into the Royal Tyrell Museum probably has a list of public programs to view/visit an active dig in various summer camp type activity especially for children, worth looking into if you want to feel like a pro for a day if one wants to get serious in a legit way and see real finds.
Besides they small aquatic creatures, small pieces of ancient corals and plants also common in Alberta rivers, I have found both of these in different locations in different years. These corals are easy to spot with the strong ridges and reflect well in shallow water. The round is thumb size and the longer one is about the length of a thumb, small but the fact that I found it myself so it became a part of the dead things in my living room. Going to the museum for every piece would be burdensome on the specialized skills that curate the more substantial finds, preliminary self identification is key, we all want to know what we have.
Amazon link to purchase the book below just in case. I bought mine years ago at a store, most likely on mega sale as bargain hunting for books is another fun activity. In Canada, Chapters/Indigo have good sales around back to school days worth while for getting smart on a budget.
https://www.amazon.ca/Prehistoric-Life-Definitive-Visual-History/dp/075669910X
This is a great book to flip thru for any fossil and prehistory enthusiast, a 500 page geological bible that covers each era from the potential living conditions, species and what the may have looked likes along with color images of the different fossils associated along with the geological changes that occurred over these periods. It's Informative. An oldie but goodie, an essential tool to get most of the information the hobby rock hound needs to self identify most common species both in plants and creatures. It's both big and thick, I would even recommend this for an older kid that is into this type of nerdy stuff even just as a science learning tool. It's simply explained and enough visuals to keep things interactive rather than just another boring science lesson. The book is so big, I had to stand on a kitchen chair to take a photo. In hindsight, I should have just put it on the floor.
Obviously it's a 500 page book, like any other time I post about books, get your own if you want to know what's in it, this is just meant to be a small sample taste of the variety found in it. I read it cover to cover quite some time ago and I enjoyed it, every part and I keep it as a valuable natural history resource for the inquisitive spirit.
Two different pieces from the same strange dream/real life cobwebbed creepy tree-hole. I love the different patterns, polishing them would highlight them even more. I might depending on what type of permitting, I don't have a tumbler tho and don't rock hound enough to justify buying one.
Besides plants...what else is hiding on the riverbanks? Petrified wood. Now this story is too strange for coincidence and I want to share it, be patient. One night, I had a dream, I was on the riverbank at my usual cool-down summer spot. Next thing I knew, I saw a creepy hole in a bank full of cobwebs and I went in, completely and it somehow turned into a cave, I started jumping around feeling like I had the find of the century and I started pulling out a bunch of rocks, I woke up before I knew what I found.
The first picture on the left is a little blurry because I had to get up close more than the camera can handle, I just wanted to point out the fine amber lining the inside of this specimen. Nothing significant but pretty cool, this wasn't even in the water and someone did walk right on it seconds before me, I just happened to looked down at the right time. It has well defined tree rings on the outside.
A few days later, I was at my river spot for real, waking around until I saw a familiar sight, the same hole as the dream in the riverbank. Full of cobwebs, this was gross but too much to be coincidental, maybe it was a sign. It didn't turn into a deep cave like the dream but I said, TF with the cobwebs and stuck my whole arm in it, elbow deep. Gross. I started feeling around with my hand, probably a stupid move to blindly stick my hand in a hole in hindsight, I did do a beachwood stick test first, nothing jumped out.
I felt a series of rocks, I pull one out...Petrified wood! I stuck my hand in again and started pulling out every loose rock I could feel, I pulled out an entire large ice cream bucket full of petrified wood out of the creepy dream hole. Well then. I must have had good universal juju for a surprise reward. It's not worth that much but each palm size piece polished probably goes for about $5. I still have it but it saves me from buying it. I did buy a polished piece so I could see what it looked like. The rough ones I found are part of my décor. Just like the small seashell fossils, same governmental rules apply, it has to be approved by the proper authorities first but it's ok to keep it freely within Alberta boundaries as riverside pirate booty.
I did promise the stackers and pirates some silverporn worth lifting an eye patch for. It's been a bit since I did some fun shoots with tokens and coins but I did get a toonie's worth of inspiration with a few keepsakes I had kicking around. 2 separate American silver half dollars, 1942 and 1945. the aqua towel and the chunk of petrified wood to lean the coin created a nice background. Another stacker photography tip, taking photos of your coins on a 45 angle helps with weird glare and adds depth to the background.
Sorry for the price tag in the photo, I didn't want to take it out of the case since it still looks pretty new and unexposed to oxygen. A bit overpriced for the time but both are nice collector pieces. when my birthday or holidays come around the corner is when I request the more collector vs stacker stock.
Well, there you have it, a multitude of ways to turn boring old rocks into some fun from finding and creating a photography project to keep me busy for a few hours of the afternoon. Finding a crafty way to turn rocks into Hive Power. This concept never gets old for me 🤣.
Ok, Hive on gang and keep being creative. xox