Watch Out for Scorpions and Falling Rocks!

"Watch out for scorpions and falling rocks!"

That was our motto for this Mother's Day.

With my new rock hammer in hand and hiking boots on our feet, we made a trip to Lake Worth to do a little fossil hunting.

Note: you can click on any of the pictures to get a bigger picture so you can see more detail.

This is the beginning part of the trail.  It's really flat and just a little rocky.  You can see the lake but it actually isn't as close as it appears.  It is in the distance and at a much lower elevation.

I was anxious to get down closer to the lake where there are more rocks but Rachel wanted to stop and chase every butterfly she saw.  

Here we are at a slightly lower elevation but still a distance from the shoreline.

There are some nice trails to hike on.  I've read somewhere that there are about 6 miles worth of trails in this area.  

A cool caterpillar was spotted!  Eventually we'll get to the rocks.

Some of the trails have steep rocky slopes so you have to be careful.  And you have to watch out for mountain bikers.  There were several of them speeding past us while we were there.

We made it over to the rocky hillside that Stuart had briefly explored the last time we were here.  We call it our white cliffs of Dover.  All of the white area is rocky and very steep.  But it is rich with fossils.

Nicholas found this amazing piece. Doesn't it look like teeth and a jaw?

He found a mold of a fossil on a rock.

This hillside is incredibly steep.  I've tried to capture just how steep in this picture.

Our little explorer, Nicholas, forged right up the hillside much faster than the rest of us.  He was directly ahead of me.  One time he slipped and several rocks came falling down the hill.  One of them was about a foot wide.  I saw it coming and couldn't get out of the way without slipping so I just turned my back to it and let it hit the back of my calf instead of the front of my shin.  

Ouch!

A little while later, Stuart found a little tiny scorpion.  We had  never seen a live scorpion in the wild like that.

From then on, we shouted reminders to the kids to watch for falling rocks and scorpions!  Isn't that what you would say on Mother's Day?

We eventually had to give up on the hillside and explored the trail at the base a little further.  We found a path to the lake so we checked it out.

We found several fossils just sitting in the water along the shore.  Here is a piece of ammonite.

Stuart found a cool oyster shell and a fossilized sea urchin.

After a couple of hours, we were tired and very hot.  Although we brought water and tried to stop for breaks, it was a little challenging climbing back up the path we had taken to get into the area.  I thought we'd never make it back to the car!

We cleaned up our favorite pieces.  Here is the cool fossil that Nicholas found.  I posted this picture of it on the Dallas Paleontological Society's Facebook page to get some suggestions about what it might be.

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Here is how the "conversation" went.  Nicholas was super excited when he first got confirmation that it was a jaw and was referred to a professor at SMU.  But that was short lived.  Read on.  I love how so many people tried to help us figure it out and then they start their own debate among themselves about the particular genus of the fossil.  I have learned so much from the people in this group!

Me: My son found this fossil in Fort Worth this weekend.  The piece is about 4 inches long and looks kind of like a row of teeth.  Any ideas about what it could be? 

Christopher: Wow! 

Robert: Dead reptile jaw.  Ask Lou Jacobs at SMU.  He is the expert.  

Shawn: An ammonite.  The genus is Mortoniceras; a very common ammonite in the lower Cretaceous in Texas.  What you are seeing are the ventral tubercles of the outer shell.  

Nathan: After close inspection, I agree with Shawn’s diagnosis.  There are no processes that indicate reptile or even jaw.  Still cool impression.  

Robert: Ooops!  

Jordan: Part of an ammonite forward chamber – what we call the suture or dendrite pattern.  http://paleo.cortland.edu/tutorial/Ceph%26Gast/Ceph%26Gast%20Images/sutures.GIF  Looks like egnoceras.  

Me: Wow, thank you so much to all of your for sharing your wisdom and helping us learn.  Ammonites are amazing and I’ve never seen one oriented like this so it is a cool find.  However, my little boy liked Robert’s answer best and wants to keep believing he found a dead reptile jaw. 

Jordan: Ha ha.  Well good find!!  Egnoceras aren’t that common.  Go find more!!!  

Shawn: I have to reiterate Mortoniceras here.  There’s NO way you can confuse it with Engonoceras.  Sorry Jordan.

Here is a picture of what we now know are parts of two ammonite.  I'm tempted to crack the rock open with my cool rock hammer in hopes that I can see more of the ammonite but I don't want to destroy the fossil.  What a quandry.

Here is a cool shell....maybe oyster?

I'm not sure what this is.  The lines in it jumped out as me as possible ammonite markings but there isn't much there to really go by so I'm not sure.

I really like this shell below.  I think Nicholas found this one.  It is a pretty spiral shell that has been smooshed on one side by pressure or weight of some kind.

Nicholas found his bad boy below too.  It is a complete fossilized clam (?) with both parts of the shell intact.

Ammonite mold that Nicholas found.

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Another ammonite impression.

Stuart found this little fossilized sea urchin.  I love these!

A piece of an ammonite??

An oyster of some kind.  Click on the picture to enlarge it because there are some neat little 

All in all, we had a great time and found some pretty cool fossils.

My Early Mother's Day Gift

I thought I had done a pretty good job of hinting to Stuart about what I wanted for Mother's Day.  But when he mentioned something about flowers and chocolate covered strawberries I knew I hadn't tried hard enough.

He was thoughtful and all but this year I was looking for something a little less traditional for a Mother's Day gift.  I told him I liked his ideas but I like things that last a long long time.  He paused for a moment and then his face lit up when he thought of Color Me Mine where the kids have custom decorated pottery for me in the past.

Oh, how I love gifts from the kids from Color Me Mine.  But no, not this year.  I told him that I liked things that lasted a long, long, long, long, long time.  Nicholas caught on first and shouted "fossils!"

Yep, I'm all about fossils this year so I want a rock hammer for Mother's Day.  What???  That's not what you were planning to give your mom for Mother's Day???

Stuart took today off to just have some fun with the family and go to a homeschool book fair with me.  But first, we decided to stop by Nature's Gallery in Carrollton so I could pick out my own rock hammer gift.   Yay!  I love this place.

Nature's Gallery is a great place for anyone who loves rocks, gems, and fossils.  There are lots of them on display and for sale.  You will also find a selection of books and supplies for the collector.  Of course, I found my awesome Estwing rock hammer there.  I'm so excited!

While we were there we bought a big geode for the kids.  We love that they will let you take the geode home to crack open or they will use their press and crack it for you right there in the shop.

We opted to let them use the press on ours.  How cool!

Next we headed to Arlington for the bookfair but since we were all getting hungry we stopped at Simply Burgers for lunch.  It is neat revisiting places we used to hang out at back when we lived in another town.  We ate a Simply Burgers probably once a week when we lived there and this lunch tasted just like I remembered it.  Yummy!

We finally made it to the homeschool book fair.  This bookfair comes once a year and includes about 250 vendor booths selling all kinds of homeschool curriculum and supplies plus they have a full line up of speakers covering all kinds of topics related to homeschooling, organization, marriage and family.  Wow!  But somehow we let the day slip by and we only had about 1 1/2 hours to spend there.  That was really probably enough since we did have both kids with us.

I had a great time looking at books and finding out more about companies I had never heard of.  We found a  neat program for teaching etiquette that I intended to buy but somehow we never made it back to the booth. We spent a lot of time at the J.M. Cremps booth...an adventure store for boys.  We got a beginners whittling kid, some paracord, a book that we will be using in Konos that I can't find at our library, and two sling shots.  Yep, most of that had nothing to do with homeschool.  Maybe the whittling could be wood shop?

I got excited at the booth that was all about science.  They had buckets of owl pellets to explore and lots of cool things to dissect, even some fetal pigs!

The fair was just about to close when we stumbled upon Midwest Bioservice Company that was selling new and refurbished microscopes.  A whole table of different microscopes!  We oohed and aahed over them but the announcement came over the speaker that the show was closed.  We started to leave but then magically got pulled back to the microscopes and swooped one up for ourselves before they kicked us out.  It is an awesome microscope by Swift (the "Nikon" of microscopes or so we are told).

I'm almost as excited about the microscope as I am about my Mother's Day rock hammer.....nah, the rock hammer really rocks!

Baskets and Eggs

The Easter Bunny came this morning!  Both kids seemed to think that they knew exactly where they would find their baskets this morning.  I guess the Easter Bunny heard them because they were a little harder to find than expected.

They were both excited about their goodies which each included a small LEGO set, Easter toys, and a few pieces of candy.

Later we colored Easter eggs.

Rachel was fascinated with the basic dye.

Then I pulled out a special kit I bought that created colorful textured eggs.  It included some glue and packages of different colored sand.  

 

Nicholas painted the glue on then placed the egg in a cup that contained the colored sand.

The sand stuck to the glue and really did look neat.  Rachel got into it too but she preferred to sprinkle the sand on her egg rather than roll it around in a cup.

Once we had dyed all the eggs we were going to dye, Nicholas asked if he could combine the colors.  

Of course he knew he would get a dark sludgy color....and he did!

Rachel laughed at his antics but she was quickly back to her egg work.

Every one of them was a little masterpiece.

This one was my favorite of all her eggs.  I just like the way the pink and yellow blend and then the yellow and green blend.  It looks cool!

She sprinkled sand on every one of her eggs and sometimes added sand on top of sand just to see if she could make them even more beautiful.

Our little artist at work!

Community Helpers: Fire Fighters

Today for preschool, I talked to Rachel about fire safety and fire fighters as community helpers.  

Outside, I used colored chalk to make some fires on the sidewalk.  I let Rachel play the role of the fire fighter who had to put out the fires with water from a squirt bottle.  

What kid doesn't love playing with a squirt bottle?!

I loved watching her at work.  

She put out all five fires.  Yay, Rachel!  You saved the day! 

She quickly realized that the wet chalk could be smeared around and could decorate her hand.

Finally, we played hopscotch on the fires.

As we were heading back inside, she was drawn to one of my rose bushes in the front yard.

She absolutely loves flowers and she enjoys checking on my flowers, smelling them...and occasionally pulling off their petals.

Fossil Hunting in Fort Worth

I've been following the Dallas Paleontology Society (DPS) on Facebook and there has been some talk of a place  near Lake Worth in Fort Worth where fossils, particularly ammonites (which I love), can easily be found.  We were running errands today in the general area of the place so we stopped by to check it out.

We found a few cool things just walking towards the lake.  The ground is very rocky on the path and as we came to a steep slope, we decided that without their hiking boots on the kids should just stay with me and Stuart would venture down on his own to explore.  None of us ever made it down to the actual lake.

While we were waiting for Stuart to come back, I found this amazing piece...a mold and cast of an ammonite.  The piece on the left is an cast of the actual part of an ammonite and the piece on the right is a mold of the real thing.  I saw the other side of the ammonite on the surface of the ground.  I dug it up and then noticed the mold underneath.  So cool!  My first ammonite fossil!!

Someone on the DPS Facebook page suggested that it is an Oxytrpidoceras ammonite. We also found this piece of an ammonite.

Stuart and Nicholas found cool fossils of Echinoids (sea urchins). 

This is a big hunk of rock with a large smooth round piece protruding from it.  We aren't sure what it is but we didn't have the heart to leave it behind.  Someday I'll get a rock hammer and so a little more exploration on this piece.

Here is a cool shell.  This was not near the lake but I can say for certain that it is a fossil but it certainly could be since the whole area was under the water millions of years ago.

This picture is of an oyster shell, again this was not found near the water.  Someone on the DPS page suggested that it is ostrea which is an ancient genus of the oyster family.

I'm not sure what this little guy is.

Some little oyster shells.

These fossils were all easily found scattered through rocks or slightly embedded in the ground.  It was a fun place for the kids to explore but we were limited because of the steep slope.  We'll come back with hiking boots next time!