Monday, November 16, 2009

Who's Collecting Crittenden Springs?

Jim Jenks is writing a paper on the Early Triassic ammonoids he has collected over the years at the Crittenden Springs locality north of Montello, Nevada. He went out a few weeks ago to take some photos of the beds he collected and found that someone has been out there recently. Large excavations and partially collected fossils is what he found.

One of the large holes found


A large Churkites noblei partially collected (notice the saw cut)


Another large hole where the beds were exposed. Jim says excavations like this have occurred in several places.


Complete fossiliferous bed shown here, Jim exposed these for a photo in his paper, he says quite a bit has been removed from this site too.

The collecting area is on BLM and Winecup-Gambel Ranch property. It would sure be nice to know who has been collecting here, whether it is someone from an institution or commercial collectors. This seems to be a larger excavation than someone who is digging for reasonable and/or personal use would need to dig.

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