Each of us pretty much filled a 5-gallon bucket. We have a family of four and brought our niece. Then it took us an hour to select our top pieces and then have them sawed and polished. We arrived at the quarry about 1:30 and dug for 2 hours. Click here to see options for your visit. You’ll want to dig at least for two hours. A variety of trilobites and other fossils can be found at the quarry. (Yeah, we’re scientific for sure!)īut it’s not quite that simple. To rookies like us, trilobite exoskeletons simply remind us of bugs. The biggest we found was about an inch long. The fossils at the quarry range in size from one-eighth of an inch to two inches. Anciently, these prehistoric life forms roamed the bottoms of the seas in search of food.
It’s an extinct form of marine life, about 550 million years old. You’ll still have to dig and split limestone shale, but it’s totally doable–and fun! Whatever you find, you keep! Shane has a big excavator, which he uses to turn over the layers of sedimentary rock in the quarry, exposing fresh layers for customers. The owners, Shane, Carrie, and sons will educate you on what to do and give you great pointers so you’ll know where to dig and what to look for.
Why Is U-Dig Fossils Fantastic?Įven if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can find great trilobite treasures here. Throughout Utah there are various places to find fossils or go rockhounding, but we’d like to show you a trilobite quarry in Delta that’s fantastic: U-Dig Fossils. Sadly, I knew I had to choose just a handful to take home.Does digging for fossils intrigue you? For us, it’s like a treasure hunt, and we enjoy finding them as a family. The first several finds proved exciting, but a trilobite hunter turns picky before long - looking for the right few beautiful fossils to take, especially when the heavy shale has to be packed for a flight home.Īfter a few hours, I had quite a pile of trilobites.
#Udig fossils full
The small, but intricately patterned, beasts ranged in size from a pinkie fingernail to a full thumb. Once I found a likely pocket of shale, I uncovered a trilobite or two - or five - with every few hammer blows. The typical visitor, the website estimates, discovers 10 to 20 trilobites in a standard four-hour hunt - seemingly a vast understatement.
#Udig fossils how to
She showed us how to break the shale into smooth sheets with the short, sharp whacks of a hammer.Įmbedded in the sheets, as often as not, are the trilobite fossils.Ī couple with a young child, a university student and a few other visitors toiled under the cliff face with me but with plenty of room to themselves. I’d picked up a cheap pair of gloves at a Delta hardware store.Ĭallahan led a group of people on the short hike from the shed to the quarry, where large piles of shale are periodically pulled down from a cliff face by a backhoe. I recommend long pants - because of the sharp rocks - and, to protect the hands, thin work gloves. Customers are allowed to haul home as much of their finds as they wish. (trilobite) on top of a big one hey, it’s a mama protecting its baby!” “Sometimes, I even make up my own story for each rock. “I’ve been a rock hound all my life,” she said. I checked in at the small shed that serves as a ticket booth, an information center and a sunshade - with Robin Callahan as the day’s guide. The quarry is plopped down in some low hills, surrounded by nothing but sky and loneliness. Several miles along, I spied a broken directional sign, lying in the scrub, that once pointed the way to Death Canyon.įortunately, U-Dig has erected several encouraging signs of its own along the way - reassuring me that I was aimed toward fossil-finding fun rather than an early demise. 50 about 12 miles south of Delta, with 35 miles of a dusty gravel road in front of me. “We try to steer people out there because it’s such a great experience,” he said.Īnd so I headed into the desert, turning off U.S. When the conversation turned to trilobites, he became adamant that I go to U-Dig - where fossils of the small creatures are found in abundance. Nielsen happily showed off the museum collection of rocks and fossils and launched into an impromptu lecture on the Cambrian explosion, a time of rapid expansion of the types of life on Earth.
He had moved to the area after retiring, he said, precisely because of the fossils and dark skies. Owen Nielsen - an enthusiastic “rock hound” and amateur astronomer. Delta and surrounding Millard County offer plenty of outdoor activities, such as rock climbing miles of trails for all-terrain vehicles and several sites central to early Utah history - including the old Territorial Statehouse, the oldest Utah government building, in Fillmore.Īt the Great Basin Museum in Delta, I ran into museum volunteer J.
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