I'm sitting at a picnic table in the Colorado mountains, prying open flaky chunks of rock with a razor blade. Every so often when one splits open, I find the perfect imprint of a bug fragment or leaf inside.
It's like flipping open a picture book that hasn't been seen in 34 million years. Or peeling layers off a delicate baklava pastry and discovering ancient art.
 PAMELA LEBLANC/Cox Newspapers Pamela LeBlanc and sister Angie Pierce found fossils of organic material and leaves when they broke open rocks at Florissant Fossil Quarry in Colorado. For a larger, high resolution image, click HERE |
At Florissant Fossil Quarry, a privately owned fossil quarry about 35 miles west of Colorado Springs, you can pay $10 an hour to sort through piles of rock, looking for fossilized treasure. Whatever you find is yours to take home.
The quarry is next door to the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, where you can hike, check out Volkswagen-sized petrified redwood stumps and inspect drawers full of compression and impression fossils. (The park celebrated its 40th anniversary Aug. 22.)
I'm here with Angie and John Pierce, my sister and her husband. They have a pop-up camper, so we drove two hours from Denver and set up shop at nearby Blue Mountain Campground. Getting away from Texas during the summer inferno is high on my list, and camping is an inexpensive way to vacation.
So far, fossil hunting is the highlight of the trip.
Bent over a mound of rocks, Angie's peering through a tiny magnifying glass, speculating on just what it is she's seeing. She's a research scientist, and I can tell by her intent expression this is her version of bliss. In between the thrill of finding fossils, I'm reveling in the 70-degree temperatures.
Considering the tray full of fossils we've uncovered in the past hour, it's not surprising this area is home to one of the richest fossil deposits in the world. Nearly 1,700 species have been found here. Most are as fragile as glass. All provide a window into prehistoric Colorado, a much warmer and swampier place than we know today.
An ancient volcano created a 14-mile-long lake here millions of years ago. A sticky mat of diatoms, or algae, formed on the lake's surface. Leaves and insects got caught on that mat, which eventually sank and settled on the lake's bottom. The process happened over and over, and eventually the material fossilized.
Eons later, we're now exposing those fossils. When we arrived, we learned how to insert the edge of a razor blade between the paper-thin layers of the wafery sediment, popping the rocks open like sandwiches that need mustard.
It doesn't take us long to find treasure.
On my first attempt, I find the tea-colored image of what looks like a modern live oak leaf.
My brother-in-law is the first to discover an insect. It looks like a mosquito was squashed inside his rock, but the imprint is millions of years old. Angie uncovers a fossilized feather no bigger than a dime. I imagine it drifting in the breeze, carried from a prehistoric bird's nest.
Three or four other groups are making their own discoveries, using razor blades, butter knives and spackling knives to chip away at Mother Nature's treasure chest.
Craig and Barb Darroch, along with their kids Melissa, 14, and Tyler, 11, of Martin, Tenn., pile out of the family van, looking eager. They're in the midst of a five-week summer road trip, and rock hunting is a favorite pastime. The parents are professors at the University of Tennessee-Martin, and science fervor has been passed to the next generation.
"I like science and just have always liked hunting for rocks," Melissa says, adding that she hopes to find some plant fossils.
Her little brother echoes those thoughts, although he'd like to find a dinosaur fossil, too.
Dinosaurs aren't likely in these deposits, according to Brian Moore, who's tending the money box today. This layer of rock is from the wrong time period to contain them.
The quarry, owned by the Clare family for five generations, has been open to collectors for about 20 years. Today, Toni Clare and Nancy Clare Anderson run the place.
"Most people who come here are rock hounds," Moore says. "It is addictive."
I know what he means.
I wasn't a rock hound before, but I think I am now.
Pamela LeBlanc writes for the Austin American-Statesman. E-mail: pleblanc(at)statesman.com.
