Marc Behrendt |
|
Journey to a Remote Nevada Dig
Talk was cheap. For several years, Ken Karns, Shanan Peters and I discussed going on a serious trip together. Usually we traveled and collected alone, sometimes in a twosome, never together. Two years ago Shanan, while performing field research for his PhD dissertation in Paleontology at the University of Chicago, had discovered some interesting fossil zones that he noted required some further serious checking out. The three of us agreed - this was the right time! And so it was we were headed to Nevada to investigate these remote and beckoning sites.
Planning was a strategic affair; the three of us made individual trips out west- Shanan drove, carrying all the heavy equipment to Nevada; Ken flew out on a Friday night; I flew out Monday morning. (Ken wanted to collect insects for a couple days, so he left 2 days ahead of me.)
Shanan met Ken at the Las Vegas airport and camped at a nearby park. They headed north, where I would ultimately meet them. Upon my arrival at Las Vegas, it was 114 degrees. I picked up my rental vehicle, a 4 wheel drive Jeep Cherokee, then drove out of Vegas and stopped at a grocery to stock up on water and food. Traveling north, I met my partners in Tonopah, where the temperature had dropped to a comfortable 95 degrees. To the west, smoke from wildfires hid the sun, coloring the town and region an ominous, surreal red. We decided to stay in a local motel for the night to organize our equipment, clothing and food.
The following morning was crisp and clear, with no vestige of smoke in the air. Shanan drove the lead vehicle, me eating his dust for over 2 hours. We drove on primary gravel roads, turned onto secondary and tertiary roads until Shanan’s GPS unit directed us to the first site. (Localities will not be listed in this travelogue. Shanan is still researching the sites and has requested the locations not be given out.) I have seen remote areas during my travels around the USA, but nothing compares to where I was now standing. 100 miles from any town, vertical canyon walls reached into the brilliant azure sky. Juniper trees covered the mountains; except for the wind, not a sound could be heard.
We parked outside the canyon and hiked in. During his previous visit, Shanan discovered a rockslide that in a moment’s examination, he’d found two Ordovician limestone chunks that contained large complete trilobites. The plan was to find the rockslide and follow it up to its origin.
We investigated the area, decided where we would work, then brought in our equipment and set up camp. We immediately hit the rocks! Ken and Shanan are human mountain goats, so I let them climb up the steep washes. While they looked for the complete trilobite layer, I stayed down low and searched the washes and surface skree. I was amazed at the number of fossils contained by much of the surface debris - some pieces were absolutely covered with brachiopods and gastropods. Many trilobite pieces could be seen, but no complete bugs jumped out at me.
Our first break came when I came upon a wash blocked by a pile from a rockslide. On top was a 12-inch long slab of limestone with 2 inverted Pliomerid trilobites, unfortunately terribly weathered. Piece by piece I examined every rock in that pile, until the pile was relocated several feet away. Not another complete trilobite was seen! I began to work my way up that wash, consistently finding fragments, mostly the star-like pygidia. About halfway up the mountain I found a small exposure and pulled out a weathered piece of limey shale. On it set a severely crushed pygidium and thorax, a head was not visible with matrix covering where the cephalon should be. (This trilobite, prepped out, had its crushed cephalon folded underneath.) Now the ice was broken! However that was to be my only large trilobite of the day. I had also found a tiny inverted trilobite in a unique clean, thick flat limestone slab that I had not seen anywhere else on the mountainside.
Ken and Shanan came down from their exploration with a load of rock. They had each found a fairly acceptable complete Pliomerid, neither near perfect however. Ken found a small Encrinurid trilobite that should clean up well. They’d also found tiny inverted trilobites like mine, in the same clean limestone. They were grinning ear to ear though. They believe they found THE layer that the Pliomerids were coming from. Ken had found a huge enrolled bug still in place in the canyon wall that needed the rock saw tobe removed. The next day would be spent working that layer.
An early start gave us a view of a beautiful sunrise. We attacked the exposure with gusto and excited anticipation. By ten in the morning, we found absolutely nothing. It seemed the bugs were widely scattered in the layer, too widely for us to be successful. We separated and worked all the washes up and down the canyon walls. Early afternoon we met at the camp, and Shanan showed us his find, an excellent crinoid and cystoid that he removed from the formation. He stated there were more to collect!
After a quick lunch, we worked our way up that steep wash. Of course, good fossil sites are never easily accessible. The echinoderm spot was virtually at the top of the mountain! Ken and Shanan worked to remove a large slab covered with crinoids. I worked a neighboring exposure, finding nothing. The entire surface of the very steep slope was covered with loose chunks of hard shale and limestone. I crawled around, examining all the pieces within my reach. To my left, an 18-inch chunk caused me to do a visual double take. On it was a 3-inch, fully inflated Pliomerid, with part of the head, thorax and pygidium exposed to show the bug was complete.
It was so big I called over to Shanan from 20 feet away and tilted the rock his way, and he saw clearly what it was! We had a brief celebratory moment, and explored with gusto for more trilobites, however this was the only one. I slid down the mountain on my hind end with this 50-pound rock in my lap. On the way, I found another fine partial Pliomerid, 2 once complete but now badly weathered Asaphid trilobites, and I met one mildly unhappy rattlesnake that was hiding under a tree and letting me know I was entering his space. Ken and Shanan had their own hands full, hauling the huge crinoid slab down the mountain.
On the way down, they discovered a rockslide of the flat, clean limestone, and found a few more of those weird little trilobites; each and every one was inverted! Our arrival to the camp was one of total physical collapse. But we were ecstatic that we finally found some quality specimens. With the big saw we cut away excess rock from the large specimens. During this process, the skies began build with dark angry clouds. The humidity had been rising all afternoon, and we were soon hearing thunder. Having camped along a wash, we quickly decided to get out of the canyon should there be a flash flood.
We packed and fled the canyon, driving over the flat desert to a dry lake road, where we decided to sit out the storms and to camp overnight. The sky had turned black, even though there was still another hour of daylight. We could see 3 separate but huge storms working their way north, one over the mountain range to the left, one over the flatland, and one over the mountain range we just abandoned to our right. Lightning was constant and vivid. We oohed and ahhed and took lots of pictures, none of which captured the awesome, immense, indescribable scene in front of us. As the invisible sun set, the clouds turned to various shades of red, brown, orange and gray. Finally the storm reached us and we sat it out in my vehicle as thunder cracked, the wind pummeled our vehicles, and driving rain powered washed away the humidity and dust.
Afterwards, we sat out and marveled at the beauty of the desert at night. A coyote howled to our right, then another to our left, then behind and in front. Stars filled the sky. We watched overhead as one satellite after another tracked across the heavens. This is what collecting in the desert is about. The finding was fun, but it was the majesty of the land, sky and nature that left its mark.
We’d been warned about the heat, bugs, snakes, and altitude. One desert dweller that I met the day of my arrival told me not to worry about the bugs or snakes, “It’s too danged hot for them!” he hooted with a laugh and a knee slap! Those reassuring words were partially true. We experienced no bugs, only two hidden snakes, the temperatures were perfect for collecting, and the altitude did make us huff and puff (some of us more than others) but conditions were perfect. We could have tried collecting the site longer, but Shanan saw what he needed for the time being, and we headed to another site he desired to investigate.
The entire trip lasted 12 days for me, 14 days for Ken, and after a month Shanan still has not come home. We intensely collected and researched 5 sites and exploration yielded a couple more locations that will require further examination. However, that first site, though not a goldmine in trilobites, was the most memorable. Its absolute remoteness, its resounding majesty, the pent up years of anticipation to collect together, all coalesced to make this what will surely be one of the most memorable times of my life. |
|
