Nevada Fossil Hunting

What is a trilobite?

A trilobite is form of invertebrate marine life that lived more than 500 million years ago, but are now extinct. These hard-shelled prehistoric critters roamed the sea floor and coral reefs in search of food. Because of their great diversity and often perfect preservation in fine-grained rock, they are one of the most popular fossils among collectors.

Some of the species below have been found, but are quite rare:

Other types of fossils can be found, including brachiopods, sponges, worm tracks, and phyllocarids. 

 The fossils range in length from 1/8th inch to two inches.

Paleontology clubs, societies, community events

Fossil collecting site leads

Not leads or about fossils.  Climbers use this for direct links to maps and more about NV mountain peaks -  http://www.climber.org/data/peaks/NVpeaks.html or the main page to see CA, CO, OR or WA - http://www.climber.org/data/peaks.html 

General fossil information

Nevada Devonian - http://www.mpm.edu/research/geology/aa_devonian_lore.html 

Photos of sites, fossils, and dioramas

College cross country field trip - http://www.paccd.cc.ca.us/instadmn/physcidv/geol_dp/dndougla/WYO97HP/WYO97HP.htm 

Call BLM before going to these sites and ask if the site is in a WSA (Wilderness Study Area).  Several million acres of Nevada have recently been designated WSA's.  In WSA's, you can drive roads, but not off road; you can collect fossils, but not any paleontological materials of "scientific value."  

Museums with fossil exhibits

Las Vegas  Barrick Museum of Natural History

Selected state or national fossiliferous sites -
parks, monuments, forests, wilderness

Fish and Wildlife Service - Ash Meadows NWR
BLM - Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area

Fossils in Las Vegas, Nevada

The French Mountain Fossils

For the Frenchman Mountain trilobites, drive east from I-15 on Lake Mead Boulevard in North Las Vegas. After about six miles, you will be climbing the steep incline to the pass between Frenchman Mountain and Sunrise Mountain, to the north. Continue up the slope past past Hollywood Boulevard and on past the last houses and stores. Off to your right, you will shortly see a turnout for "The Great Unconformity", where PreCambrian-age metamorphic rocks are overlain by the Cambrian Tapeats Sandstone. Just beyond this marker, a dirt road goes right into a small gulch, at the mouth of which is an old trash dump. At different times, this road is blocked by the developer further down the mountain, but this is BLM land and open to collecting. If you have a four-wheel-drive vehicle, you can drive around the roadblock. Take this road several tenths of a mile up the hill, to a large cut bank on the east side of the road. This was formerly a quarry for shale used in making terra cotta pipe. This rock is Cambrian Pioche Shale, and several layers host trilobite fossils. Whole trilobites are rare, as most of the fossils are molted exoskeletal parts, of which the cephalons are by far the most common. Other fossils occasionally found are worm burrow casts and, much rarer,small brachiopods. Nearly all of the fossils are "imprints", with little mineralized skeletal material. Sedimentary structures such as ripple marks and raindrop prints can also be found, from the time when this mud was originally deposited. This shale breaks down very quickly after a rain, so digging is needed to reach relatively fresh rock, and a sturdy hammer and chisels are needed to excavate slabs of any size. It is very hard to find much at this locality when it is wet, after a rain, as the rock falls apart badly. Good luck. BH

If you park where the big tires are and head towards the shale deposits on your left, start looking at the lowest shale deposit. You should easily be able to find "biceratops" & "paedeumias" heads there fairly quickly. If you go up to the top of the big deposit, you will find very little except tracks. I have not been down to the other end where the house are in years, but there used to be a trench my Dad had dug with a backhoe that had was a good spot as well.

I hope someone will jump in and give you good directions. I'm not familar with southern NV, but Bright Angel (Pioche) Shale appears to be what you are looking for. It's listed in one of the links below, and be sure to look at the bioturbated pictures in the links too. You might try contacting Steve Rowland, a geology professor at UNLV. In one article he sounded like someone who would be excited to share information. http://home.earthlink.net/~llanitedave/rainbowgardens/pages/PhotoGallery.html ..... http://home.earthlink.net/~llanitedave/rainbowgardens/pages/GeoHistory.html .... http://www.unlv.edu/Colleges/Sciences/Geoscience/pub/rowland/Virtual/research.html ... http://home.earthlink.net/~llanitedave/rainbowgardens/pages/StrataDesc.html#Tapeats

I found the dirt road with the trash dump.  The road is completely blocked now with huge old tires and rocks and dirt.  I walked .35 miles to the high point of the road and to my left (east) was the shale on the side of the cut.  Beyond the high point of the road there is a huge water pumping tank.  Looks new.  It is fenced and has a good road.  The next time I go to the site I will go from that end.  There is good parking and it will be a shorter hike to the site.  It also looks like a more comfortable place to leave your automobile.  Expensive homes are very close by and more development are planned (I think).  I talked to an employee of the water company working there and he said no problem in parking there on the dirt.  Stay off the paved area.

I know there are some sites north, east, and west of Vegas, but I've never hunted down there, and I don't have directions. I see the question all the time, but have never seen an answer or a website about the area (except one long ago about the area 40 miles north of Vegas--battleship wash or something like that near Moapa). That was a University of Nevada LV, field trip. If I were going, I would get in touch with the UNLV and/or go to the Univ to check out the paleontology masters thesis's. I would also check with the BLM in Vegas.

Examination of Devonian rocks and brachiopods in cast-central Nevada.  In comparison to Wisconsin, Nevada is a very different place to do geologic fieldwork. There are few flowing rivers to watch, and no maple or oak trees to provide shade from the fierce sun.  The fierce sun causes the identification of rocks, stones and fossils to be very difficult.  The landscape is scattered with jack rabbits which leap out of your way, small lizards scurry over rocks, scorpions hide underneath them, and the occasional rattle from the tail of a rattlesnake keeps your attention riveted to the ground as you hike through the dessert in search of rocks and fossils for your collection.

The rock exposures are spectacular and everything is exposed with only a few sagebrush, Joshua trees and cactus to avoid. Thousands of feet of rock are accessible to you as you transverse the Nevada desert landscape. Many of the mountains are made of Devonian-aged rock, sandstones, lime-stones, shales, conglomerates and cherts.  The brachiopods that have been found have survived the mass extinction.

The brachiopod and faunas reflect, having been produced in shallow-water as the Las Vegas Nevada region was at one time a low lying swampy ocean.  Interestingly Las Vegas means "The Fields"

An unusual fossil locality occurs east of Owens Lake, near the crest of California's Inyo Mountains--a place many fossil enthusiasts call the Chainman Shale site, where 325-million-year-old ammonoids can be found along the same bedding planes that yield fossil shark teeth and terrestrial plants. The fossil remains have been preserved in what geologists refer to as the Upper Mississippian Chainman Shale, a thick marine deposit, almost everywhere slightly metamorphosed, which also contains several species of pelecypods and brachiopods, in addition to a peculiar orthocone nautiloid cephalopod called Bactrites, or in more colloquial language the "darning needle" cephalopod because of its sharply elongated, needle-like appearance in the rocks.

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