GMS Field Trip

GMS Field Trip
Eocene Fossils in Georgia
Saturday, September 25, 2016

What a trip! Because of the nature of quarry work, even the quarry people did not know where we would be collecting until a few days before the trip, and even then the location changed the day of the trip. Thanks to Tom Batcha's presentation about fossils in Mid-Georgia, we had just learned about the formations we were likely to encounter as well as the kinds of fossils that can be found there. Though we could not be sure which layer we were in, we knew the fossils would be Eocene age (56 to 33.9 million years old).

There was a large turnout so we had an impressive caravan to a kaolin mine. We visited four different locations. At the first location, attendees found sharks teeth, various shell casts (steinkerns), lots of bryozoans, plus some ray plates and barbs. At the second location, there were some superb kaolin chunks that were perfect for schools. People found sharks teeth, some coral, shrimp burrow casts, and possibly some bone. Jim Haege even got me some maracasite sand! At the third location, we found mostly super sparkly maracasite and we got to see the strata. Unfortunately, I missed the fourth location because of an errant caravan. People who went said there was pink kaolin and they got to see some large mining equipment.

Many thanks to quarry personnel for allowing us to visit their mine! Thank you to Diana Poppelreuter for baking the best cookies. And a big thank you to Terrilyn Price, who was instrumental in getting the field trip arranged.

Lori Carter
On behalf of Charles Carter, GMS Field Trip Chair
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