New York and Ontario 2025

While on a recent family vacation to the Buffalo/Niagara falls area of New York and Ontario I managed to squeeze in 2 days to find some fossils in the area. It was my first time collecting the area and the only time that I have searched for Devonian aged fossils. After some lengthy research I managed to track down two spots that seemed to have promising chance without bringing any of my own tools!

I started at the Penn-Dixie fossil park in Erie County, New York. The park is open access to the public on the weekends and charges a small feel to dig or search the area. It was a rainy day and much of the area was mucky but that kept a lot of people off of the piles and I had some good luck even without digging. The fossils there are Devonian marine fossils with the main target being trilobites of various species.

I quickly found my first partial trilobite, being the head of an Eldredgeops rana, the most common in this location. Note the complex eyes that they have, prior to trilobites most “eyes” were less complex and detected changes in light instead of truly seeing the environment.

Brachiopods were also plentiful at this site, most were fragmentary but I was able to scrounge up a few nice complete ones

A collection of rolled up trilobites, likely also Eldredgeops. Trilobites often roll up when in danger or dying so they are often found like this

A collection of brachiopods with some of the small crinoid stems to the left side

The only gastropod that I found, *Naticonema lineata*

Overall Penn-Dixie was a great site to try and is ideal for people inexperienced in the area (Like me)! I found a wide variety in just a few hours and it didn’t require any tools that can’t be rented at the site. After some sightseeing we crossed to Canada and did some fishing. I was able to checkout an abandoned quarry site that had been turned into a lake and nature park. It also contained Devonian aged fossils but with much fewer trilobites, there was primarily fossilized corals and crinoids.

Glacial striations present on the walk in to the site, these are marks left by glaciers moving south from Canada towards the New York area at the end of the ice age. Rocks and gravel trapped under the glaciers left groove in the bedrock below the heavy blocks of ice!

A long strand of rugose? coral exposed in the bedrock

An example of a fossil-bearing boulder with corals and crinoids

More corals, the area was littered with fossils

The best piece that I was able to find at the quarry, a large plate of crinoids and corals with hundreds of small fossils

The highlight of the trip! A small placoderm fish bone, scale bar is 1cm. My oldest vertebrate find! Identified as Protitanichthys sp. by the fossil forum!

The riker mount that I put together for the trip, lots of horn coral and trilobites from New York and some beautiful large coral pieces from Ontario

Overall it was a great and educational trip to see a lot of Devonian aged fossils. With proper tools and time the sites likely would have yielded much more and some higher quality finds but I am happy with the finds I got in a short time!

To finish this entry off: a beautifully crystallized section of fossil coral, I’m unsure of the type but the preservation is stunning