Wandong fossils victoria

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Just out of town you can find several fossils mainly shells but if youre lucky you can find trilobites, star fish crinoids, worms, and a lot more different types of marine fossils. The fossils are found here because the towns listed bellow wore once all part of the sea floor millions of years ago. You can find the marine fossils in almost any sandstone mudstone, siltstone rock outcrop in layers between the strata of the rock around wandong, Kilmore east, clobinane and Kinglake areas and other areas nearby. I started finding fossils in wandong and clobinane in 2009 doing lots of foot work (walking) around clobinane area sometimes I would do 4 to 6 km in one day. At wandong I have often cached the train there then got off at the wandong train station and rode on a push bike from there to the dry creek area about 3km from wandong where on a hill I crack open hundreds of rocks on the hillside looking for any fossils inside. There is a special technique to breaking them open to reveal an intact fossil you have to know where the cleavage plane of the rock is. The cleavage is the natural weak spot of a rock or mineral every rock has some type of cleavage for an example if you have ever broke black slate or mica you will see it breaks off in sheets. to break a rock that may contain a fossil or two you have to 1 have a wide flat chisel 2 know where the cleavage is 3 hammer that chisel along the line of clearage where you want to break the rock into a tile like sheet not into several bits. Then to prepare them for the bumpy trip home you will want to wrap them carefully in tissue paper then bubble wrap or cloth because they are mainly in sandstone, mudstone and siltstone the actual fossil can be rubbed away if not wrapped properly. The next step is displaying them if they are in sandstone you have no problems because sandstone is not affected by the heat of the sun however if they are in siltstone or mudstone you have to keep them out of the heat and sun otherwise they crack open just like mud and your wonderful fossil is in 2 bits or even 5 some of the trilobites can be as large as a foot in size. some areas in the rock you can expect to find 2 or more trilobites in one rock but this is rare normally you find 1 in every 10 or so rocks you bust open the siltstones and mudstones both have high amounts of salt inside them if you wore to put one in water then dry it out with a heater youll see small salt crystals growing as the water evaporates. You can also find them in the railway cuttings from Kilmore east to wandong but I wouldnt advise getting in the way of the trains.
the clobinane fossil area is actually closer to Andersons creek camping ground but clobinane is the closest town the fossils here are mainly shells star fish worms and crinoids all from the sea but here they can be found in sandstone only in certain layers but much more abundant as the layers contain up to 100 visible shells in a hand size rock you rarely find starfish but they are there crinoids are in abundant there too but with the shells getting there is a bit hard you need a four wheel drive then you have to walk down a steep hill and half way up another about 500m to find the outcrop once found there are so many fossils you could go a bit nuts and take a few kgs home if you wanted to. Extracting the fossils is easy at this location all you will need is a hammer wide flat chisel/bolster hammer/mallet a good strong bag/backpack and tissue paper or smooth cloth fossils can also be found down from this spot in the creeks in almost any rock.

Kilmore east locality I have only found them to be in a nearby old quarry and in the bedrock along the creeks from Kilmore to wandong and are quite hard to find you may find 1 in every 20 or so rocks you bust open but they are there trilobites and shells are mainly found here.

Kinglake locality was a quarry with lots of big foot sized trilobites found but has since been turned into a tip and most of the good stuff is now buried in junk however im sure you would find some if you dug down in the area of the tip or cracked open some rocks in the nearby creeks.

https://flic.kr/p/N7W1jm

There are several areas where I would suggest digging down for fossils as the ground under these spots has never been tested due to top soil covering the rock there are quite a few hills and creeks that may be worth going that little bit deeper to uncover more fossil localities please also seek permission to go onto any private land to fossick.

I run my own field trips to these fossil localities except for Kilmore and Kinglake once every year.

Pictures and map to come

heres some more info about them https://museumvictoria.com.au/DiscoveryCentre/Infosheets/Marine-Fossils/Trilobites/
 
Have you seen the Moroccan trilobites? They painstakinglychip away the host rock to reveal the entire fossil, I saw a documentary on it recently, they are so well preserved you can even see the individual eye sections like an insects eye. Pretty amazing. Nice vid.

1479242314_trilibite.jpg
 
Heatho said:
Have you seen the Moroccan trilobites? They painstakinglychip away the host rock to reveal the entire fossil, I saw a documentary on it recently, they are so well preserved you can even see the individual eye sections like an insects eye. Pretty amazing. Nice vid.

https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/img/member-images/487/1479242314_trilibite.jpg

no I haven't they look like they may crumble with one breath the ones in my video you can find fully intact ones with eyes and all except the spikes show on the one above but because of the mudstone weathering so quick its hard to keep them from just breaking up.
 
HTY,some great information there on one of my favourite areas to look for fossils and also plenty of gold around :Y:
 

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