UnderMiner
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- Jul 27, 2014
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Went on a road trip with some members of the New York Paleontological Society over the weekend. We traveled to a number of destinations in Pennsylvania including Renovo, Centralia, and a mysterious Amish settlement. Our main objective was to find fossils from the Devonian age. The first place we stopped was an area of road just outside Renovo, PA call "red hill". Red hill is a massive cliff of ancient sedimentary rock. It was the site of many discoveries in the fossil record - including some of the first fossils that showed physical evidence that fish evolved into terrestrial animals. Within 15 minutes of arriving we were chiseling away at the cliff. Below are some of my finds (some of the best of the day).
400 million year old Hyneria tooth, (penny for scale).
Another Hyneria tooth - still embedded in rock matrix.
The next dig site was on the side of the road in Amish country.
This area is best known for its Devonian coral and small "trilobites". And we found a few of each.
A large trilobite still mostly encased in rock (head and two eyes exposed).
A collection of "horn corals", bivalves, snail shells, and crinoid stems.
A snail shell - and a crude depiction of what the living snail may have once looked like 400 million years ago.
Before the 5 hour drive back home a few of us decided to take a detour and drive further into PA to the mysterious ghost town of Centralia. We had heard legends that in certain places of the abandoned town the ground is still hot to the touch as a result of a coal fire that has been raging underground since the 1960's. We did not believe such a claim, but we wanted to check out the town anyway. After driving through the town we met a few people who lived in the area, they told us all the stories of "hot ground" and "rising smoke" were once true - but the fire has long since gone out and we were just "about 20 years too late".
But we didn't give up - because we are a group of explorers, scientists, and treasure hunters. We parked our vehicles on a section of heavily damaged road, got out, and began exploring the abandoned residential streets. Soon we were at the top of a hill overlooking the town. That's when I noticed an area of ground not too far away - it was black - clearly an outcrop of shale (a rock closely associated with coal). I figured where there is shale there is coal - and since we were looking for a burning coal mine I figured to check it out. I climbed down to the shale deposit and felt the ground - it was cold. Then for almost no reason I put my hand under some of the shale deposit - and it was warm... "no - it couldn't be," I thought, "must have been heated up by the sun - surely." But then I began digging a little and the more I dug under the shale the hotter it got until it was as hot as cup of tea. I called to the others and they were amazed - it seemed the legends were true. The team was quick to celebrate the discovery - and then they noticed the shale deposit was also rich is ancient plant fossils! They began chipping away at the rock and harvesting samples to take home.
As the sun set on the horizon I sat back and gazed out at the view - you could see for miles. The air began to get chilly and that's when one of our group noticed a column of steam rising from an area not too far down the hill. The steam was rising from the center of a fractured rock! We all gathered around and looked down into it. It was amazing - almost like a little geyser. There was a pool of boiling water within the rock! This was proof that the fire that was started in the coal mine way back in 1962 was still burning quite intensely to this day! An even cooler realization that struck us was that we were now being kept warm by the heat of a fire started over half a century ago - a fire older than all of us - this was a real natural treasure - and it seemed to be forgotten and overlooked by so many!
It was now very chilly out, the sky was dark, and we were all still in our shorts. I would have loved to spend the night camped out by the steam column - which would have easily served as a natural heat source - but we all had work the next day - and it was still a 4-5 hour drive home! So we all said goodbye and headed back to our homes. Until next year...
Hopefully a few of my comrades come through and will provide pics of our Centralia adventure since my camera had died by then. Hope you all enjoyed my tale.
400 million year old Hyneria tooth, (penny for scale).
Another Hyneria tooth - still embedded in rock matrix.
The next dig site was on the side of the road in Amish country.
This area is best known for its Devonian coral and small "trilobites". And we found a few of each.
A large trilobite still mostly encased in rock (head and two eyes exposed).
A collection of "horn corals", bivalves, snail shells, and crinoid stems.
A snail shell - and a crude depiction of what the living snail may have once looked like 400 million years ago.
Before the 5 hour drive back home a few of us decided to take a detour and drive further into PA to the mysterious ghost town of Centralia. We had heard legends that in certain places of the abandoned town the ground is still hot to the touch as a result of a coal fire that has been raging underground since the 1960's. We did not believe such a claim, but we wanted to check out the town anyway. After driving through the town we met a few people who lived in the area, they told us all the stories of "hot ground" and "rising smoke" were once true - but the fire has long since gone out and we were just "about 20 years too late".
But we didn't give up - because we are a group of explorers, scientists, and treasure hunters. We parked our vehicles on a section of heavily damaged road, got out, and began exploring the abandoned residential streets. Soon we were at the top of a hill overlooking the town. That's when I noticed an area of ground not too far away - it was black - clearly an outcrop of shale (a rock closely associated with coal). I figured where there is shale there is coal - and since we were looking for a burning coal mine I figured to check it out. I climbed down to the shale deposit and felt the ground - it was cold. Then for almost no reason I put my hand under some of the shale deposit - and it was warm... "no - it couldn't be," I thought, "must have been heated up by the sun - surely." But then I began digging a little and the more I dug under the shale the hotter it got until it was as hot as cup of tea. I called to the others and they were amazed - it seemed the legends were true. The team was quick to celebrate the discovery - and then they noticed the shale deposit was also rich is ancient plant fossils! They began chipping away at the rock and harvesting samples to take home.
As the sun set on the horizon I sat back and gazed out at the view - you could see for miles. The air began to get chilly and that's when one of our group noticed a column of steam rising from an area not too far down the hill. The steam was rising from the center of a fractured rock! We all gathered around and looked down into it. It was amazing - almost like a little geyser. There was a pool of boiling water within the rock! This was proof that the fire that was started in the coal mine way back in 1962 was still burning quite intensely to this day! An even cooler realization that struck us was that we were now being kept warm by the heat of a fire started over half a century ago - a fire older than all of us - this was a real natural treasure - and it seemed to be forgotten and overlooked by so many!
It was now very chilly out, the sky was dark, and we were all still in our shorts. I would have loved to spend the night camped out by the steam column - which would have easily served as a natural heat source - but we all had work the next day - and it was still a 4-5 hour drive home! So we all said goodbye and headed back to our homes. Until next year...
Hopefully a few of my comrades come through and will provide pics of our Centralia adventure since my camera had died by then. Hope you all enjoyed my tale.
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