It's that time of the year!

the ice in the creek bed looks like an ancient glacier (stolen from @itsyourrock on instagram)

I don't know how many of you readers exist in the Midwest...but if you do, our collective pain is palpable.  This winter has been a rough one. I'm sure it's been hard for everyone...there's just something about being land-locked that makes my pain more important than your pain.

Saturday was nice, though.  It was roughly 50 degrees (t-shirt weather, yay!) and we decided to go on a fossil hunt.  We threw the dog in the back of the Honda and were off like rockets to my favorite fossil ditch.  We had a fairly successful venture: horn coral, petrified wood, brachiopods, some crinoid stems, and some Devonian coral (not sure what kind, anyone? anyone...bottom row second from the right).  

Not too shabby.

Fossil Hunting in Iowa.

Left to right: 1. a layered fossil of tiny shells.  2. I believe this to be a part of coral, it has a hole in the center and is fossilized. 3. this one I'm not so sure about.  It branches like a coral but plants also do that.  Any ideas, readers? 

This is the single best example of a horned coral I've ever seen.  It was 100% there.  No chips, no dings.  Very nice.

I found this in a ditch.  When I busted a certain type of rock in half I would find these plant like pattens in the center.  I am so unfamiliar with this type of fossil that I purchased a book written specifically about fossil hunting in Iowa.  Pretty soon you'll have to call me Professor Jane. 

This appears to be another type of plant fossil but there looks like there is some type of circular shell in it and some type of crinoid in the very center.  Someone help!  I feed feedback!  It looks like a layer of ocean trapped in a smallish rock.