I cracked around 30 Mazon Creek concretions today, and I still have many to go. The good thing is that a lot of them came cleanly open, and a freeze/thaw cycle wasn’t needed on any of them. The bad news is that, even though it was a clean split 90% of the time, nearly all of them came out empty.
However, the first fossil to emerge for a while, was a shrimp.
As the animal was exposed to sunlight and air for the first time in 300 million years, the fossil got a bit more color to it and became more well defined than is shown above. And the photo below uses a filter to highlight the shrimp imprint.
Afternoon was social distance bike ride by the river
Followed by some fly tying.
