October Meeting - Different!!

by Craig Tipton

About 35 members and guests packed the meeting room at the Parma-Snow Library on a beautiful warm October day. Jim Supp, our Vice President, ran the meeting while President Dick Cole was in Scotland. We quickly dispensed with the business meeting including the Treasurer's report, a call for member participation in being officers of the club, and the information on the Field trip to the Union City Pennsylvania Site. New member Alan Simpson was introduced.

Following the short break Tony Verdi ran a raffle of several nice items generating over $100 for the club. Then the special program ensued. For this meeting, many of our members brought in strange or favorite fossils that they had found. About eight members brought their finds up front and described them to the club and what was strange, interesting, or unusual about them. Carl Fechko had brought his special camera and was able to project the fine detail on the fossils onto the screen in front of the room (Thanks Carl!). Tom Steckel showed some fossil shells and discussed remnants of color patterns on them. Most fossilized shells lose their color markings over time in the fossilization process. Chuck Piovarchy brought in a brachiopod covered with Aulopora corals and the whole piece was beautifully pyritized. Our new member Alan Simpson jumped right in and showed the group an ammonite plate found on the southern coast of England where he used to live. Craig Tipton showed a horn coral embedded in chert from southern Indiana, and an unusual fossil from the Mississippian Bagdad Road site which was tentatively identified by Doug Dunn as a fish spine. Tony Verdi showed several interesting items including fossils containing crystals and showed an exquisite clam from Fort Drum with calcite crystals inside. These were a few of the things shared. Everyone seemed to agree that we needed to have more meetings like this one where many of our own group participated.