Captain Capitalism and the Lost Devonian Fossils

Permit me, if you will, a deviation from economics and allow me to share a side aspect of my life with all of you who read Cappy Cap, and that is my side hobby of fossil hunting.

As I mentioned a week or so ago I had gotten word of a fossil bed in northern Iowa. This is convenient because the majority of the fossils I find are located in Wyoming, the Dakotas, and Nebraska, while Iowa is a two hour drive from Minneapolis. I took some pictures and would sincerely appreciate sharing them with you;

This is me getting ready for the big fossil hunt;

As you can see I was not in a good mood. I had to wake up at 6AM to make it down there in time to not only have enough day light to search for fossils but also enough time to get back. I don't like sleeping in hotels, I don't care how comfy the bed is, there is nothing more comfy than your own bed. I remember driving back from Guadalupe National Park after a fossil hunt there straight back to Minneapolis which took 33 hours, no sleep, no stop. I like my friggin' bed. I truthfully can more easily sleep in a tent than a hotel room and that's convenient because you have to pay for a hotel. A tent you just pitch.

Anyway, I came into the town of Rockford where the reported fossil bed was found.

Sadly to my discovery I found out that the information I got was not necessarily a secret and quite dated. Matter of fact the whole town kind of prided itself off of the fact that fossils had been discovered in that area;


They even advertised it on their water tower;



With the lost allure of me being the only one privy to this information I decided to go to the fossil beds which were located just outside town. An old abandoned quarry that hit water and ceased their operations. To this day, and maybe one of you is an expert in aquatics can tell me this, but how the hell do bass and blue gill end up in the lakes that form in quarries when there was no water there previously nor any tributary feeding it? There were turtles, fish, and all manner of aquatic life there. Anyway, I started looking for fossils.

Sadly I did not take any pictures of the quarry. Didn't really occur to me. But I found this one picture on the internet which doesn't do it justice, it's literally 9 times this size;


But the good news is I did find some nice specimen there. This is a photo of some of the better fossils I found, boiled and cleaned at the Captain's bachelor pad;


Truth is though, there was literally limitless amounts of fossils. And this is a good thing. Because at my age there's a fair amount of single mothers with young boys who are fascinated with fossils which provides you a great in. I remember going to the dentist and there was a single mother there with her kid and he was reading a book on dinosaurs. I had recently returned from a trip in South Dakota and remembered I left my bag with some fossils in it in my car. I grabbed the bag and while his mom was getting her teeth worked on I striked up a conversation with the kid and he just about passed out when he saw the fossils I had. Ended up getting a date out of that little charade. Since then I've kind of kicked around this half-assed business idea/theory about hording a bunch of fossils and then selling them to men in their late 20's and early 30's as a means to get them an "in." Oh well.

Anyway, glad to share my fossil hunting experience with you all.