As long as a few fossils remain in the cache, you are welcome to take a fossil to add to your own rock collection!
During the great quarantine clean of 2020, I discovered my rock collection, assembled over years of studying geology in college and just picking up cool rocks along the way. Having way more rocks than we knew what to do with, we thought it would be fun to share them with fellow geocachers in a new series along the Merrimack River: the rock collection! These 15 caches are hidden in a linear fashion along a portion of the Bay Circuit Trail which can be walked or biked, across AVIS's Deer Jump Reservation (and a couple other reservations as well). The containers vary in size, but each should be an easy find. Each one highlights a different really cool rock. Tradeables may not be left in these caches, though if you collect rocks yourself you can keep a rock from some (but not all) of these caches. Coordinates for a possible trailhead are provided, though there are many places you could begin your hike.
Indiana Fossils
During the early paleozoic era (about 500 million years ago) Indiana was covered by a shallow, warm inland sea which connected to the Atlantic Ocean. This sea supported coral and many other marine life forms, which flourished until the sea receded due to continental uplift and receding sea levels leaving behind fossils of the many marine organisms that once lived there. When I was growing up my grandparents lived in Indiana, and my grandfather would often take us fossil hunting in the streams around their house. This cache contains many of the fossils we collected, including some bivalves and brachiopods (the ones that look like shells, upper right in the photo), bryozoans (the ones that look like branching coral, lower right in the photo), and horn coral (left in the photo). As long as there are a few fossils remaining in the cache, feel free to take one for your own rock collection!
