Collecting Fossils

Allie Kochert

“Collecting fossils isn’t usually a hobby that a middle-aged soccer mom gets into, but maybe I’m not your average soccer mom. Yet the ancient imprints wedded onto sandstone was exactly what helped me stave off the often-mundane daily life as it fed my curiosity and woke me up to the expanse of time well beyond school bells or alarm clocks.

On a hike with my mom one day in the Laurel Highlands outside of Bedford, I stumbled upon a large chunk of rock just sitting beside the trail. I bent down, knowing that this was not just a fossil but an amazingly well-preserved one, extremely rare just to be sitting there in just crumbled off a ledge resting between leaf litter. This fossil was a clump of large crinoids from the Silurian age, 443-416myo (million years ago), beautifully preserved.

Fossil hunters say this is the ‘hook’—and indeed, I was. I took side trips while the kids were in school to fossil pits known to local paleontologists and found glorious caches of trilobites, shells, stems, leaf patterns, and worm tracks. One of my favorites was finding the tracks of Early Cambrian worm burrows that are some of the oldest known fossils on the East Coast ‘hidden in plain sight’ on the Lancaster County River Trail. I will forever be awed by the age and magic of discovering fossils, just there for our wonder.”

Memories & Inspiration: The Kerry and C. Betty Davis Collection of African American Art is organized and toured by International Arts & Artists.