4 places in Ontario for top notch fossil hunting

You can’t miss here. If you have a cottage along the south Lake Huron shore or if you are in day trip range, this is the place to go. The Rock Glen Conservation Area encourages fossil hunters to collect specimens and it also has a large display of local fossils and First Nations artifacts, making it a great Plan B if your trip is rained out. There are horn-shaped corals everywhere, plus branch corals, fragments of trilobites (which grew to a metre long, but finds are typically 2 to 3 cm long), shells, and even pieces of body armour from primitive fish. You can pick up fossils from the ground and rinse them off with water. The area is safe, with no overhanging rocks or poison ivy, but be sure to keep a close eye on small children around the river. Fossil 411: Safe and fun, and you can’t leave empty-handed. The one minus: It can get very hot from June to September, with high humidity from the nearby lake and reflected heat from the rock and clay. Pace yourself and bring lots of water.

In the Kawarthas and the Lake Simcoe area, most rock exposures hold interesting fossils, some of them rare. This is the part of Ontario where you’re most likely to find starfish or entire crinoids (a.k.a. sea lilies, marine animals related to starfish that looked like flowers, about 10 to 15 cm long). The rocks in the region also hold the largest diversity of trilobites, with at least 30 species, ranging from near-microscopic to more than 20 cm long. Most exposures are made up of alternating layers of soft shale and harder limestone. (If you come across a bed of thick, hard limestone, you’ve found the Gull River Formation along the edge of the Canadian Shield, and you’re in the wrong place. Go farther south.) Check on the ground along the base of rock exposures. Fossils are harder than shale, and as the exposures age, rain and ice separate the fossils from the shale. Keep your eyes open for enrolled trilobites. (When in danger, they curled up into a ball and sometimes were fossilized that way.) If you can split the rock, check the shale layers and the limestone for snails, trilobites, crinoids, clams, and rarer animals that were swept up in mudslides. Fossil 411: Lots of fossils here, but a place to be careful: Avoid collecting at big, tempting rock cuts such as the one on County Road 6, south of Kirkfield. It’s not worth the risk of having a rock tumble down and hit you. Once you find a low, accessible outcrop, use a hammer and a chisel to remove the fossils.

The Pretty River is accessible at the Pretty River Parkway on the east side of Collingwood, just north of Hwy. 26. The river falls over layers of limestone containing marine snails (1 to 10 cm) and trilobites. (You can find the same kinds of fossils on the Lake Ontario shore near Cobourg and in Prince Edward County.) There are exposed limestone banks along the river that hold shells, heads of trilobites, and parts of crinoids. Collecting is best in late summer, when the river is low. There are also exposed layers of limestone along the shore of Georgian Bay nearby. You’ll need a small hammer, a cold chisel, and protective glasses. Unless you plan to make this a hobby, don’t waste money on an expensive mason’s hammer. West of Collingwood, oil shales covered with fragments of trilobites and sometimes complete specimens are exposed in stream cuts starting at the old Craigleith railway station and extending west to Georgian Peaks. Fossil collecting is not allowed in Craigleith Provincial Park or any other municipal, provincial, or national park, but there are some exposures of Ordovician black shale nearby along the highway. The shale also contains shells, and bits of crinoids. You can easily split layers with an old table knife or a screwdriver. In the Beaver Valley area, rivers and streams often expose shales and limestone layers of the Georgian Bay Formation. The rocks are similar to those found along Etobicoke Creek in Toronto (between Bloor Street and Marie Curtis Park), the only easily accessible place to find this formation south of the Georgian Bay area. Beds were laid down by mudslides and in hurricanes about 445 million years ago and are rich in fossils. They hold the cone-shaped shells of nautiloids (squid-like animals up to 30 cm long), as well as the remnants of trilobites, crinoids, and clams. Fossil 411: Fairly easy collecting, though the tough limestone beds at the Pretty River and east of Craigleith Provincial Park may be frustrating, as the fossils can be hard to remove. Stick to the shales and softer rock and you’ll do fine.

Prince Edward County is a treasure trove. There are rock cuts that hold a wide diversity of fossils. The Consecon area is a great place to hunt trilobites, snails, and other Ordovician creatures. If you collect at rock cuts, make sure your car is parked well off the road. Stick to the small cuts on the back roads. Better yet, collect on the shorelines. Parts of the shoreline have large areas of exposed rock. The public shoreline areas west of Army Reserve Road and south of Sandbanks Provincial Park have swaths of flat limestone. You’ll easily find snail fossils in this rock. If you work around them with a light hammer and a small chisel (no wider than a fingernail), you’ll find that they pop out fairly easily. If they break, collect all the pieces, dry them, and put them back together with superglue. You may also find trilobites exposed in the rock. Check out Salmon Point. Local kids have collected fossils there for years, but there are still lots to be found, as waves and ice keep breaking up the rocks. Fossil 411: A pretty good destination for fossils, although hard bedrock in some places is sometimes frustrating. Collecting on the beaches can pay off. Avoid private land, and be careful around the water: In some spots, the drop-off is quite steep.