I had the great good fortune to have a science teacher for an uncle. He loved his work and taught his nieces and nephews about the world at large as well as the part of it we lived in: about soils and rocks, the importance of the summer and winter solstices, and how to identify harmless snakes and move them without getting bitten, among other things.
He enjoyed taking us on field trips on his days off, and one of his favorite places to explore was Eighteen Mile Creek, a tributary of Lake Erie that meanders south of Buffalo, mostly through the town of Hamburg. As a science teacher in the Buffalo City Schools, Uncle Ed knew all the places where people were permitted to go fossil hunting. His goal on these trips was to teach us about paleontology, the study of fossilized plant and animal remains, as well as something about life in Western New York before the Buffalo Bills.
Eighteen Mile Creek is so-named because its waters flow into Lake Erie at a point 18 miles southwest of the former village of Black Rock, now a neighborhood on the western edge of Buffalo.[1] I remember as a child clambering down the shale cliffs behind my uncle, into the gorge formed by the creek. While in places the cliffs rise 100 feet or more, the creek itself is wide but not very deep, a perfect place for wading on a hot summer day while we searched the cliffs for ancient life.
My uncle had a knack for simplifying complex subjects in a way that made them meaningful for children. All of the fossilized creatures we would find in the layers of thin grey shale would be from the Paleozoic Era, he would tell us, and they lived not in the Great Lakes but in a body of water known as the Devonian Sea. Rather than have us try to memorize the Latin names of the fossils (what 11-year-old would remember athyris spiriferoides?), he would tell us the “common names” of what we were finding.
He described how at the bottom of the Devonian Sea lay a magnificent coral reef not unlike the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. The drab, grey fossils we were looking for—brachiopods, pyrite, crinoid stems, and the most sought after prize of all, trilobites—were once as colorful and beautiful as any ocean creatures we might see today. If we found one of these precious relics, he instructed, we were to wrap them carefully in newspaper and put them in a metal box, so as not to break the tiny creatures embedded in the fragile shale. We stuffed the harder, calcified fossils we found near the creek bed and lakeshore, into our pockets.
I remember going home at the end of the day with our small treasures, my head filled with images of small marine animals clinging to rocks, and of plants waving their fronds at the bottom of a sea where I now walked. I still have those fossils, safely tucked away, wrapped in very old newspaper.
As an adult, I have since learned that the Great Lakes are a paleontologist’s dream, with fossils plentiful all along the vast shorelines, thanks to the glaciers that scoured them from the hardened Devonian sea bottom, and the waves that now deposit them on the beaches. I’ve also recently learned about a place called the Penn Dixie Fossil Park & Nature Reserve in Hamburg, on what was once part of the quarry of the Penn Dixie Cement Corporation. According to the Reserve’s website, it is ranked as the #1 fossil park in the U.S. and welcomes guests from around the world.[2]
The Fossil Park is temporarily closed until April 2023, but when it reopens, I plan to visit. I read that you can keep whatever fossils you find during your explorations. What better way to relive my childhood memories of a mind-expanding educational experience, and honor the memory of Uncle Ed, science teacher extraordinaire.
Have you ever looked for or found fossils on the beaches of the Great Lakes or along one of its tributaries like Eighteen Mile Creek? I would love to know if you share my interest in these small relics of the past, or if you have ever simply stumbled upon them. Please let me know in the comments below.
Moxie Gardiner is a writer, gardener, and traveler who grew up on the West Side of Buffalo, NY. In a previous life she was a journalist, magazine editor, speech writer, and policy wonk. Back in the day she made three solo parachute jumps, flew in an F-15 fighter jet, and crawled through mud pits at the Jungle Operations Training Course in Panama. She now meditates and practices yoga. She is almost ready to publish her first novel, set in Buffalo.
[1] An excellent scientific and historical tome on the subject is Geology and Paleontology of Eighteen Mile Creek by Amadeus W. Grabau. This book, Grabau’s master’s thesis at MIT, was originally published in two volumes in 1898-1899, and has since been republished by the Hamburg Natural History Society. I have no idea if my uncle ever read this book, but I hope he did. He would have loved it.
[2] For more information about the fossil park, visit https://penndixie.org/fossil-hunting/
Thank you for the wonderful reply, keep up the good work you are a very talented writer
Jim&Diane
I grew up at the mouth of Lake Erie on 18 mile creek. I spent many hours down there, climbing along those shale cliffs, finding fossils but never really understanding them. I was lucky to live there, you were lucky to have a scientist Uncle!
Yes, Lynn we were both lucky in different ways! I love 18 mile creek to this day, and still enjoy going there with my sister who lives a short drive away. Thank you so much for leaving a comment.
Love your article on fossil hunting,it brought back some very dear memories to me. On the weekends I would take my kids fossil hunting,you knew them as Greg and Pam . Greg has since then past away at 49yrs old , a year before he died we went fossil hunting one last time at Penn Dixie. I still have the fossils we collected from our weekend adventures. Would like to share a few fossil pics we collected.
JimThigpen (Bettencourt’s)
Thank you Jim, for sharing your story as well as your fossil pics which are awesome! You were a good dad to take Greg and Pam on these excursions (my Dad also took us at times, in addition to the field trips with my uncle). How wonderful that you got to go fossil hunting that one last time with Greg, and can hold on to that precious memory.
Hi and thank you for writing about fossils. My mother went to Buff State in the 70’s (to get a college degree before her children did) and took a geology course there. I took one at Fredonia. She had worked in the library at the Buffalo Science museum before I was born and learned a lot about fossils and met many of the scientists. When we were any place where there were rock formations and stones she would look for fossils. There are some that you can see at St. Peter and Paul’s in Williamsville, in the stones on the church building!
She was fascinated by Brachiopods, and others that I need to review names on. I must go to Penn-Dixie this year!
Thank you Virginia, for sharing your story about your mother and how she helped instill in you a love of fossils. I will definitely have to go to St. Peter and Paul’s to see the fossils in the stones! Did you know that you can also see fossils in the walls of Grey Cliff? Apparently Frank Lloyd Wright was fascinated by them as well!
No, I didn’t know there were fossils in/on Grey Cliff. No wonder I like FLW’s architecture!
Now I do have to get out to Grey Cliff!