(See map below) We think this a great activity for all ages but would be especially fun for families. U-Dig quarry is located approximately 52 miles west of Delta, Utah, near Antelope Springs. The bonus is that you get to take home what you find. On average 10-20 fossils are found in a four-hour period by most visitors, I think we found that many in the two hours we visited. Personal instruction is offered and access on the 40-acre quarry where visitors can hunt through freshly excavated shale. The shale splits easily into flat sheets, revealing the trilobite fossils. But if you want a real fossil hunting experience you can take a hammer provided by U-Dig and spend time in the quarry splitting limestone shale. There are so many of these little critters concentrated in this quarry that you can often find them by simply looking down as we did within a few feet of where we were standing. We see them frequently at rock shops and in museums but never have we seen them so readily available and easy to find as we did at U-Dig. Because of their diversity and near perfect preservation in fine-grained rock, trilobites are one of the most popular fossils among collectors. Trilobites are among the earliest known marine arthropods and were some of the most successful of all early animals, existing for over 270 million years and went extinct in mass extinction 250 million years ago. We heard this was a good place to find trilobites, but we had no idea how easy they are to find and in such abundance.
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