Suedberg Fossil Site - Swarata State Park, PA - Rock-Hounding on Waymarking.com

From the DCNR handbook: (visit link)

A very accessible and interesting collecting site for Middle Devonian (about 375 million years ago) fossils can be found in the eastern section of the park. The borrow pit exposes a sequence of olive-gray siltstones and claystones called the upper Mahantango Formation. The fossils are concentrated primarily at the west end of the pit in deeply weathered bands 2 to 3 inches thick.

These ancient rocks are a record of a past environment. They show that this site was a shallow sunlit seafloor where mostly filter-feeding organisms thrived in the gentle sea currents. Following the death of these organisms, wave action concentrated their hard parts into lens-shaped deposits. Today we find these concentrations of shell and skeletal matter exposed as rock.

Although the environmental conditions were similar to those described for Swatara Gap, the fossil zones at Suedberg are representative of organisms that lived 65 million years later than the ones at the gap. Figure 7 illustrates and names the fossils most commonly collected here. The fossils found in the concentrated zones are mostly internal and external molds of brachiopods and bryozoans. Pelecypods can be found as delicate white casts in the claystones on the east side of the pit.

Fossils: yes Rock Types: http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/topogeo/parkguides/pg16.pdf Gems: Not Listed Meteorites: Not Listed Minerals: Not Listed Admission price: Not Listed Hours of Operation: Not listed

Visit Instructions:
Please post a photograph taken at the site showing either your GPS or your finds for the day you visited.

Recent Visits/Logs:

Date Logged Log User Rating   04/22/2022 horselady9 visited it 02/09/2009 Gosffo visited it 12/09/2008 ODragon visited it

View all visits/logs