Scouts, students, rock hounds, geologists, and life-long enthusiasts all keep rock, mineral, and fossil collections.
Scouts, students, rock hounds, geologists, museums, and life-long nature enthusiasts all keep rock, mineral and fossil collections for research, for education, for display and for fun. You will create a five-part rock, mineral and fossil collection, one part for each of the three main types of rocks as well as one part for minerals and one for fossils. You will learn techniques to obtain and display specimens for your collection as well as ideas on make improvements as your collection grows.
Instructions
1. Organize your field tools and supplies into a sturdy backpack. Include your field guides to aid with field identification of the specimens you find.
2. Plan your field trips in advance and join in the planned field trip adventures of other local geologists and rock hounds. Study area maps and your field guides for ideas on what you might find in the field and the best way to get there.
3. Collect mineral and fossil specimens everywhere you go and at every possible opportunity. Streams, beaches, quarries and gravel pits are excellent places to find rock outcrops and rock, mineral and fossil specimens.
4. Use your hammers and chisels to create specimens of about egg or golf ball size, but keep large beautiful specimens and whole fossils intact rather than breaking them into uniform pieces.
5. Take notes on each specimen you collect, recording the location of each find in your field notebook with as much detail as possible. Include specimen identification (ID) number, collector name, date, specimen name (if determined) and detailed location information.
6. Wrap each specimen in newspaper and assign each one a unique serial number for later reference. Write the serial number on the newspaper wrapping and key it to the notes in your field notebook.
7. Clean your specimens when you get back home, rather than out in the field. Carefully unwrap and clean hard specimens with soapy water and a soft brush, but do not attempt this yourself on soft fragile minerals and fossils. Seek help from experienced collectors for rare and fragile specimens.
8. Set your washed specimens on a newspaper to dry.
9. Label each clean and dry specimen by first dabbing a small circle of white fast-drying paint on a flat but discrete portion of your sample, then using a black fine-tipped permanent magic marker to assign each specimen in your collection a unique serial identification number.
10. Add a two-letter code to your numbering system, if you wish. For example: IR, MR, SR for igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks; MN for minerals; and FI and FV for fossil invertebrates and fossil vertebrates respectively. Designate your first metamorphic rock specimen as "MR-001" and your third fossil invertebrate as "FI-003" for example.
11. Identify the specimens that you have collected, cleaned and labeled. Use your field guides to help you with this process. Several guides are often useful for making positive identifications. Use a variety of resources to identify accurately your specimens.
12. Record each collected and labeled specimen in your geologist's notebook. Record the serial number you have assigned each sample and your rock's identification.
13. Transcribe any field information from your field notes into your permanent geologic notebook. This information may prove valuable to you in the future when details escape your memory due to a large number of specimens and a lifetime of collecting activity.
14. Display your specimens in a way that suits your budget and creativity. Initially, egg cartons and jewelry boxes may be ideal. Line boxes or uniformly sized plastic storage totes with paper egg cartons (the bottom half). These are perfect for egg-sized and golf ball-sized specimens.
15. As your collection grows, you may wish to buy or build display cases.
Create separate storage or display trays--one each for each of igneous, metamorphic, sedimentary, mineral and fossil specimens--when your collection grows large enough. At some point, you may wish to build or purchase display cases to show off your finest specimens.
Tags: your field, mineral fossil, your collection, specimens your, collection grows, each specimen
