Visitors can keep what they find at Fossil Park

SYLVANIA, Ohio -- A blur of pigtails, arms and legs dives into the pile of dirt and rocks, searching for hidden treasures.

It takes only seconds before the first high-pitched voice screams, "I found one!"

"Hey, here's another one," cries out a young girl. "I'm finding lots of them."

Within minutes, plastic freezer bags are stuffed with chunks of gray rock containing trilobites, brachiopods and horn corals -- Devonian-era fossils from creatures that inhabited the Earth 350 million years ago.

Fossil Park, which has been built in an abandoned 5-acre quarry about 10 miles from downtown Toledo, is open for its second full season this summer.

And visitors can keep what they find.

"These are things you can feel and hold in your hand," said Gary Madrzykowski, director of the Olander Park System, which operates the public park. "They get to take home real souvenirs."'

Madrzykowski said the park is one of three in the United States that he knows of that are open to the public for fossil-hunting. The others are in Rockford, Iowa, and Hamburg, N.Y.

Fossil Park is open on weekends through Oct. 19, and admission is free.

There are two digging pits at the bottom of the quarry where visitors sift through piles of dirt and rock. Finding a fossil takes very little work and getting a little dirty is unavoidable.

Many pieces of shale contain at least a partial fossil, though many have complete impressions and are easy to recognize. Some can be found by breaking the rock by hand.

"It's easy to find fossils," said Debbie Owens of Sylvania. "Almost everything you look at has some piece in it."

The rock in northwest Ohio is rich with fossils -- at least 200 types.

'Like kids again'

Most of the fossils found at the park are fairly common, their value more educational than monetary.

"It's considered to be world-class collecting," said Ron Rea, a geologist with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources' Geologic Survey. "A lot of the specimens that come out of there are in real good shape."

Madrzykowski knew the park was going to be a hit the first day it opened in 2001 when he saw an older couple make their way into the quarry.

"She dropped her cane and he dropped his cane and they plopped themselves down on the pile and started to dig," he said. "They were like kids again."

The park system has a 10-year plan to develop the site, which now has few amenities. It wants to add more digging pits, a walkway around the rim of the quarry, picnic shelters and permanent restrooms -- there are just portable toilets now.

Within three years, the park may be open seven days a week, but there are no plans to charge admission, Madrzykowski said.

Fossil hunters have found the park by word of mouth and the Internet. It's not unusual for an out-of-town visitor to show up on a weekday and find it closed.

"In a way, it's been impossible to keep the genie inside the bottle," Madrzykowski said.

A year ago, there were about 10,000 visitors -- some from as far away as Russia and South Africa. This year, school groups completely booked the 50 openings for tours held this spring and the upcoming fall.

On a recent spring morning, about 40 second-graders from Toledo pretended to be paleontologists, digging and chipping for prehistoric finds. After less than an hour, they lugged their bags full of fossils onto the school bus, but some didn't want to leave.

"You can come back," said Erika Buri, one of the park's guides. "We never run out of fossils."