When you arrive at Penn Dixie Fossil Park and Nature Preserve, check in at the entrance where you can rent a bucket, ask questions and get more information.
The Buffalo News has a story about the Penn Dixie Fossil Park. Want to visit the beach this summer? Why not a Devonian beach in New York? If you love fossils, step back in time and collect fossils from an old cement quarry that is absolutely chock full of fossils. Brachiopods, horn corals, and trilobites are very common, but others, like snails and crinoids can be found, too. The park is open most of the year and has very reasonable rates - $12 for adults and $9 for children.
At a 54-acre attraction in Blasdell, visitors arrive with sunscreen, sunglasses and hats. Some carry small coolers, chairs and buckets.
With a perennial breeze and the sun beating down, it's almost like a day at the beach – except the sand is soil and the warm water that covered the area nearly 400 million years ago is gone.
We’re at Penn Dixie Fossil Park and Nature Reserve, where anyone can be an amateur paleontologist and dig for fossils to take home.
That’s right – there’s a large fossil park nearly hidden in our own backyard that is so impressive it has been ranked No. 1 in the country.
It’s a step back in time and looks like it. First-time visitors may be surprised to see an expansive flat and barren landscape broken up only by a few mounds of shale and soil. But you’re in the right place. That's where the treasure is found and it's often in plain sight. At Penn Dixie, you are walking on fossils.
First, though, look to the top of the tree line in the distance. Everything below that (yes, even where you are standing) was under water about 380 million years ago when the area was a tropical sea rich in creatures such as brachiopods, horn corals and trilobites (called the potato bugs of the ocean and you’ll see why when you look at one).
