Deborah Prescott | Daily Press Escanaba resident Steven Messimer stands by his largest trilobite fossil on display at the Escanaba Public Library.

ESCANABA — Escanaba resident Steven Messimer has collected fossils since he was a young boy living in the south side of Chicago. Now parts of his collection can be found in an exhibit in the Escanaba Public Library during March.

“Fossils were just fascinating to me,” said Messimer. “A friend and I would go to the many coal mining pits around there. You could find slag piles, nodules, which basically looked like oblong rocks.”

Messimer and his friend would tap the nodule with a hammer and it would open revealing a fossil inside.

“A lot of times there would be something inside, mostly leaves. That was really exciting, like finding a buried treasure,” said Messimer. “So I became very interested in dinosaurs, like a lot of kids are when they are young. I just kept collecting over the years.”

Messimer’s exhibit includes books, tools, and an assembly of fossils from his collection, some he picked up in shops and others he found. Fossils he bought in shops are ones he cannot find in the area. If the shop is good, the store will have information regarding the species and where the fossil is from.

“I happen to like trilobites. It’s not a common finding around here … they’re close to horseshoe crabs, and very prominent in the fossil record going way, way back,” said Messimer.

“I wanted to give people a general idea of what I have and what it’s like to do this. It’s really fun actually.”

A fossil is created when the remains of a living creature dies and the skeleton is left in an environment where there is not a lot of oxygen. The remains are not destroyed by bacteria. Over time, the skeleton takes on minerals around it and becomes mineralized. Soft-bodied animals do not mineralize the same way, instead they leave an impression.

“Some sediments are so fine they leave soft-bodied elements preserved in good detail,” said Messimer. “Those are very exciting, and rare to find.”

Messimer’s hobby has taken him as far as Florissant, Colo., where he has found, what he calls, a wonderful little quarry. In the quarry is fine sediment that aids in a finer definition of fossils. Messimer has detailed fossils on display that include a small fish, a seed with a bee, and a mayfly.

“Things that would normally be destroyed by bacteria become fossils in the right environment. Layer after layer after layer of sediment on top,” said Messimer.

His most memorable find was found by his wife, a piece of a trilobite, a little tail section. It is in the exhibit.

“It was exciting because … I knew the sediments were the right age, and the area didn’t have many in it. The person who gave us our buckets … were pretty sure we were not going to find anything, but we did, which was really cool,” said Messimer.

His second memorable find was a soft-bodied animal, tubular with the back end like a squid, he believes to be a Tullimonstrum, Tully Monster, about 300 million years old from the Pennsylvanian geological period. They have only been found in the Mazon Creek fossil beds of Illinois.

Messimer advises others interested in collecting fossils to start reading to understand how geology and fossils fit together. Read enough to know what animal types can be found in certain sediments and understand where the animals were in a table of time. Start out with generalized books about fossils, how-to books, and field guides.

“The reason I chose invertebrates … a lot of time they were around and there’s plenty of specimens around, whereas bigger vertebrates are harder to come by,” Messimer noted.

Collectors should know the age of the rock and what type of fossils can be found in the rock.

“Identify by the time … you can infer pretty much what you’re going to be able to find in that area,” said Messimer.

“Sometimes it’s not quite as simple as all that. For instance, with trilobites what you find … may not be the shell whole, but parts of the shell.”

Part of collecting is knowing the structures of animals to identify fossils, this can be learned by reading books, or online. According to Messimer, there are two types of stone, the matrix which is the sedimentary rock, which is softer, and then the fossil part, which is mineralized and harder.

“If you’re using a sharp tool, or pick, you can break through the mineralized parts of the fossils. You have to be really careful. If you use something too big, or heavy-handed, you can break the fossil. As a general rule, that’s one of the reasons why I generally don’t, if I find a specimen that’s really nicely done, I’ll buy it,” said Messimer.

He advises to have training in chipping away the stone. If done properly, a rock can be split with a razor blade and knife, revealing a fossil.

“It doesn’t happen every time,” said Messimer.

Finding a location to locate fossils can be tricky.

“Finding a quarry is like going into a bait shop and asking someone where they fish in the lake,” said Messimer. “What kind of response are you going to get? It’s the same kind of thing … these are closely held secrets about little places.”

In Michigan, there are four fossil parks people can go to, Isle Royale National Park, Keweenaw National Historical Park, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, and Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

“There are a couple places where you can find different fossils. One is Stonington, where the Stonington Lighthouse is, right off the end … now I haven’t been out there for some years … with the water coming up it’s hard to say what’s still accessible there,” said Messimer. “Right off the edge, along the side, look around in the rubble down in there, you’ll see examples of different kinds of shelly fossils, brachiopods, there’s a bunch of them over there.”

Messimer said, around here shelly fossils, trilobites, plants, can be found, but not big vertebrates like dinosaurs. Dinosaurs showed up later and are very rare.

“As soon as a big bone is discovered the feds, everybody jumps on it, and then there’s a big fight with who gets to excavate it, which is why I like to do the little stuff,” said Messimer.

Unless you are a paleontologist, you probably will not be able to see those sites.

“Occasionally you can find a quarry no one knows about and then that’s fun,” said Messimer. “It’s a different game than what it use to be, when I was a kid. You could ask somebody if you could go somewhere and look at their rocks, and they would let you, because they didn’t really care.

“But now fossils have become monetized, and the problem is that it’s very difficult to get in quarries and actually have the free access to a quarry and look around through stuff, unless you’re involved in some academic organization or something along those lines.”

Escanaba Public Library Director Carolyn Stacey encourages others who might have treasures to share to contact the library if they would like their items featured. They are always pleased to showcase the unique and interesting collections of community members and appreciate Messimer’s presentation of the fossil hunting experience.

“Once you see what fossils are and you learn how to recognize them, that’s when it’s fun,” said Messimer.