SHERMAN, TEXAS – FOSSIL SHARK TEETH
Post Oak Creek in Sherman off the Travis St bridge for Cretaceous Shark teeth. Easy to find, good for kids. http://nautiloid.net/fossils/sites/post_oak_creek/post_oak_creek.html
DALLAS, TEXAS – PEROT MUSEUM
Another good place to see a mineral exhibit is the Perot Museum of Nature and Science. http://www.perotmuseum.org/explore-the-museum/exhibit-halls/gems-and-minerals-hall.html The Perot Museum has programs of interest to kids of ALL ages, from toddlers to adults. http://www.perotmuseum.org/events-and-programs/index.html
FORT WORTH, TEXAS – MONNIG METEORITE GALLERY
Texas Christian University – Fort Worth, Texas
This is a WORLD CLASS MUSEUM, designed by some of the same people who designed the Smithsonian exhibits. Think you have a meteorite? Monnig Meteorite Gallery identifies meteorites (or meteor-wrongs) in their laboratory. The meteorite gallery, located in the Sid Richardson Science Building, displays about 170 of the Oscar E. Monnig Meteorite Collection, which is one of the largest university-based meteorite collections in the world. The collection holds over 1,700 different meteorites. Admission is FREE. Call ahead to schedule a guided tour to make your experience even better! http://monnigmuseum.tcu.edu/
LADONIA, TEXAS – LADONIA FOSSIL PARK ON THE SULPHUR RIVER
Fossils – Cretaceous
Fannin County, Texas
The North Sulphur River in southeast Fannin County is noted for Cretaceous Period marine megafossils such as mosasaurs and plesiosaurs and for Ice Age fossils such as mammoths and mastodons. Ladonia Fossil Park (aka Pete Patterson Fossil Park) is located just north of Ladonia where highway 34 crosses the North Sulphur River. Fossils here include ammonites, bivalves, shark teeth, and mammal bones and teeth. http://ladoniachamber.com/events/ladonia-fossil-park/
MINERAL WELLS, TEXAS – MINERAL WELLS FOSSIL PARK
Fossils – Pennsylvanian Period
The Mineral Wells Fossil Park is located on Indian Creek Road, northwest of Mineral Wells, Texas (80 miles southwest of Dallas). Mineral Wells Fossil Park provides an excellent opportunity to see and collect for personal use well preserved “Pennsylvanian Period” fossils. These fossils have been dated to be just over 300 million years old. The most common fossil found at Mineral Wells Fossil Park are the stalks of crinoids (sea lilies). Although crinoids may look like weird plants, they actually are animals. http://www.mineralwellsfossilpark.com/
BENBROOK LAKE, TARRANT COUNTY, TEXAS
Fossils – Cretaceous
Benbrook Lake – located southwest of Fort Worth – is a noted fossil-hunting location. Much of the rock that underlies Tarrant County consists primarily of seventy to eighty-five million year old sedimentary rock strata from the Late Cretaceous Period. Accessible in the Benbrook Spillway cut and many other exposed areas, these rocks are the remains of a shallow ocean that covered this part of the continent and receded over the last seventy million years to the present Gulf Coast shoreline in South Texas. It represents a shallow marine habitat, under about thirty feet of depth, which was populated by oyster reefs, corals, clams, sea urchins, and ammonites. It is very similar to what you might find off the Texas coast today at similar depth, except for the ammonites. Ammonites are an extinct group of shelled mollusks, related to the nautilus, squid and octopus. Most of the fossils you find have living descendants today, some in almost exactly the same form, like oyster shells. http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/20561-my-first-fossil-hunt-benbrook-lake-spillway-inspiration-point-lake-worth/
http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC22YBY_benbrook-lake-fossil-hunt?guid=08b012de-7b7e-4d5b-a772-ce021ec8dc15
http://www.swf-wc.usace.army.mil/benbrook/Cultural.asp
THREE RIVERS, TEXAS – CHALCEDONY & PETRIFIED WOOD
From The Texas Roadrunners Take Hwy 281 south of Three Rivers and look for the CR 314 turn-off. Turn east on CR 314 and begin your hunt on and along the unpaved gravel road. From the entrance to the road, the oil refinery in town was in plain view. I headed east on the road and stopped at the following GPS coordinates:
28° 25.498 North and 98° 10.457 West
Eureka ! Not only did I find some nice petrified wood in and along the unpaved road but, also some light blue botryoidal and rose shaped chalcedony. This is a good site. I will be sure to go back if I am ever in the area again and of course look for more unpaved back roads. In addition to petrified wood, I found quite a bit of botryoidal blue and amber chalcedony. If fact, it was so plentiful, that all I had to do was pick it up while driving real slow! In fact, there was so much of it on the road, that all I had to do was drive real slowly with the door open and pick it up off the ground.
http://nautiloid.net/fossils/sites/sites.html – This site lists a number of locations in Texas where fossils may be collected.