Andrew Berkholtz and myself departed Portland around 5pm and rolled into our campsite at Sunset Bay State Park around 10:30pm. After camp was setup I was off looking for other NARG members in the campground. I located Tim, who made it down the day before but Dan was now where in site.

Saturday morning, still unable to locate Dan, we headed off to the first pre-arranged destination. Not long after arriving at the site, Dan pulled in, and we were off.

There are several decapod species that can be found in this formation and are encased in small concretions. They can be found weathered out of bluffs along the coastline but with the high tides most of the float has been scoured off the beach. Dan lucked out and found an area where 50 or so small concretion had collected.

The day before Tim visited an Empire Formation (Miocene-Pliocene, Weaver, 1942) locality and found several nicely preserved Pectins. The Empire Formation beds at the locality are highly fossiliferous and contain sandstone concretions that encase bivalves and gastropods. There were numerous Pectins at this site with some of the best preservation I've seen.

Saturday evening we sat around and popped some of the concretions we found. In all we rescued 4 different species of decopod; Palaeopinnixa rotundus, Raninoides, Callianopsis, and a portinid crab.

We departed early Sunday and drove North to Newport. The first site has exposures of the early Miocene Nye mudstone (Schenck, 1927), which underlies the middle Miocene Astoria Formation.

Found imbedded in the mudstone we found a species of cancerid crab. They were not concreted so the preservation was poor and the carapace in most cases was crushed. Never the less they were an exciting find.

The final destination on this trip was the Astoria Formation. With the tide coming in we opted for a location that has produced a few crab specimens in the past. It was about a mile beach walk to the site but with lots to look at along the way it when quickly.

I found a few concretions and one contained a very nicely preserved Mursia vondae crab. When Dan showed up he ask what I thought of a fossil he found and pulled out an extremely rare shark tooth, that measures about 1.5" in length, and was the find of the trip.

NARG Members: Andrew Berkholtz, Tim Fisher, Dan O'Loughlin, and Andrew Bland.