Best Fossil Hunting Spots in America

The United States has more publicly accessible fossil hunting sites than any other country. Federal land management agencies — the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the National Forest Service — allow casual collection of reasonable quantities of common invertebrate and plant fossils on most of the land they manage, without a permit, for personal use. State parks and specifically designated fossil parks add hundreds more sites. The challenge for American collectors isn't finding fossil hunting sites — it's identifying the ones that actually produce finds on a typical visit.

This guide organises the best accessible US sites by what you're most likely to find, since the right site depends entirely on what you want to collect.

Shark teeth: Venice Beach, Florida

Venice Beach is the best accessible beach in the US for shark teeth, and for most collectors it's the easiest entry point into the hobby. Shark teeth wash up continuously from the offshore Miocene and Pliocene sediments along this stretch of the Gulf Coast. The teeth include multiple species — Carcharocles megalodon (commonly called Megalodon, extinct shark from the Miocene epoch, 5–15 million years ago), Carcharhinus species, Hemipristis, and ray teeth. Small teeth in the 1–3cm range are common on any visit. Larger Megalodon teeth up to 15cm are found regularly enough that local collectors make productive trips multiple times per year.

The Venice Fishing Pier area and the beaches north and south of it are the most productive. No permit is required for surface collection on the public beach. Early morning visits, especially after rough surf, produce the best results — wave action stirs the offshore sediment and delivers new material to the shoreline.

Manasota Key, a short drive from Venice, produces similar material and is less visited.

Trilobites and Ordovician invertebrates: Ohio

Ohio has the best publicly accessible Ordovician fossil collecting in the US. Two sites stand out:

Caesar Creek State Park, near Waynesville, Ohio, has a designated fossil collecting area at the spillway below Caesar Creek Dam. Ordovician limestone and shale roughly 450 million years old produce brachiopods, crinoids, bryozoans, and Flexicalymene meeki trilobites (the classic enrolled Ohio trilobite). Entry and collecting are free. Ohio state law explicitly permits personal collection of fossils at designated state park areas.

Trammel Fossil Park in Sylvania, Ohio, exposes the Silica Formation — roughly 375 million years old, Devonian age — with Eldredgeops (formerly Phacops) trilobites, brachiopods, and crinoids. The park was established specifically for public fossil collecting. No fees, no permits, no quantity limits for personal use.

Both sites are in northwestern Ohio and are easily combined in one trip.

Dinosaur trackways: Connecticut River Valley

The Connecticut River Valley in Massachusetts and Connecticut preserves some of the best Jurassic dinosaur trackways in the eastern US. Tracks were made in Triassic and early Jurassic mudflats roughly 200 million years ago, when the Hartford Basin was a rift valley with seasonal lake systems.

Dinosaur Footprints Reservation in Holyoke, Massachusetts, is managed by The Trustees of Reservations and is free to visit. Several hundred dinosaur tracks — primarily from a bipedal dinosaur called Eubrontes — are exposed on a flat rock surface along the Connecticut River. No collecting is permitted; this is a viewing site. But the scale of the exposure is substantial and the tracks are immediately recognizable.

Dinosaur State Park in Rocky Hill, Connecticut, has the largest exposed dinosaur trackway available for public viewing in the US: approximately 500 tracks under a geodesic dome. For a fee, visitors can make plaster casts of selected tracks in the outdoor casting area during the summer season.

Jurassic marine fossils: Morrison Formation, Colorado and Utah

The Morrison Formation, a sequence of mudstones, sandstones, and limestones deposited roughly 150–155 million years ago during the Late Jurassic, covers large areas of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and adjacent states. It's primarily known for dinosaur fossils, but the majority of the accessible public-land collecting is in the invertebrate and plant material — logs of silicified wood, oyster-like bivalves, and occasional freshwater snail fossils.

Dinosaur National Monument, which straddles the Utah-Colorado border, has a famous quarry wall display of in-situ dinosaur fossils — approximately 1,500 bones of Late Jurassic dinosaurs embedded in a cliff face, viewable through the Quarry Exhibit Hall. Collecting is not permitted anywhere in the monument, but the in-situ viewing is one of the best paleontological experiences available to the public in North America.

For collecting Morrison material, BLM casual use rules permit surface collection of reasonable quantities of common plant and invertebrate fossils on most BLM land. Jurassic fossil wood is collectable on many BLM parcels in Utah and Colorado without a permit.

Cretaceous marine fossils: Kansas chalk

The Niobrara Chalk of western Kansas preserves the Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway — a shallow marine environment that covered much of central North America roughly 85 million years ago. Fish, mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, and birds preserved in the chalk include some of the most scientifically significant vertebrate fossils ever found in North America.

Most of the productive chalk exposures are on private land. The Fick Fossil and History Museum in Quinter, Kansas, displays local chalk material and can direct collectors to accessible areas. Fort Hays State University's Sternberg Museum of Natural History in Hays, Kansas, runs annual fossil digs that accept public participants. Check current availability directly with the museum.

For surface collection of invertebrate material from the chalk (oysters, bivalves, shark teeth), BLM casual use rules apply on the federal parcels within the chalk belt.

Carboniferous plant fossils: Illinois coal basins

The Illinois Basin, which covers much of central and southern Illinois, preserves Carboniferous (Pennsylvanian epoch, roughly 300–310 million years ago) coal swamp deposits. Mine spoil heaps and river exposures in this area produce excellent compression fossils of Carboniferous ferns and seed plants — Lepidodendron scale tree bark, Calamites horsetail stems, and Pecopteris fern fronds are the most commonly found.

Mazon Creek, east of Morris, Illinois, is the most famous Carboniferous site in North America. The Mazon Creek ironstone nodules preserve soft-bodied organisms — including the enigmatic Tully Monster (Tullimonstrum gregarium), the Illinois state fossil — with extraordinary detail. The original spoil heaps at Braidwood are on private land, but nodules wash into and along the Kankakee River corridor and surface in exposed creek banks on public land. Collecting ironstone nodules from creek beds on public land is legal in Illinois.

Where to go next

For site-specific guides to the US locations covered here, the Ohio guide covers Caesar Creek and Trammel Fossil Park in detail. The beginners guide on GFH covers kit, collecting rules, and what to expect on a first trip to any of these site types. For current BLM land status and collecting rules for specific parcels, the BLM's GeoCommunicator map at blm.gov is the authoritative resource.