Make sure you get permission from the land owner, not just a tenant, before you excavate or you could end up with a hefty fine and some lawyer bills like a friend of mine did. He came very close to spending some quality time in the local jail. More landowner are prosecuting fossil hunters for digging without permission, and it makes all fossil collectors look bad to the non-collecting public. More places are being placed off limits to collecting than ever before. Stratford Hall, on the Potomac River in Virginia, was closed to collecting because some collectors from New Jersey dug a big hole in the cliffs without getting permission to do so. Once you get permission, in writing and signed by the landowner, make sure you shore up the top portion of the excavation so it doesn't collapse on top of you. I know at least three people involved in "cave ins" who escaped with minor injuries and I have heard of several more that involved broken bones over the past four or five years. I almost got flattened years ago at a Cretaceous site in Bowie, Maryland that is now occupied by the Maryland Science Center. Several tons of marl peeled off of the bank/wall and the top of it brushed down the back of my leg and pushed me several feet away as I was walking away from where I had been screening for teeth. A few seconds earlier and I would have been killed or badly injured. It didn't come down in chunks, it fell like a solid wall 15 feet long 8 feet high and 2 feet thick and it was nearly intact after it fell down. There was no warning, there was no sound, it just fell. Everyone thinks it can't happen to them, I used to think the same thing. Now I know better. Be safe, be legal, and stay alive and free to collect another day.

hey how often to fossil at the cliffs?