(This is the fourth in a series of field reports and tinned fish reviews, forming a part of the series Frida and Alex’s Fossil Summer 2026. The first of these is here.)
To date, Frida and Alex’s Fossil Summer 2026 has been stuck in the Ordovician and Silurian Ages. Most of the exposed rock formations in Eastern Wisconsin date back to those eras. There are a lot of reasons for this, the geological history of the area and that old bête noire, glaciation, mostly. The forces involved with having a one mile thick layer of ice slowly pushing across the landscape are hard to fathom. North of us, for example, most of the rock formations that were exposed by glaciers predate the Cambrian explosion. You won’t find fossils there at all—Archaen microfossils would be hard to spot without a microscope! Anyway, here, along the coast of Lake Michigan, if you want to find something a tad more modern, you’ll need to find some Devonian formations. Milwaukee is the nearest and most convenient spot.
That my other kid, Jay—a student at UW-Milwaukee—happens to live there is a bonus. And fortunately, they had the day off and joined us.
The Milwaukee Public Museum is Dated
Did I say that it was raining? Being adaptable, we’d come up with a plan. According to the weather forecast, it was to be rainier in the morning than in the afternoon. So the plan became: pick up Jay, go to Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM), have lunch, and then go fossil hunting. Good plan. The MPM is one of those awkward museums that has sought to combine the natural history of the planet with the cultures of virtually all non-white, European human beings. Now that this sort of thing is widely understood as deeply white supremacist, this is a knot that many public institutions are attempting to unravel. Artifacts of African cultures, for example, don’t belong in the same institution as gorilla skeletons. There are also some shocking statues of non-white people.
The MPM is currently in a state of transformation. The old building, a mid-century mass weighed down by $100 million in deferred maintenance and a shit ton of cultural baggage, will be shed by 2027 to make way for the Milwaukee Museum of Nature and Culture. The existing collection will be recontextualized to tell the story of the history of the planet and the many ways that societies have adapted themselves to nature. Hopefully, this will be an open-ended story, we still have some work to do.
Here are some photos from a previous visit in 2010.
Probably the most salient exhibit had already been packed up to be spritzed up and re-installed in the new building. Fortunately, I photographed it about 15 years ago:
THIS is the landscape represented by the fossils we’ve been finding… crinoids, brachiopods, etc. Altogether, we enjoyed our visit. However, the need for a new building, new approach, etc. was very evident. Frida (I think) said it’s like a museum museum. We plan to return when it reopens.
By 1 pm, we were feeling peckish, so we repaired to a nearby falafelry—it was completely out of falafel, bad form. Probably the less said, the better; it wasn’t bad enough to bad mouth, but not good enough to recommend.
Bradford Beach
Bradford Beach is just North of Downtown Milwaukee. Despite the slightly drizzly weather, the beach itself was crowded with beach volleyball players and other Summer sportos. The people of Wisconsin only get so many days of no-coat weather per year, so we are not ones to be dissuaded by minor weather-related irritations. We found a spot just at the North end that wasn’t very crowded. We were able to find quite a few fossils—crinoid stems and brachiopods—in the Devonian shale that washes up along the beach.
Estabrook Park and the First Trilobite of FAFS26!
Another exposed Devonian rock formation is located just below the beer garden at Estabrook Park (how Milwaukee was that sentence?) Behind the garden, you’ll find a staircase that will take you down to a path. To get to the formation you’ll need to leave the path…
This is what it looks like:
Some of our research indicated that the best area to look for fossils is under the boardwalk, however the water was quite high. No matter, the shale was rich in fossils. Like anything else, the more we look, the more we knew what to look for, the more we found.
While we didn’t find anything related to fish, it was interesting to get a sense of a different formation, one that’s different than our local friends the Niagara and Maquoketa.
Tinned Fish Reviews
Since the expedition team had swollen to three, we decided to pack two tins of fish to sample. The first was Bokksu Shirasu Anchovies in Yuzu Pepper Sauce. I’d note that none of us had any idea what shirasu anchovies are. I’ve had many sardines in my day, these weren’t what I was expecting. Shirasu anchovies are babies. With eyes. The flavor was pretty mild, what came through was the light yuzu flavor and saltiness. The consistency, we all agreed, was pasty. Jay was the only one who enjoyed them, they gave it a 6/10.
La Curiosa Sardines with lemon… What is there to say? The label is darling and the fish are beautifully packed. These are very nice, though the quality of the fish isn’t higher (at least in our estimation) than, say, Wild Planet sardines. In a world that didn’t have better tinned sardines with lemon, these would choice. Unfortunately for La Curiosa, we agreed we don’t see a role for these so long as Fishwife’s Sardines with Preserved Lemon are available.