[1] By 1860 William Palmer Rust (1826–1897) and his father Hiram were actively excavating fossils from quarries on the family farm originally opened for building stone.
[5] Walcott left the area and active working of the quarry in 1876 (his wife Lura Ann died of tuberculosis on January 23, 1876) although he returned for brief periods throughout his career.
[1] The old fossil quarry site was reopened in 1990 by Thomas E. Whiteley (also involved in the rediscovery of Beecher's Trilobite Bed)[9] and extensively re-examined.
Fossils represented in the Walcott–Rust quarry beds reflect a shelf community that developed during times of rather low net sedimentation and minimal bioturbation of the bottom.
[12][13] More specifically, the fauna includes brachiopods, bryozoans, 11 described species of crinoids, one paracrinoid, one rhombiferan, two "carpoids", two asteroids, one ophiuroid, and one edrioasteroid.
[14] Walcott–Rust Quarry is the single richest and most varied source of trilobites in the New York Trenton Group limestones and perhaps in the entire suite of New York Paleozoic rocks.One layer (the "Ceraurus layer") yields specimens that are uniquely preserved with calcified appendages, forming the basis of Walcott's earliest and still classic papers which first documented biramous limbs of trilobites.
Organic matter made the closed micro-environment anaerobic; decay proceeded by sulfate reducing bacteria producing bicarbonate and sulfide byproducts (Allison, 1990).