Do not search on vegetated surfaces, but rather look where the rock is exposed, or nearly so. Look at rocks where the highway has been cut through, or along river banks or in fields where the rocks crop out. Commonly, the action of rain, frost, and wind etches the rock matrix away from the fossil and leaves it exposed in relief, or sometimes frees the fossil entirely so that it simply lies loose on the surface. A note of caution. One should not carelessly gather fossils, separate them from the rocks, and then discard them.
Fossils are important tools to the researcher and are of value to the serious collector.
If you find specimens that you wish to collect, they should be wrapped and labeled. You should keep a notebook assigning a number to each specimen and describing with the greatest amount of accuracy the exact location from which the specimens are taken. A description of the rock strata should be included, referring to the rocks above and below, the thickness of the rock layer and its color, other fossils in the same rock, the date and so forth. The same specimen number should be written on the specimen in indelible ink. The exact name of the fossil is not the most important, because the name may change as our knowledge increases, but the locality where it was found will not.