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That looks like a seed but I don't think it is fossilized. I know nothing about tropical plants.

The ocotillo are flowering and other plants are beginning to show nice flowers which is making the hummingbirds happy. Wish I could snag a photo of them feeding. Palo Verde trees in bloom.

Long overdue to post about some of my NC finds from earlier this year! First up was a very exciting trip to the NC Triassic to look for a variety of plant fossils, which were my first Mesozoic plants. Beautiful white coloring on some of them as well, the matrix is extremely soft (you can easily scrape it with your finger nails) so I've done some experimenting with how to best consolidate them without damaging the visual effect. Not a ton of variety at the site, but they are abundant and sometimes surprisingly well preserved. I have found Otozamites hespera and Otozamites powelli, as well as a few other kinds of plants. I also disturbed a "hibernating" lizard, initially I was concerned that my digging had injured him, but after a some time in the sun he scampered off seemingly no worse for the experience.

I'm pretty good with the ones with an octet of legs as well. Tammy and I made a roadtrip to the panhandle (Pensacola area) to try to see some of the White-topped Pitcher Plants (Sarracenia leucophylla) in bloom. Sadly, most of the parks that were supposed to be packed with thousands of them were overrun with vegetation. The Splinter Hill Bog Preserve just over the border into Alabama is taking steps to clear the underbrush using prescribed burns. Unfortunately for us, they seemed to have done this just a few days before our arrival. Nothing was left of the largest single population of S. leucophylla but a few charred pitchers and flowers. We shall have to return at a later date to be able to see for ourselves the wondrous profusion that I've seen in online images. We fared a little better the next morning at the Yellow River Marsh Preserve State Park. The loop around the lake at this park and the trail through the nearby Garcon Point Water Management Area were sadly choked with undergrowth and the population of pitchers was missing. These locations seem like they could use a good prescribed burn to restore the bog habitat for the pitchers. Ironically, the best population of pitchers (and upright sundews, Drosera filiformis f. tracyi ) were to be found in a swale area alongside the road leading into the park. Tiny yellow (3 mm) long flowers of the carnivorous Zigzag Bladderwort, Utricularia subulata, could be seen if you looked closely and had the right search image. A sign in the park mentioned that Yellow Crab Spiders, Misumena vatia, might be found hiding camouflaged among yellow blooms. We searched a couple hundred yellow flowers only to spot its kin--what seems to be the Green Crab Spider, Misumessus oblongus. At just a few millimeters long and with the flowers blowing in the breeze I fired off around 20 attempted images only to find that the first one was the only one in focus. Cheers. -Ken

Hi all, Last weekend I took a trip, again, to the Florissant Fossil Quarry. The quarry doesn’t normally open until Memorial Day, but I went with the Colorado State University entomology club. I successfully lobbied for the club to take a field trip there, and the club got the trip funded by the student’s association so we got to go in as a by-appointment special group for “free” (at least for us). Perhaps this whole process is a story I’ll tell another time. Anyway, for those not familiar in the upper Eocene Florissant Formation fossils of insects and plants are highly abundant, but fossils of vertebrates are exceptionally rare. This is despite being a superficially similar depositional environment to the Green River Formation, where fish fossils are abundant. Well, after countless total hours of splitting in the quarry over the years I’ve finally come across a vertebrate fossil - the head of a teleost fish! This is exciting simply because fish fossils are very rare in this rock unit. The shale breaking split the fossil, so presumably the body is still out in the quarry somewhere. There are of course fish described from Florissant, but I’m not familiar with them. The only identification I can readily make is teleost. Thought I’d share a rare find! My “white whale” for the Florissant Formation is still a spider fossil. There were three spiders found by entomology club participants, but of course I was not one of them. Of course I’d find the way more rare thing, but not the thing I wanted 😀

Good question. It is statewide, all public lands including waterways owned by the state. Keep in mind, the permit is only required for collecting vertebrate fossils, not invertebrates (shells, etc). This quote is from the Florid Permit website: "Fossil sharks teeth are specifically excluded from these regulations, as are the fossils of plants, invertebrate animals (e.g., mollusks, sea urchins, crabs, etc.), and other organisms, so no permit is required to collect such specimens." https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/vertpaleo/amateur-collector/fossil-permit/

The previous thread posted was filling up and I needed a short break. The Castle Dale Museum was a nice treat as this was my first visit any of the towns along highway 10 which runs north and south on the west side of a huge Morrison Formation where the Cleveland-Lloyd dino quarry is located and endless locations of Cretaceous, Triassic and Jurassic fossils are found. These fossil locations are mostly treeless as you see in my photos so that surface finds are only a matter of walking through the formations. People think there are "secret spots" to find the best hunting grounds for big and small game, rocks, minerals, rare plants, fossils, etc. Nope...nearly if not all land has been walked on by humans. Those who hunt fossils in Utah talk of such places and In my opinion these "secret spots" or " honey holes" are only such in their own minds. Today's tech just using Google Earth mapping will find anything you look for. Crashed airplanes- simple. Morrison formations in Utah deserts...way too easy. Fossil concretions are quite visible from satellites looking down into Utah deserts. Not to poo-poo on the idea myself, people ask me all the time where I caught such a huge fish. I say I caught it in the mouth. They persist and I say in the water. They get the point and we have a laugh. Then I will share a location with them. They ask what bait. I say 'bread', they say, 'Bread?', I say bread, they repeat, 'bread?', I say yes, like a sandwich. Again the light bulb comes on, we laugh and I tell them that every source of Utah waters has big fish like this in it and most people feed ducks at those water sources. Fish are under the ducks eating bread, too. This applies to fossil hunting in Utah...where did you find that? In the desert. Between Green River and Salina or Moab and Price or even in Salt Lake City. Then I say fossils are under your feet. However, giving away your favorite spot isn't smart collecting because someone has already been there. But at the moment it can be your "secret spot" and productive site. Utah certainly has been fossil hunted for over a century continuously. Off the soap box, back to the trip which thus far has allotted me 4 hours of sleep in two days. Lets go, Steve! Here's my "secret spot". Thanks to Landsat/Copernicus imagery. The banded Morrison Formation is easily seen from space and the Cretaceous formation is like the pie crust around it. The Jurassic National Monument is also known as the Cleveland-Llyod Quarry. You can google it for more. Keeping the honest folks honest. Once I parked among the other visitors, I checked it and the gal asked if I had a park pass. I showed her mine. She sees the "Senior" diamond shaped emblem on it and says, no, that's not your card, Yes it is, here's my license to go with it. She smiling, no way you're that old. Yepperdo! I get in free and we had a nice, fun , chat about retirement, thinking good thoughts, loving life and making the most of it. The daylight caused many reflections on the glass cases. A bone in a jacket. The most touted Dino next to the Utahraptor, the Allosaurus. Say Cheese! Outdoors is mile and a half trail and the other building covering the 'big pile of dino bones'. This model seemed quite well constructed. Upon exiting, I noticed we were also leaving the Morrison formation. See any concretions? See any now? When I was close to entering the Park site, I noticed a couple getting out of the van with buckets and a pic. Well, methinks there's a blatant clue. Be sure to dial 811 before you dig! Upon driving back out of Morrison formation back onto BLM land and Cretaceous sites, I noticed the same vehicle still there over an hour later. But the couple weren't visible. I turned down the side road, stopped , put on my hat and greeted them. All went well and they welcomed me to join them. I offered to move to another site and they still welcomed the company. I showed them what I had found the day before in another town outskirts and they had not seen trace fossils here before but the guy knew that meant tunnels, burrows, footprints. They actually had bird tracks from that place in the beginning of the other thread with the snow on the summit pass. I found a nice trace fossil right away and gave it to them to get their bearing on what to look for. They were excited and the gal found 4-5 quickly and was very pleased with them. They had been at this location several times and were about to leave but suggested I search the hills and into the washes and ditches. I helped lift a huge concretion into their vehicle and they did the same for me as they left. Bending down to lift their concretion I saw this piece under his foot. I did take a few pics but enthusiasm won out as it always does and the picture taking falls to the wayside. A pic of his find. A pic of mine. ...and more... The Heavy. I'll get the bucket contents sorted ASAP and add those. Gotta apply some generous amounts of CA to some pieces. Steve PS - Oh, I early forgot! While I was at the Nat. Park I was traipsing along with a family, mom, dad and twin boys. The boys talked fossils the whole trip according to the mom. They were from Georgia and were going to the Natural History Museum in Salt Lake the next day before flying out. I said your boys will love it. It's like a 100 of this collection. One boy asked was this a fossil - holding a polished rock. His mom said it's a rock, I said , yes it is, but it could be a fossil gastrolith. A what? the boys exclaimed. Gastro= stomach, lith = rock. A stomach rock. Dinosaurs swallowed rocks to help grind and digest their food, just like birds do. But if you stop by my car on the way out, I'll give you a for real fossil each. I gave them my Birgella sp. gastropod fossils collected the day before. They were happy.

Hi!! I'm Kimi, just a girl who loves ALL things Nature. I'm especially drawn to rocks/ fossils, plants, and insects. Sometimes I think the rocks and fossils are even drawn to me! With gratitude and reverence, I can also say that most plants are dear Allies to me, and always show me great patience as I continue to learn and grow.🌱✨️ That being said, Nature continuously offers us new opportunities to learn and grow, no matter where we are on our journey. Although my son will tell you this about me, "she always THINKS she found a fossil", he is never convinced. Me, being a novice to fossils, would love to better my understanding of these ancient treasures. So, without further ado, here are the first four finds that I am curious about......🥁 I know the one is definitely an ocean type fossil, just not sure what, but are the other three just cool rocks? Idk.... I reside in Arizona now (Michigan native), which is where these were found, AZ. I find rocks all over the state, but the main places would be locally (around the valley), Superstition area, Tucson area, Stafford, Christopher Creek, Sedona, and Flagstaff. There are so many more that I have questions about too, but maybe by posting a few at a time, I can begin to discern for myself which ones have potential. At least that is my aspiration. Thanks friends! I appreciate you♡ #1 #2 #3 # 4

Hello, here's the Geologic timeline for my location. The lighter specimens with coloration are from the Chesterian-Morrowan boundary. Where the first land formations happen locally. Lowest of the Morrowan most likely. If these are the first plants in this location I probably shouldn't expect much biodiversity. To my untrained eye I've only seen neuropteris, cordaite and very rare pieces of calamite. The darker gray specimens are Morrowan-Atokan and from a different location. They are definitely below what is designated as the Bug Scuffle formation. This sphenopteris is not well preserved and getting good relief shots with it being the same color as the matrix is difficult. This time I noticed a lone apparent neuropteris fragment as well

I think the order might be alethopteris, neuropteris and then two potential calamites with internode branching with some trace leaves...but the folks who really know their plants will fill us in.

A snapshot of zoophycos out of a layer here known as the Andrecito Formation (lower Mississippian) and finally a solitary imprint of a shell in shale. This is unusual for the area as the shale tends to be non-fossiliferous except for land plants. Given the geology it had to have been Mississippian but it's possible to have washed in from higher ground over time and be Pennsylvanian. Also, a solitary plant fossil of what might have been sigillaria but its too badly preserved to be certain. 100% sure this was washed in from higher ground over a mile away over time as that's the closest formations of Pennsylvanian which is the first documented time plants were found in our area.

Vertebrate fossils are extremely uncommon, but I think I managed to find a Ctenodus lungfish scale in Mazonia. Plants are also present in the Essex biota, albeit less common and well preserved as in Braidwood. Here is one of my favorites - a Calamites horsetail shoot from the eastern area of Mazonia. Here is a hash plate of what I think are horsetail fragments from Braceville. So far I’ve been quite unlucky when it comes to finding nice Annularia, horsetail leaf whorls. Here is my best one from Mazonia - halves of two whorls. Most of my lycophytes come from Braceville, which is counterintuitive as that place is mostly known for aquatic fauna. Here are two pieces of bark from Lepidodendron cf. aculeatus. And two lycophyte cone bracts - first one I think is Lepidostrobophyllum majus, and I am unsure on the second one beyond Lepidostrobophyllum sp.

A good chunk of it is was naturally outside of the rock, and it is at a angle of somewhere around 45-70 degrees. The rock that it is on has from 1 to 3 dozen other fossils, but a majority of them are, from what I can tell, more common ones. The most notable ones is this one, and one other one, and the rock which I picked up and kept looks like a part of a tusk or bone, which it is not. It looks more convincing in person then via a photo and all the other rocks around it looked nothing like this rock. It was in a desert- ish area - there were a lot of short trees and plants, but the ground was mostly sand, and the rocks around it were not smooth: this one was. One looks to be 1 of two things, 1- a geode that was broken in half at one point a long time ago and filled with rock, or 2. - an egg that is missing the bones inside, because it may have been a hatched egg, which is around 2-2.5cm circle like shape. Also the outside and inside rock looks to be the same. I am going to add one of the photos I have of the rock. It is a photo before I cleaned it, but the blue area is where the egg/geode one is. The yellow area is the one with the vertebra and the wihite is one that I am pretty sure it is a carbon bleach of a lizard, but it looks very weird and there are multiple ones of it of its tail and only the tail 3 in total .

Hi! I recently collected my first fossils and I'm very excited, but I would really appreciated some advice as to how best to care for them. Here in BC anyone who collects fossils from Crown Land is considered a steward of the fossil, as it is legal to collect them however they still belong to the land. This, and the fact that I genuinely care about these fossils, is why I would love some help with learning how best to preserve/stabilize the fossils. I think they're carbon fossils, and are all plants from the Eocene Era. The shale that they're set in is brittle and likes to chip, so one or two specimens have small chips that came off when I opened them and I'd like to re-attatch these (should I just glue them on? What kind of glue is best?). Lastly, I was hoping someone might have advice for making the darker fossils a bit more visible. I heard that dipping the rocks in resin can help the contrast a bit, but that seems blunt and expensive to me. Thanks for the advice and your time!

Sorry for no scale I am in the bush currently, these are in Mississippian strata In one area, Indiana are these worth taking? They look like plants

I decided to take a trip out to the Mississippi River. With the weather warming in Missouri, the trees and plants are starting to grow and bloom once more. It is quite beautiful seeing some of the flowers and trees flourish, which I wish I had snapped some photos of. The downside to that, is some of my fossil hunting spots get quickly overgrown, or sometimes get submerged underwater. This trip was to check out an exposure of Silurian aged Bainbridge Formation rock. I had not been to this site before, so I was excited to get out and explore once more. After a nice walk to my destination, I found the exposed red rocks along the river I was looking for. Almost immediately, I found what I was searching for, trilobites! Calymenids are common in the right exposures of the Bainbridge Formation, but I didn't expect to see so many. 95% of the specimens found were weathered, damaged, and missing a lot of shell. Here's a few photos I took before I got overwhelmed by the sheer amount of trilobites exposed on the rock. See how many you can find in the first picture. You may need to enlarged the photo. I counted over 10. And the search was on! The goal was to find a nice, complete specimen or two to take home, clean, and then compare to other Calymenid trilobites I've found in different exposures of Bainbridge Formation rock. I spent the warm and windy afternoon hunched over, scouring over all the exposed bedrock. After hours and counting over 100 poorly preserved specimens, I finally found a nice looking one worth taking home. It had a little bit of weathering, but looked to be all there. Many of them were exposed in this sort of flexed position. A bit of noise, and I extracted the specimen. This is a nice one I'll hopefully get a professional to clean, so I carefully packed it up and continued my search. A nice cephalopod, and a few crinoid holdfasts were also exposed atop the bedrock. They were both pretty cool to see, especially that cephalopod fossil. Like trilobites, they aren't things I get to see everyday. I didn't find anymore good trilobites exposed and I didn't want to split rock, so I shifted to flipping over and looking through the river tumbled rocks for a while. The 9th rock I had fllipped over, looks to have a ventral trilobite on it. The luckiest, and cutest find was this little .3 inch Calymenid trilobite that was washed along the riverbank. I have no clue how it hadn't been destroyed from the river, but I was quite happy to find it. Note how it's exposed in the similar flexed orientation as the last one I found. One other interesting rock on the riverbank that probably has a complete specimen within was found. It had a few pleura segments and part of the pygidium exposed, but I forgot to photograph it. I'll upload a photo of it when I get home and unpack it if I don't forget. It was great to get back out to the Mississippi River. I always enjoy nature, solitude, and fossil hunting. I avoided ticks this trip, but not the mosquitos! A good afternoon spent, I decided to pack up my belongings and head back to St. Louis for the night.

I agree with coal. And I feel pretty sure that the marks that resemble plants have a merely accidental resemblance to plants. Many phenomena in Nature mimic plant growth.

Hey! 😄 went out for another river shore hunt on Saturday 3/16, no huge teeth this time but a nice variety of smaller teeth and other fossils. Here's my favorite finds.. First mammal tooth of the day.. Carcharias taurus in good condition. C. hastalis with cool weathered patterns. Probably from the roots of plants. Isurus oxyrinchus Bovine tooth A tiny Isurus retroflexus, i don't know if it's either juvenile or posterior.. A nice piece of coral, probably Flabellum tuberculatum. At this point i actually met the guy who shared my spot, he told me 'no great finds today, just bits and pieces'. Instead of expressing my anger toward him, i said 'same here, there's defenitely better spots around 😏 good luck anyway'. Felt proud of myself for keeping calm, cause i really don't like what he did.. Anyway i continued my hunt and was pleased to still find some good stuff in the area he already covered. Notorynchus sp. Lower C. hastalis. Another mammal tooth.. The nicer hastalis of the day. And a dolphin earbone, i think Delphinodon sp. (possibly Delphinodon dividum) periotic. @Shellseeker And here's the whole lot cleaned up.. Thx for watching! Dries

That's a very common occurence. Google Mazon Creek fossils. The concretions formed around plants and fauna. Hundreds of thousands of leaves of the same shape and size, and therefore extremely similar concretions. Your conretions may have also formed around organisms.

not sure what it is..., as far as I know the sediments are dated to carboniferous I would assume this are plants, the raised lines may be the edges of tree trunks

I tagged Jack Wittry, Fossil Forum Member and author of several books about Mazon Creek Flora, and an expert in Carboniferous plants.

I've visited Turimetta many times and can confirm Tim's ID's. There are no fish, shells, worms or belemnites to be found here sadly, just plants and trace fossils. The first, fourth, fifth, and sixth photos are fragments of horsetails. Possibly of the species Paraschizoneura jonesii. The orange stuff are most likely mineral stains containing iron. Pro tip: if a rock has a rusty or reddish colour to it, you can bet there's iron in there. The vertical object is likely a trace fossil (burrow infill).

I was very pleasantly surprised (actually more thrilled to be honest) when I heard about the discovery of the northern tyrannosaurid dinosaur Nanuqusaurus hoglundi from the Cretaceous Prince Creek Formation dating 70.6-69.1 Million Years ago in what is now the U.S. State of Alaska. Image Credit and Source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260757717_A_Diminutive_New_Tyrannosaur_from_the_Top_of_the_World At first thought to be only 5-6 meters (16-20 feet) in length based on the currently catalogued specimens, it's now believed based on currently undescribed remains to be 8-9 meters (26-30 feet) in length fully grown (compared to the 12.3-12.4 meters (40.4-40.7 feet) in length it's cousin Tyrannosaurus rex could reach fully grown). Image Credit: Artist Nathan Rogers Image Source: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Z5w900 Fiorillo, A. R., & Tykoski, R. S., 2014. A diminutive new tyrannosaur from the top of the world. PloS one, 9(3), e91287. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0091287 Druckenmiller, P. S., Erickson, G. M., Brinkman, D., Brown, C. M., & Eberle, J. J. (2021). Nesting at extreme polar latitudes by non-avian dinosaurs. Current biology : CB, 31(16), 3469–3478.e5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.05.041 https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)00739-9?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0960982221007399%3Fshowall%3Dtrue The Tyrannosaurid Nanuqusaurus is also unique as the northern most tyrannosaur known from Western North America (at the time the continent of Laramidia). Adapted to the colder climates of the region, it shared its habitat with a vast diversity of plants, small mammals, and other non-avian dinosaurs including hadrosaurs such as Edmontosaurus, the pachycephalosaur Alaskacephale, the Ceratopsian Pachyrhinosaurus, and a large currently unnamed genus of troodontidae. But it's confirmed geologic range is only during the early Maastrichtian (70.6-69.1 Million Years ago) of the Cretaceous period. Images Credits and Sources: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260757717_A_Diminutive_New_Tyrannosaur_from_the_Top_of_the_World Fiorillo, A. R., and Gangloff, R. A., 2001. Theropod teeth from the Prince Creek Formation (Cretaceous) of northern Alaska, with speculations on Arctic dinosaur paleoecology. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 20(4):675-682 Image Credit: Artist Nathan Rogers Image Source: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Z5w900 The question I have is why this is? Did anything major happen to the habitat of the Prince Creek Formation between the Early-Late Maastrichtian? Did Nanuqusaurus live up to 66 Million Years ago to the latest Maastrichtian of the Cretaceous period?

Still looking for information about these plants from the Piesberg