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I bought this ammonite at the MAPS fossil show recently and I'm going to make a unique display for it. The old label that came with it is what caught my eye at first then I picked it up and held it up to the light. The calcite filled chambers are translucent and "glow" nicely when back-lighted. I have a few ideas on how to display this guy but would like some input. I will post pics to this thread when I have started to work on this so stay tuned. Thanks mikeymig

I bought a bunch of nodules to practice with my hammer and chisel. This one seems to have two different ammonites in it, or is it just one fat one?

Zdravo! This is my second attempt to see which species of ammonite i have in my collection.The ammonite is From Stara Planina Mountain and probably from a Jurassic period. Any kind of help will be much appreciated.

I am doing the jury duty thing today so I have a lot of time on my hands to make a trip report post. This post isn’t rich in fossils despite visiting 3 different sites. It was something of a strike out for the day, with the exception of 2 pieces from the 3rd place we stopped at. One of the pieces was a true keeper for me though. I was on call for my work this past week, including the weekend, which means I have to stay close to home. I had a couple really long days without sleep. One 27 hour and the other 24 hours. It wipes me out. Thankfully I didn’t get called in Saturday night, because I had plans to go poking around a few spots with @Fruitbat aka Joe. He lives maybe 7 minutes away from where I do. The day was on the cool side, in the low 50s, overcast and breezy, but reasonably pleasant. The first place I wanted to check out was about 15 minute from my house. It was in the Austin Chalk, upper I think. I didn’t have high expectations of finding anything noteworthy, but I keep trying, because I’m surrounded by the upper Austin and upper Ozan, which have next to zilch from what I’ve on numerous attempts. The area we went to is a new development that recently broke ground in Garland on the southwest corner of Shiloh and Buckingham roads. It is mostly black clay like material, but a bit of white chalk and light gray shale are exposed and I think limestone or marl was exposed during trench digging. There is also the Duck Creek waterway on the east side of the development. We didn’t find much more than Inoceramus clam fragments in the development area. I did find an interesting looking clam about 1.5 inches wide imbedded in chalk. No clue what it is. Since we didn’t find anything there we headed to check out the large creek. It seems the city channeled the creek to bury water or sewer lines in it. So it was down to the bedrock with a concrete strip running down the center. The banks were about 10-15 feet high in most areas. The East bank being layers of chalk and marl like stuff. The west side dirt and clay. When I got into the creek I couldn’t find my phone. I assumed I’d left it in my car. Later I realized I’d put it in my coat pocket and had it the whole time. I didn’t get any pics. There was only one picture I wish I’d been able to take. In the creekbed we came across a circle that looked like a giant flat cinnamon roll about 2 feet wide. It didn’t look like any ammonite I’ve ever seen. Joe said it was an Inoceramus clam. I squatted down to have a closer look and sure enough the side was exposed revealing the tale tale pattern of Inoceramus shell edge. It isn’t the biggest clam I have found out hunting, but it was probably the most complete large one I’ve seen. I’m tempted to go back to take a pic since I drive by there most weekdays. There wasn’t much of interest otherwise. Since we didn’t find anything of interest we headed south to Dallas to our 2nd spot. I’d seen an exposure off of 30 I wanted to check out. It was part of the Eagle Ford formation. We arrived and parked our vehicles on the edge of a large field and made our way walking towards a hill in the distance with an exposure visible. There were huge piles of construction dirt and rock in the field. I have explored those before so I didn’t revisit them this time. Most notable were the very large septarian nodules with brown and while crystals. I’d been here before and collected a few pieces. We walked through high grass and underbrush then headed downhill only to encounter a wash or small creek we couldn’t cross. The creek doesn’t show up on any map. We worked our way along through considerable underbrush between knee and waist high along the creek. Joe took a little rest while I explored the area looking for a crossing. I found one a Joe soon followed. After crossing a couple of them I came to a dense hedge of Chinese privet. If you’ve never encountered it you’re blessed. If you’re considering it for landscaping think twice. While it is pretty it is a very aggressive shrub that grown incredibly dense making areas impassible. It will take over a whole field and thin forest if left unattended and nothing else can grow there. I didn’t notice it until I came to it and realized there was no getting through or around it. Here you can see a dense patch of it. It’s maybe 5-8 feet tall in most places. We realized there was no way to make it to the outcropping from where we were. We walked back to our cars after maybe 30 minutes of trying to get to the outcrop. We would have to come at it from a different direction. There were lots of spring flowers in bloom along the walk. I thought I’d share them with you. Per Joe this is a form of wild mustard. This is actually the bud of my favorite wildflowers. It is a milk thistle. I don’t like the prickly part, but I think they’re beautiful, but that isn’t why I like them. I like them because I am fascinated by them. I have picked them many times and arranged them in a vase beautifully. I leave for a few hours or overnight and they have completely rearranged themselves! Not just a little either. Individual stems will move by an inch or more at times. I think it is chemotaxis or something. It isn’t phototropism, because it happens at night and the direction they move is not uniform or unidirectional. Can’t wait for them to be in bloom. I don’t know what these are. I think these are 2 varieties of evening primrose. I think these are a form of verbena. We drove around the back side of a large warehouse and found a spot to park. We were able to access the exposure from there, but only because someone had bulldozed a path through the Chinese privet. Much of it was the Eagle Ford gray flacks shale. I found the top valve of an oyster or possibly clam (I still need to clean it up). I also found a very weathered fragment of a medium size ammonite that was only identifiable because of sutures. Other than that the only thing of interest was more septarian nodules. This is one of the smaller ones I saw. You can’t see the septarian qualities on the exterior, but it’s definitely a septarian. It was very heavy or I’d have taken it home to open up. If they have a split in it like this one they usually are filled with crystals. I also found quite a bit of small crystals laying around. Usually it’s calcite, but I’ve read the formation has abundant gypsum. Nothing of real interest there other than septarian nodules so we moved on to look for our third location. We drove west on I-30 and then south on loop 12. The first spot didn’t have anywhere to park nearby. So we drove across the freeway to look at an exposure off of a parking lot in a low area. I think this is likely to be the Kamp Ranch formation, a subunit that underlies the top layer of the Eagle Ford about 75 feet under it near Arcadia Park. This location was not very fossiliferous, but it did have yellow/orange thin plates largely consisting of conglomerates of shell fragments. It also had gray and black clay/shale with large septarian nodules. These are some of the fragments I picked up. This is one, which was buried that I tried to extract but I wasn’t successful. It was too big and I didn’t feel like putting in the effort needed to extract it or break it up. I walked around picking up plates looking for anything of interest. I came to a wash area and found this plate. This is the find of my day. It is covered with small ammonite impressions. It’s the only hint of ammonite that I found. There are a number of impressions that are partially covered up. I think with a little prep work it could be a real beauty. I’ll have to practice on the back side to make sure it doesn’t leave white marks. While I was off finding this Joe was off harassing this poor mama killdear bird nearby. He was trying to find out where the eggs were so we didn’t step on them. Turns out she was sitting on them. He said she was giving him the broken wing routine. She also spread her wings and tail trying to defend her eggs and nest. Her eggs are just behind her. Joe found this little plate and gave it to me. It’s got a little shark tooth on it on the top left. From there I had to leave to go home. It was a relaxing day, except for fighting through the little jungle like underbrush and vegetation trying to cross the wash/creek and having to retrace our path because of the Chinese privet. But it was a nice day overall. Oh, this is a closeup shot of part of the ammonite impression plate that I forgot to insert above.

I recieved this Upper K ammonite unprepped from a North TX buddy, and spent a little time scribing replaced shell off one side to reveal its lovely sutures. Shown here wet. I may slather it with an elixir of beeswax and turpentine to make sutures pop before placing it on an exalted shelf space for permanent display. Out of courtesy, I’ll withhold add’l details so as not to put new heat on his site. But we can all enjoy the natural splendor from the convenience of our laptops and phones.

Hey all: For your consideration and expertise, an ammonite partial collected by the poster's parent has some interesting features. I don't know the exact formation of origin, but within the Rio Puerco river valley known to be Cretaceous period. I'm posting the best images I have at the moment, which, in addition to the partial with the scale cube (lower ammonite partial), are my attempts at using a smart phone to shoot down the dissection scope tube with the ocular removed...It's the best I can do at the moment. In question are the egg like features you can see on the partial. Most ammo eggs I have seen are spherical and not bacilli-like. The black dots are lichens that are commonly found in area rocks, usually in small crevices that trap dew. Thoughts?

I was eating dinner and my son came in and asked me I he could leave that big ammonite here in my garage. "sure son". Then this morning I walked into the garage and there it was sittin on my extra chair. I had forgotten just how big this thing was!! He took off all the rock on both sides too. That had to be quite the job and making it about 150 lbs lighter? Its missing a big part of the fragmacone but he tells me that he will composite another piece onto it someday. This kid is gunna have one H-E-Double Toothpicks of a collection!!! This thing is 26 inches across!!! RB

Found this on east coast of uk, is it a ammonite? The material seems rock/stone like.

Greetings, I recently bought an Heteromorph Ammonite fossil from Morocco (my first moroccan ammonite) and I decided to clean it with a little bit of water the same way I did with previous fossils. Big mistake... since I was shocked to see how the red ammonite turned brown and some parts disappeared (those put together with some sort of brown putty) when I put the ammonite under the water... After speaking with some fossil collectors I found out that many Heteromorph Ammonites from Morocco are indeed broken and put together, and they are sometimes "created" using the parts of different ammonites... You can see the ammonite before (the red one) and after (the brown one) and what I would like to know now is how to restore it please. What is the brown putty they used to put all the pieces together and how do they obtain that red colour? Is it totally necessary to use the same procedure? I've been creating and painting clay sculptures for years and I wonder now if using some clay and acrylic paintings would work... Thank you very much.

Aioloceras besairiei, 2.8", Albian Stage (100 million years ago, Lower Cretaceous), from Mahajanga Province of Madagascar.

I found this the last weekend of November, 2017 in Arlington Texas. It was in an area that is marked Woodbine, but Grayson formation fossils are mixed in. So, I’m not sure which it is from. It was found in a tan crumbly soft clay like soil. I sat down to try to ID it, but it seems pretty worn down. So I am not sure it is even identifiable. It is about 14 cm in diameter and has a whorl breadth of 30 mm and whorl height of 60 mm. There appear to be 2 rows of tubercles. One on the interior edge of the whorl. There are 6 tubercles in this row. The 2nd row runs down the middle of the whorl. Those in the middle are so worn down some are missing and I’m unable to determine the tubercle count, but I can count 10 tubercles within the same space of 3.5 tubercles on the inner edge. I tend to think there should be a 3rd row of tubercles on the outer edge, but if there is a third row it is worn off. This was taken at an angle so you could see the tubercles better. They’re very faint bumps. The tubercles in the center are most noticible, but still pretty worn. If anyone can point me in the right direction on ID I’d appreciate it. @BobWill and @Uncle Siphuncle and @bone2stone