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Today I stopped to stretch my back and did about 10 minutes of collecting near Whites Creek, Tennessee- I believe that this might be Richmond Group Ordovician. I would be looking for a little help on some IDs, I believe @Peat Burns, @Herb And @Tidgy's Dad might be able to help out. Here are some of my finds- Brachiopods- Gastropods- Bryozoan- I believe that the smaller pieces are Constellatia Florida. Hash Plates-

While @UtahFossilHunter was out for a quick bike ride yesterday, he stumbled across a wash that's been cut by a road. The upper part of the wash above the road is on private land that we do not have permission to be on yet. We had looked at the downstream part of the wash area for fossils before but had not found anything. After some melting of snow and construction, that happened over the last couple days some rocks had been pushed downstream. We decided to look at this wash once again and found these! This is a significant find because it is within 5 miles of my home. Our usual spot is 50 miles from my home so this is great news.

Longtime lurker here. As my first post, this will be a trip report about mine and @UtahFossilHunter 's attempt to find the rumored fossils on Stansbury Island in the middle of the Great Salt Lake. The island isn't quite known for having fossils but the rocks are the right ages for this area. First, we consulted a geologic map of the area we wanted to look through. We used this map from a dissertation of a student at the University of Utah. We decided to go to the undifferentiated Mississippian this time. We had gone out to the area a few times. We had gotten skunked on the Ordovician Garden City Formation and undifferentiated Cambrian in early February. Although, it had a nice view so the hike wasn't for nothing. Both of those formations were empty of macrofossils. (Microfossil analysis coming soon!) So we went to an adjacent valley where a grassy hill sat where the undifferentiated Mississippian would outcrop. We saw a outcrop of phyllite but staying hopeful, we hiked to it looking for any fossils. At the outcrop, I flipped over a rock from one of the beds. Lo and behold, at last, some fossils, albeit slightly metamorphosed. This layer and only this layer is filled with bivalves and brachiopods. We grabbed some sizeable chunks and made are way out. Stay tuned for more progress on research here.

Here is another rock which I found in a middle Tennessee creek. (Mississippian, St. Louis Limestone & Warsaw Limestone) This one also has a lot going on within it. There are several fossils I’d like to have identified, but am most curious about the area I circled in red. This rock had a lot of algae (or moss?) growing on it. Is the area which I circled even a fossil?

Here is another rock from a middle Tennessee creek. (Mississippian, St. Louis Limestone & Warsaw Limestone) It is full of tiny brachiopods, bryozoan bits and maybe a few other fossils. I would like to have the area circled in red identified.

This all started over a year ago. I was selected as Member of the Month and a couple of TFF members from Texas invited me down to the big state to collect. I primarily collect in my home region, the northeast, but I've taken fossil forays to New Mexico, Kentucky, and Germany and was willing to consider a trip to Texas and the opportunity to visit some classic fossil sites and collect fossils that are outside my usual focus. I began planning this about ten months ago, contacted potential fossil collecting partners and did my own research on fossil sites, geology, and the types of fossils I would likely encounter. I had never been to Texas let alone fossil collected there. From the Forum I knew there was a lot of great hunting. Then there was all of the logistics, what to stay, what to bring. Since I wanted to bring back a lot driving appeared to be my best option, but I hadn't driven that far solo in over thirty years. Timing of my trip; mid-late September, came right after my daughter went away to college and I was in the middle of moving to a new place. So things couldn't have been more hectic. Finally, early in the morning on September 8th I set out. Things went okay until I was in Kentucky. Just as it was turning nightfall, torrential rain hit, traffic was stopped on the interstate for two and a half hours, and the last two hours of the trip I struggled with wet conditions and poor visibility. I finally arrived at my parents' house just after one in the morning. The next day on my way over to my sister's I took a small detour and stopped at an outcrop I was well familiar with in Leitchfield, the Upper Mississippian Glen Dean Formation.

I found this rock in a creek in middle Tennessee. (Mississippian, St. Louis Limestone & Warsaw Limestone) It has several fossil imprints and I’m wondering if the circled one is a cephalopod. If not, can anyone tell me what is it?

Dear Guys, When I was in Varena town I was doing research of one erratic kind- grey and greenish spongiolites and collected many mollusc, foraminiferan and also brachiopod, vertebrate remains. I probably found Diovarilima, Barbatia, Ciliatocardium and other bivalves, cerithimorph Tarebia, brachiopods like Terebratulina, sawshark and fish remains. If anyone is able to identify these fossils, it would be very helpful. I would like to know the age of rock pieces and from The first impression I guess these erratics belong to Miocene or something similar. There were shallow marine conditions I think. Any help will be appreciated! Kind Regards Domas Picture 1. Anadara? bivalve

Has anyone visited Mazourka Canyon Road East of Independence? YouTube videos in the last year show a reasonable road and Donald Kenney [http://donaldkenney.x10.mx/SITES/CAMAZOURKA/CAMAZOURKA.HTM] lists a number of sites and the possible fossils. BFLADY

Hello everyone! As my family was making its way through northern UT this summer on my way to Dinosaur National Monument I realized that there would be some extra time in the afternoon between when we would arrive in Vernal and when we would check into the hotel, so I decided to do the only logical thing and find a place to go fossil hunting for a few hours in the surrounding area. One of the sites I found only talked about finding belemnites, ammonoids and oyster shells on BLM land off of the highway going into vernal. It was supposed to be middle Jurassic Curtis formation (according to the geologic road signs, an interesting feature of this area's highways). I followed the directions given on the website and we reached the area that we believed to be the one mentioned (The Rockhounder: Belmemnite Fossils Near Vernal Utah) we met a young couple and their toddler out hunting for fossils (always nice to see). What we found somewhat disappointed me (however any afternoon spent fossil hunting is automatically better than any not doing so), only brachiopods and not one cephalopod fossil to be found. The main point of posting this in ID is to figure out if these brachiopods are jurassic species or older, as no belemnites were found they couldn't be used as indicators to the true age.

I have a number of pieces of fossil parts collected at Peace river in Florida. I do not have the complete fossil. How do I differentiate between scallops and Branchiopods?

Nice haul of brachs from Georgetown todày. The Bellevue and Corryville are exposed are this this road cut. Rafinesquina sp., Hebertella occidentalis ,Vinlandostrophia ponderosa, Vinlandostrophia laticosta and V. cypha. Ordovician about 445m years old. They are all available for trade.

I don't throw around the word "best" casually, but I think it's safe to say that my recent trip was one of the best in all my years collecting, if not the best. I spent the better part of five or six hours collecting at numerous different sites across western Maryland ranging in age from the lower Devonian to the lower Mississippian, so this is part one of my posts (for simplicity's sake I may include photos of most of my other finds from these sites even if I didn't collect them last go around). The trip started off okay. I visited a couple of my oldest sites that are some small roadside exposures of the Oriskany Sandstone and Mahantango Formation. These sites produced decent material in the past, but over the repeated years of collecting I seem to have worn them out as this time all I found were some brachiopods (including a decent Mucrospirifer sp. from the Mahantango site). I'll talk more about these finds later, but afterwards I found time to visit a new site in the Brallier Formation. By this point it had started to thunder, and while driving to the site the rain started to come in and fog filled up the valley. I thought it was the end of my trip, but as I got to the site it was pretty much dry. My best guess is that I was simply hearing a storm from way off in the distance. The site I visited, as I recently learned, might actually expose two different formations: the Brallier Formation and the Foreknobs Formation. The difficulty in discerning between the various upper Devonian formations in Maryland is multifold. First off, the MGS doesn't differentiate the Harrell, Brallier, and Scherr Formations, even on their most recent geologic maps. Second of all the literature around these deposits is scant and very dated. Most still use the (now) incorrect Woodmont and Chemung Formations, which further exacerbates problems as the Woodmont Formation consisted of the current Brallier and Scherr Formations, making it difficult for an amateur like me to really tell just which fossils occur in either formation. On top of this the contact between the Harrell, Brallier, Scherr, and Foreknobs is mostly gradational, so the differentiating layers lithologically is next to impossible as the beds gradually blend into one another. Generally speaking the Harrell is a dark shale with a fossiliferous limestone (the Tully Limestone) demarcating it's base, the Brallier is mostly dark, fissile shale with interbeds of siltstone, the Scherr is mostly lighter colored shale and siltstone with some sandstone beds, and the Foreknobs is a mixture of gray shales, red shales, conglomerate, sandstone, and siltstone. A guide fossil for the Brallier is the brittle star trace fossil Pteridichnites biseriatus, which was the fossil I originally set out to collect and found in the darker shale. Generally speaking the brachiopod genus Cyrtospirifer sp. in particular C. disjunctus is a guide fossil for the Foreknobs, but I believe this genus also occurs in the Brallier Formation. I found both fossils at this site, the brittle star in the dark shale and the brachiopod in a reddish siltstone, and considering the transition in rock types (one end of the site was just dark, fissile shale and the other had significant amounts of conglomerate and siltstone with shell beds) I think it's likely that the upper end of the cut was in the basal Foreknobs Formation and the lower end was in the upper layers of the Brallier Formation. As such, all of my trace fossils are from the Brallier and almost all of my other fossils are from the Foreknobs. The Brallier Formation is a late Devonian turbidite unit that was deposited in fairly deep water as the Acadian Mountains eroded. It is mostly unfossiliferous, but does have the occasional pelycopod, gastropod, and trace fossil (these being the most common). Ammonoids are also reported from the Brallier. Like I said earlier I originally came trying to find the brittle star trace fossil Pteridichnites but I ended up finding some other very interesting trace fossils. I picked up two of them because I had seen images of similar looking things from the Pennsylvanian of Alabama which I believe @Rockin' Ric labeled as resting traces from horseshoe crabs. These are late Devonian, deep water marine in origin, not terrestrial/freshwater from the Pennsylvanian, so I don't really know what they could be. Perhaps from some other arthropod? Anyways I also found some brittle star traces, including a group of what look to be four or five Pteridichnites biseriatus oriented in life position as if it were an imprint of the brittle star body. Image 1: Pteridichnites biseriatus Image 2: A group of four poorly preserved P. biseriatus Image 3: Unknown arthropod (?) trace fossil Image 4: Unknown arthropod (?) trace fossil If any of you guys know what the last two fossils are, please feel free to let me know.

I know this is a bit different than a traditional collecting trip story but... My friends and I have an inside joke that I can accidentally find a fossil anywhere, without any warning. I used to go upstate often, and there were numerous fishing locations with Devonian deposits. As it turned out, the gravel in the parking lot of the cabin we stayed at was from a bluestone quarry that was also fossiliferous. This blue quartzite would follow me around to this day. My best guess is it's from an Ordovician or Devonian deposit from some area north of the Hudson Valley. I have found several different Brachiopods in it, as well as some crinoids and 3 tiny Phacopsid Trilobite fragments. A couple of years ago, I was with a friend at a beach on Long Island. I was collecting shells and rocks, and came across a brachiopod 3 inches wide, right there on the beach. Same bluestone from upstate. Last year, I discovered an urban fishing spot that had recently been renovated has also utilized the same fossiliferous gravel, and I found a few nice brachiopods. More recently, the deposit has hit even closer to me: right on campus, in a new garden, the gravel lining! This has led to my best piece from the deposit yet, even over the phacops: A Brachiopod sitting in the middle of a calcite crystal! If anyone happens to have more information on this deposit, let me know! It shows up quite often around New York, apparently.

I thought about doing a personal study of the relationship of Athyris spiriferoides, in relation to other abyssal species that shared seafloor space with these Brachiopods. I have over 900 samples for the population study and now it's time to count brachs with nothing on them and all others with signs of the other species. So far most are symbiotic, a few shown signs of predatory sponge borings. To name some friendly attachments: bryzoans, crinoids, corals and some affinities I need to look up. I'll plan on highlighting examples and findings later.