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Any idea on what genus this could be from? Or, if it even is a crocodile after all? This tooth was previously IDed as a crocodile but others claimed spinosaurid. The tooth is late Cretaceous in age. It's from the Kem Kem Phosphate Beds in Touz, Kem Kem Basin, Morocco.

The first of these (the dark black one), I found last year and I was told by Dana Ehret of the NJ state museum that it was most likely a fish scale fragment, and that it could possibly be from a gar. After looking up gar scales, however, it has never seemed like a perfect fit for the shape. A few days ago, I made a trip to the brook, and found the second tan specimen. The pattern in the enamel looks very similar (though not identical) to the first, so I thought this could be another fish scale. Since I hadn't adequately satisfied my own curiosity about the exact species of the first, I figured I'd post photos of both and see what people think.

I've collected in the New Jersey brooks for a long time now, and I've found a few pieces of dinosaur material over the years, but I'm interested to know if there are any other public land collecting sites in the US where one can find (and keep!) dinosaur material.

This partial ammonite whorl was a surface find from my April 8th trip to Cleveland, Utah. In particular, it was the one I found under the foot of the guy I was helping to lift his large Ammonite embedded in a heavy concretion to carry it to his van. I could discern that it was chocolate brown underneath the calcite coating. I stuck some thick felt furniture leg pads on the back of it to keep from scratching my office desktop. Well a week later I decided to remove the coating. Here's the "as found" pic. And with safety equipment including a gas filter mask, gloves, glasses, big bowl of water, a fan and open garage door, I was ready to go at it. The chemical is muriatic acid for cleaning brickwork and swimming pool masonry. I used a toothbrush to dip into a small cup of acid next to the bowl of water. Dip, scrub, rinse repeat until I liked the results. First round on this section. Looks good. Second round. Keep going! I'm liking it so far. Round three finishes that step. Then I soaked it in a bowl of water and baking soda. Several rinse cycles, a good dry time and a coat of Paraloid after that. Then the felt pads were reattached. And I like it a lot more than before. It may only be a partial whorl of an ammonite but to me it's a lot more than that. Kinda like finding a toe claw of a raptor or a big carnivore tooth. It may not be the whole enchilada...but it's enough to think about the potential of what it was complete or once was alive.

My family is a blended one. I have a daughter from a previous marriage and my wife has 3 from hers. So daughter #3 was expecting her second child any day and my wife flew out to North Carolina to assist her by taking care of their 2 year old son. The return home date is undetermined...which means my schedule has a wee bit more flexibility for a few weeks. On Thursday this week I dropped daughter #5 off at the airport to go hang out with her sister, daughter #4, at Vanderbilt in Nashville, TN. Now my schedule was wide open. I started charging camera batteries and packing a twofer trip. The New Moon was Monday but overcast and the waxing crescent moon sets earlier than the Milky Way Galaxy rises. Win-Win scenario. I packed my fossil gear as well. Daytime fossil hunting, nighttime astrophotography. Oh yeah! I left around 1 PM and arrived at the first stop around 330 pm. Victor's Reef is the name of the spot. Funny how everything looks way bigger than on Google Maps. It's kind of a unique formation as you can see in the sat photo. The big concretions are in the meter and a half diameter on average. Then there were a few smaller ones. I parked in the pull out and took a few pics. The angle was steep with some cliff drop offs. So hiking down wasn't an option to start my day with. I drove south to the end of it and hiked down the eroded slope. Much easier. I walked around and saw plenty of footprints and broken small concretions in the volleyball size or smaller. Lots of calcite veined interiors, not much in the way of fossils. Quite a few inchnofossils on the surface. Looking north. Looking south. My Honda Element for scale. Some really big concretions, right? And then while staring at the ground for fossils or small unbroken concretions....I look up . Hello old car. I did not discern the make or model but my guess is a Chrysler product from around 1963. The engine and tranny were missing so it didn't take much guess work that some bunch of American boys towed the car into the desert and shoved it off the cliff. I found it on Google Maps after I got home. The heart is where I parked and the small rusty brown rectangle is the car just above the the other marker. I scaled the hill right past the car, checked it out, kept an eye and ear open for rattlers and climbed on out . Very steep, frost heaved loose dirt and gravel, tricky ascent. I used the broken concretions parts embedded solidly as foot steps and hand holds when needed. Checked the box for this location. Most of the concretions were calcite veined. I had earmarked a number of sites to check on the way out to the highway as daylight was burning. Right at the top was a split concretion of the jumbo category and had this embedded in it. First time seeing anything like this. My guess is petrified wood. The science behind the concretions is that something organic is the "seed" and catalyst to get things started. Shells, bones, wood and the like are common. Ofttimes, the concretion are just calcite veined with some obscure itty bitty organic bit of something. I didn't crack any open. This one with the wood in it is 1.5 meters and many hundreds of kilograms in weight. Not today. Nope, moving on. As is obvious, this place is vast. I have been hunting on the opposite side of the piece of real estate for several months and my research says ammonites are found all around the perimeter of what this pic shows. The interior of the image is Morrison Formation, The Cleveland-Lloyd quarry and dinosaur fossil bones of unknown quantity. The opposite side is a view of the Book Cliff Mountains. The distance is 25 miles from where I'm standing. This is the Sat photo showing the large fossiliferous valley. The Morrison Formation is quite evident with the pinkish and grayish banding making an upside down Vee. Time to check another spot. I parked and checked out some eroded drainage ditches. Now I'm on the right track. I stepped into the ditch and see this piece with Inoceramus oyster fossils. And then started to see concretions. I flipped or rolled all of them over to check for ammonites or keel exposures. And that's when the finding started! Most were either partials or close to whole with a plethora of large outer whorl sections. WoooHooo! I'm in pay dirt now! And another... And a scorpion underneath the next one. ...and another one... An Indian Paintbrush...parasitic desert plant with beautiful stunning bright red flowers. And another partial - huge chunk with a well defined keel. And another one...actually this was the last one. It weighed over a hundred pounds and kicked my fanny getting it 50 yards over hilly, sagebrushy, cactus filled and ditches to cross. So I came up with Plan B. I hiked another 150 yards back to my car and grabbed the beater tow strap to make a harness. Well that worked for another 50 or so yards before the light bulb came on. Steve...bring the car to the ammonite...not the ammonite to the car. Back to the car, careful navigation over the desert terrain and Voila! I'm there. It was still pretty tough to get it into the car. I can lift a hundred pounds as long as it has handles or a weight bar to grab. A big unwieldy rock is another story. So I shorted the strap, made two loops to put my arms through like suspenders, then grabbed the strap tied around the rock with my hands. Hands, arms, shoulders, legs and back all working in sync and it's on the front floor board. Holy Moly it was a beast. I chugged down the electrolyte drink and headed south for the night time adventure. This one measured 21 X 15 X 10 " inches thick. On the way down further south into the desert I was rewarded again with The Belt of Venus. A celestial phenomena (also called Venus's Girdle, the antitwilight arch, or antitwilight) is visible shortly before sunrise or after sunset, during civil twilight. It is a pinkish glow that surrounds the observer, extending roughly 10–20° above the horizon. And once I was set up in the desert, I took a 2 hour nap from midnight to 2AM. Then captured the Milky Way Galaxy for almost 3 hours, then slept another 2 hours when my wife on East coast time 2 hours ahead of me starting up the "Good Morning!" texts. The trees are blurry because this is a single exposure with the star tracker, mounted between the camera and tripod, is a geared device like a clock which mitigates the spin of Earth to keep the stars from trailing during a 2-3 minute long exposure. In Utah we're spinning about 783 mph / 1260 kph. At the equator, about 1037 mph.

Hi everyone, This is first time I create a topic, apologies in advance if any mistakes. I am a newbie into fossils And I have been searching for a long time trying to figure it out some ID for this unidentified fossil bone. I got it some time ago and I would like to know if thanks to the knowledgeable members of the forum it was possible to get a closer ID. I know that getting species on isolated pieces is impossible, but I would be happy to get a group, family or closer genus of the type of animal it could belong to. *Could it be a pterosaur (as it has very thin walls that was my first guess)? Or some other reptile or even a bird? How to differentiate? * Is a radius as per seller description? Or could be a metatarsal, phalanx... It is from the Phosphate mines of Khouribga, which seeing the bit of matrix attached looks true. Internally is completely crystallized with a thin bone wall around. I took some pictures of the section. The only information I got from the seller is the following: - Location: phosphate mines, Khouribga, Morocco. - Age: Late Cretaceous 96-66 MYO - Probably radius - Unidentified species Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts! #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6

Checking to see if this specimen checks out before I purchase it