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Trace burrows.. species? Central NYS, glacially transported cobble from till. Likely constrained to upper Devonian to mid Ordovician. Siliciclastic, clast supported, fine sand to silt, little clay, moderately well sorted, sub-angular, quartz, feldspars and lithic fragments, highly porous matrix, 6" on long axis. Thanks in advance..

Hi all. This is from Swatara State Park in PA (ordovician/devonian). Many shell imprints, which are hard to see the way I took the photo, but my son and I were wondering what the little starfish would be. It's very small, maybe 5mm. Anyone have an ID? Thanks so much!

Hi, I'm having a brain lapse and need help identifying the form of iron I'm seeing. Some of the nodules I found seem to have a cubic structure much like standard pyrite but others are perhaps suggestive of hematite in its many crystalline forms? Also, some of the crystals are a glassy reddish color and slightly gemmy in appearance while others are completely black. Apologies for the shots. They were taken outside in a shady area but some of them show a yellow reflectance on the top facing reflective faces. Only the 3rd shot of the black nodules actually has yellowish and red staining. These were found coincident to a formation known as the Sly Gap formation which is a Devonian formation here in southern New Mexico. I believe I recall reading that that formation had nodules like this. The nodules range in diameter from 10mm to 30mm.

World's earliest fossilised forest discovered in Minehead, Somerset By Greg Brosnan, BBC News Climate and Science, March 6, 2024 Earth’s earliest forest revealed in Somerset fossils By Sarah Collins, University of Cambridge, March 7, 2024 THe open access paper is: Davies, N.S., McMahon, W.J. and Berry, C.M., 2024. Earth's earliest forest: fossilized trees and vegetation-induced sedimentary structures from the Middle Devonian (Eifelian) Hangman Sandstone Formation, Somerset and Devon, SW England. Journal of the Geological Society, pp.jgs2023-204. Yours, Paul H.

A few weeks ago some friends and I visited a site near Braidwood in southern NSW (3 hours south of Sydney) for middle-late Devonian fish. The site was first published in Ritchie (1984) with the description of Placolepis budawangensis, a phyllolepid known only from this locality. This species is one of the two most common here, with the other being Bothriolepis longi (see Johanson 1999). So far, only these two species have been described from this locality but acanthodian spines and sarcopterygian scales are also known. All fish fossils from this locality occur in within a 75cm band of red siltsone and are mostly just disarticulated plates, but the P. budawangensis holotype is still fairly well articulated. The plates of both species are very recognisable, the Placolepis usually have lovely parallel ridges whereas the Bothriolepis are covered in tiny bumps. Some photos of the siltsone band with some fish plates exposed on top. Peter did a great job on this hole, it's not easy work! The specimens from this locality are quite weathered, so the bone is usually quite poor and doesn't split well. They still look nice, but I chose to dissolve away the bone in hydrochloric acid to latex the cavity for photography. Here are some as found: Placolepis: Bothriolepis: Some bone in cross section (the horizontal black dotted lines): Here are some latex casts of specimens after acid preparation. The latex is blackened with ink, then whitened with ammonium chloride for high contrast photos. Much easier to make out features in these than the unprepared specimens! Bothriolepis longi plates and pectoral fins (compare with figures in Johanson 1999): Placolepis budawangensis: Sarcopterygian scale(?): No idea on this one! After the fish site, we quickly stopped in at a road cutting which yields occasional Devonian plant fossils. Nothing too exciting, but still nice to find some Devonian plants! That's all for now, I might post more ammonium chloride photos when I take the next batch. Hope you enjoyed!

After attending a conference in Norman, Oklahoma, I slipped down to the southern part of the state taking a few days to explore a bit of America I have never experienced before. This trip report focuses on the Devonian of the Arbuckle Hills, more specifically, the Haragan Formation. My research ahead of my trip provided me with a few marginal sites to play in. Little did I know, luck would be in my favor that day and provide me access to a couple great sites. I was collecting along a road, a site offered to me by a forum member, and not finding anything substantial. A truck came up over the knoll and stopped next to me. The occupant rolled his window down and asked "what are you doing" in a slightly unfriendly voice. An explanation of who I was and what I was doing appeased him. After a long and friendly conversation on many topics, he suddenly surprised me by asking would I like to fossil hunt on "his" property? He went on to tell me his parents, who really own the property, used to allow fossil hunters on the land for a fee. But due to their age and a few unscrupulous fossil hunters they ceased granting access. I asked him " is this the "White Mound" location and he verified that it was! What luck! He unlocked the first gate and the only thing he asked of me was to lock it as I left. He then said I would have to go through a second gate to get to the fossil site and explained I would likely be greeted by his goats at the gate. You can see he wasn't kidding. I was proud of myself for slipping my vehicle through the gate without a single goat escaping. As I arrived at the site, it became apparent, looking back down the path used to reach the site, that the goats were going to be my friends while I searched for fossils. Look at that train of goats as far as the eye can see. My guesstimate was about 300 head, all friendly. Fossils were weathered out, easy pickings! It was hard to keep track of what specimens I had found already so I didn't overharvest. Here are some of my finds: As mentioned already, a forum member referred me to this roadside collecting spot. It was explained to be by a gate with 2 eagle statues on it. This was Jimmy Houston's property. For avid fisherman on this forum, the name is famous as he is the star in the TV series Jimmy Houston Outdoors. For years, as I religiously watched him teach America how to fish, I took to the water applying his techniques to my fishing grounds, the Mississippi River. Maybe his educational techniques were too good, for the thrill of discovery diminished as I became a better fisherman. This caused me to loose some of my passion for the sport and looked elsewhere to satisfy my need of discovery. That's when I took to the sport of fossil collecting. Anyways, after gaining the knowledge that Jimmy lived there, I reached out to him and told my story. Then ended with an explanation that to find a fossil on his property would be as big a thrill to me as catching a 10 # bass. His response was quick and decisive. I was granted my wish. So after just an hour at White Mound, I had to leave my caprine friends behind and make a new friendship across the road. To reach Jimmy's house required going through 2 fancy gates (Oklahomans love their gates!!) and a herd of elk. Meeting Jimmy was wonderful. The better part of 4 hours was spent on his deck overlooking a lake frequently seen in his TV shows. Conversations had never related to fishing or fossils at all!! We just had a chance to get to know each other in a personal way. Eventually, he took me around his property on a 4 wheeler showing me where he felt there could be fossils. He tried hard to make my trip a success, but after hunting at White Mound, I was intrigued with a small dig site they use to get gravel for the road. It looked very similar and I soon had a few Houston fossils to take home! Here is a photo of the two of us. Currently, I am working on a shadowbox to include this picture and the fossils I found. In closing, PLEASE do me a big favor and correct any IDs or ad identification to fossils that lack it. Visiting new sites like this can be overwhelming when the identification process begins.

Could I have some help identifying these coral pieces which I found in Arkona? Any help would be appreciated.

I'm currently working on a simulation of extinct biomes, i'm slowly learning how to make everything as realistic as possible for realtime 3d simulation. I would like to start with plants recreated from some Silurian, lower devonian and upper devonian, and slowly working to recreating the biomes in the areas where they lived and later i'l like to add animals aswell. All my research is made with google i'm not a professional in archeology or 3d art, some of the models are very simple and unpolished for now and will be updated. The project is in the early stages for now but it runs very well on most pc's Here are ome of the plants that lived in the late devonian Tetraxylopteris and leaf detail Archeopteris and branch detail Calamophyton Protolepidodendropsis Uang (China) Weylandia rhenana Aneurophyton Wattieza Leclercqia

Here is a quick and (hopefully) easy question for all you Penn Dixie (New York, Erie County) or bivalve experts out there. In going through some of the material I collected last summer, I came across this very nice, but small (1.1 X 1.0 CM) bivalve. It looks most like Lunulicardium eriensis figured on page 160/161 of Wilsons Field Guide to the Fossil of New York. But the book lists it as from the Upper Devonian Canadaway Group and I can't seem to find any reference to it (after a quick search) from the Middle Devonian Moscow Group present at Penn Dixie. My question is: is my ID incorrect or did I just not dig deep enough to find reference to it from Penn Dixie or the Middle Devonian? Thanks for any help. @Fossildude19 @Kane, @Jeffrey P and any others.

Hello to all. The Acastella trilobite from my own collection. Well preserved. I tried to get close-ups of the eyes and some small details. Place of discovery: outskirts of the city of Kamenets-Podolsky, Khmelnitsky region of Ukraine. It was not possible to determine the exact age (Silurian or Devonian). Have a nice day 1.mp4 3.mp4 4.mp4

Dear everyone, I would like to hear your ideas on preparing a fish fossil from Turso, Scotland (Devonian). I am unsure of the best approach. The fossil was embedded between two layers of hard rock. The impression on one side is not entirely clear; the other side is not entirely complete (90% is there). Additionally, fish fillet has fallen out, and I have many loose pieces such as the fins, which are very thin and have matrix (grains) attached. I have been contemplating soaking the small loose pieces in acid (5%) and then rejoining them. For the larger pieces, I plan to reattach them and clean them using an air scribe and sandblaster (2.5 mohs). Another idea is to place the pieces in their original positions and create a replica on the opposite side using epoxy or cement, although this doesn't seem aesthetically pleasing to me. The tools at my disposal include: - Magnifying glass - Air scribe - Engraving pen Dremel - Dremel - Sandblaster - Sulfuric acid 100% - Cleaning vinegar I appreciate your input and suggestions. Kind regards,

First post, long lurker! I found this fossil a while back at the well known Lost River outcrop on old Route 55 near Wardensville. It’s about an inch tall and across, and has an intricate, almost web-like pattern when you look close enough (my camera has a hard time picking it up!) I thought it may have been some kind of coral or bryozoan - but someone mentioned it may be a Hyneria scale or scale of some similar fashion, and that I should ask here. Any ideas guys? Thanks!

It was such a pleasure to meet Jimmy Houston, famous fisherman and outdoorsman, and to collect a few fossils from his property. This shadow box preserves the memories of that day!

L.S., Wanted to raise some awareness on TFF because I expect many here will simply love this: A good friend of mine, Iris van Zelst (geophysicist at the German Aerospace Center in Berlin) has developed this really nice card game centred around the geological time scale: QUARTETnary The gameplay is based on the classic game Quartets (similar to Go Fish and Happy Families), where players try to collect as many sets of four cards as they can. In QUARTETnary, each of the sets represents four major events that took place during a specific geological time period. To win the game, you need to create the most complete timeline of Earth history, all the way from its formation 4.567 billion years ago to the appearance of us humans. The cards have been designed by Lucia Perez-Diaz (Earth scientist and freelance illustrator from the UK). The illustrations look amazing and I really like that they adhered to the official colour scheme of the International Commission on Stratigraphy. Iris sent me this nice set of cards for the Proterozoic: The game includes 15 sets of four cards in total (many featuring fossils): one each for the Hadean, Archean and Proterozoic eons, and one each for the 12 periods of the Phanerozoic. I expect QUARTETnary will become a really fun way to learn about and memorize the different geological units and major events in Earth history. Kind regards, Tim

Hello everyone, I have been wondering about this for a bit but only now that I atually have one of these in my collections have I decided to ask this, All of the P. bownockeri I have seen have been pyritized and I wanted to ask why this is, I do not know of any other brachiopods like this because while there are some I have seen preserved in pyrite they are from areas where the rest of the fossils are also pyritized, from what I have seen its mostly just this species that is commonly found fully pyritized from this formation. The only thing I can think of is maybe they are found in a specific layer which is why they are the ones that are primarily pyritized. So my question is, what causes this? Also do these brachiopods come preserved in other mineral such as calcite? If anyone knows or has any useful sources I would love to hear it! Thank you very much, Misha

Found this a couple years ago near Deer Lake, PA. The site is a Devonian aged Mahantango formation location. I split the rock and this was inside. The left and right halves fit together. The specimen is about 5 cm from top to bottom and about 2 cm across. The dimpling pattern is what intrigues me the most. Could it be a type of sponge?

Today, I went on a quick early morning fossilhunt. I have been anxious to get out hunting, any chance I can considering how mild winter has been so far. I decided it would be best to start today with little, to no expectations and just see what the day would bring. At about 3:30am I woke up to use the bathroom and when I played back down all I could do was toss and turn. So I did that until about 5:15 and I finally got up. Got to the hunting grounds about 7am, just as the sun was making it's presence known. Unfortunately it was only 20° at the site. There was some snow covering the site as well as ice. Obviously this made digging and splitting slabs a real chore. So much so the there wasn't a whole lot I could do. I was hoping that with the sun out maybe it would eventually warm things up enough to make digging a little easier. So for the first 2 hours i kinda putzed around surface scanning and flipping slabs over, looking for something worthwhile. Eventually I started trying to remove slabs. I was actually starting to make a bit of progress, but then the ground got hard again. While trying to remove the slabs, I picked up a small chunk of matrix that fell off. As I inspected the piece carefully I noticed a small Dipluera pygidium and partial thorax exposed on the very edge of the break. I could tell that the rest of it was underneath some matrix. I would of normally been static but the area where the Dipleura was sitting was pretty fractured and I didn't really think I was going to be able to extract it without the whole thing crumbling apart. But I put it in the truck and decided to give it a shot when I got back home. Other then that I only brought home a bivalve and a brachiopod. There really wasn't anything else worth keeping. When I got home I inspected the trilo very carefully and looked at every fracture going around it, I started breaking off small bits of matrix till it got to the point where all that was left was the portion covering the front half of the trilo. I took my angle grinder and made a notch. Then I took a screwdriver, twisted and popped off the top! That is when I got very excited! Now I have found Dipleuras smaller then this one, but this is the smallest one the I have found in this good of condition. It measures at 1 7/16 of an inch. Totally made the trip worth it! Here is before and after pics.