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I have a rather large collection of fossils, and though I enjoy showing it off to people the majority of onlookers are never quite sure what exactly they’re looking at or the significance of it. Everything is labeled, but to the uninitiated that usually means very little. So, I have been meaning for quite a while to undergo a project to add information to my fossil displays in the same way a museum would, so that visitors can better appreciate what they’re seeing and maybe even learn something. I made this little case for a few Apachesaurus fossils. Hopefully in the future I can display all of my fossils in a similar manner, with context for people who aren’t paleontology nerds. My “Permo-Triassic” shelf is the one I intend to do first. Once I get that in place I’ll show it off, and maybe document the rest of the creation of my “museum.” I have some neat ideas about how to display some of my items!

Hi everyone! I recently uploaded a pair of expedition videos to YouTube from my September trip to some late Triassic beds in northern Arizona. If you're an old school Walking With Dinosaurs fan, you may be interested to know that this spot is quite close geographically to the famed Placerias Quarry whose fossils were hugely influential in the making of Episode 1, "New Blood". I, and I suspect many of you as well, found WWD and its spinoffs to be easily the most captivating natural history documentaries of their time, and I credit its opening act taking place in my home state as playing an influential role in why I ended up in this field of study. I spend more of my time these days working in Cretaceous rocks than anything else, so coming back to the Triassic is something of a homecoming for me. Fossils at this locality are abundant but frequently in rough shape, since they begin to erode and fragment while still several inches below the surface. Teeth, like the phytosaur crown above, hold up better and are usually among the best finds of each trip. I also collected some fragments of metoposaur skull or clavicle (watch the second video in particular if you're interested in these guys!) but I will hold off until I've finished gluing the pieces together before sharing here. 😉 While large stretches of Chinle beds in northern Arizona are now federally protected under Petrified Forest National Park, these protected areas do not extend over the entirety of Arizona's late Triassic province. A short walk away from where I collected fossils is this massive excavated pit that has cut down through the fossil-bearing layers. This burial site of over 200 million years will soon become a landfill for human waste. I think this is an important reminder of why we collect fossils in the first place: 'everything not saved will be lost'.

Hello everyone, this specimen has been advertised as a phytosaur scute from the Triassic of Northeastern Arizona. I'm curious if this piece is genuine and unmodified as it is relatively cheap. I'm also wondering if it isn't metoposaur scute as I've not seen a phytosaur scute like this. As always, any help is appreciate, thank you.

This is my first official Triassic fossil - a tooth (or fish fin) and some associated (poor quality) tissue/bone pieces found in a late afternoon exploration of some rocky outcroppings in Montgomery County, PA. Both halves of the impression are included. The impression/cast are very faint and some of the definition is in jeopardy of being lost since the material powdered and flaked off a bit as it dried, and is less defined now than when I first brought it home and took the first images. Here are some views of the full shale piece and surrounding smooth area with a small skin or tissue fragment at the top: You can see the smooth area around the fossil "tooth or fin" in the positive and negative halves of the shale - which is medium grey in color and about 20 centimeters long. I chiseled open the shale while I was exploring a steep vertical outcropping. What led me to crack this particular piece of shale was a nearby small assortment of what appeared to be dessicated bones and fragments and the shale color was different from the surrounding red shale. I'm including images here of the "bone fragments" and associated material which appear to be fossilized organic material: This closeup has some impressions/pockets that may help with identification: . Update (Oct 23): There is a growing consensus that this may be a fish fin (or scale) - considering that this appears to be attached to a smooth section, and there is a bit of "skin" at the top left, this interpretation makes sense. I agree that I should remove more substrate to see what else can be revealed. Thanks to Fossildude19 for providing links to the Triassic Teeth chart and to a few experts I contacted off-line to get their opinion. The best thing about this find - regardless of the faint impressions, difficult ID and the crumbling possible bone and skin - is that this was found in an area where finds are few and far between, in Triassic sediments that are really scarce in Pennsylvania, because glaciers basically scraped and eroded most of the Triassic and Jurassic geological formations down to older (Ordovician, Devonian, Carboniferous) layers. I wasn't expecting to find anything and this was revealed just as the sun was going down, using the last half hour of daylight and came from inspecting an anomalous shale color in the formation. This suggests that it is worth our time to check out more Triassic formations in our home county/southeastern Pennsylvania. We are totally "clueless" about Triassic fossils (more comfortable with Carboniferous ferns) but since the Passaic and Lockatong formations are scattered in several places within 20 minutes of our home, we are making a few short trips to see what we might run across. Nancy and I remain interested primarily in Devonian and Carboniferous fossils and sites, however our first venture into Triassic territory holds some promise.