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Back in April of last year I started a new job based in Texas. I had planned to work remotely until we returned to the office and then make a road trip down to Texas that would involve making several fossil pit stops along the way. When the time came for my move to Texas, my road trip unfortunately coincided with Hurricane Ida and I had to sadly scrap all of my plans and simply hightail it through the Gulf Coast to avoid the storm. Fortunately though I was given off from work the week between Christmas and New Years and I was even more determined to not let my research go to waste. The delay in my road trip also had the added bonus of time- I ended up visiting several sites that I had not known about during my move to Texas. Funnily, while I did not have to dodge hurricanes on this trip, I did have to dodge two tornado warnings. I guess extreme weather is just something you have to deal with when you fossil collect along the Gulf Coast. The road trip ended up being ten days of late nights and early mornings. I found a ton of really interesting fossils, which consequently meant that I have only now been able to finish cleaning, prepping, and identifying all of my finds. The road trip involved a number of firsts for me- it was the first time I have ever done a several day fossil road trip without my dad; I found a number of fossils that I had not found before; and I made my first ever donation to a museum. I would not have had it any other way! I can't wait to do it again soon! Day One I had a long drive into Mississippi in front of me so I had hoped to get an early start to the day. Fortunately or unfortunately that did not happen. I was to met a property owner early the next morning so my plan was to just get as close to tomorrow's site as possible. I could not pass up the opportunity though to do a little fossil collecting along the way. I had read about some old Oligocene sites that I thought could be worth checking out just to say that I had been there. Sadly one of the sites was simply too overgrown to be collected and at the other I was only able to find some incredibly fragile Pecten byramensis scallop shells. First find of the trip! Day Two Early the next day I drove another hour to a stream exposure of the Upper Eocene Moodys Branch Formation. In the time that had passed from my planned trip in September to my trip in December the site had changed ownership, but the old owner was kind enough to pass along the new owners' contact information. With a little convincing the new owners granted me permission to visit. I was excited! I had been warned about the fragility of the Periarchus lyelli sand dollars at the site but with the right tools and the right mindset I was ready to get into the creek and do some exploring. I had thought that my visit would last only a few hours, but, after walking the section of creek several times looking for the sand dollar bed and making several trips to my car to bring in more tools and carry everything out, before I knew it was already the late afternoon. While the turn of events meant that I could not visit some of the other sites I had planned for the day, it did mean I had the opportunity to meet both of the owners. I showed them what I had found and they asked if I would send them one of the sand dollars, which I was happy to do. With an invitation to come back whenever I wanted and some holiday wishes, I hit the road to my planned stop for the night. Not much to see when first found, but when they are properly prepped... Far more abundant than the sand dollars where the wealth of shells, corals, bryozoans, and other tiny fossils. I ended up washing and screening some excess matrix I collected. I was astonished by what I found, including tons of tiny shells, fish otoliths, fish teeth, crab claws, bryozoans, juvenile sand dollars, shark teeth, etc. Calyptraphorus stamineus Cirsotrema nassulum Venericardia apodensata Glycymeris idonea Eburneopecten scintillatus Nucula spheniopsis Balanophyllia irrorata Flabellum cuneiforme Endopachys maclurii Platytrochus goldfussi Crab Claws Arm Plates of Comatulid Crinoid Himerometra louisianensis Sea Star Ossicles Juvenile Periarchus lyelli Negaprion gibbesi Fish Vertebra Paralbula marylandica Ariosoma nonsector Preophidion meyeri Sciaena aff. Sciaena pseudoradians Jefitchia claybornensis Orthopristis americana Day Three With a quick change of plans in light of the expected weather later in the week I drove through Mississippi into Northern Alabama to hunt the Mississippian Bangor Limestone. When I had told a friend that I was planning a road trip through Alabama he had recommended several sites in the Bangor Limestone worth checking out. He recommended going in the winter time though since one of the sites was only exposed when the lake is drained. With six sites on my list I knew that I would have to be efficient with my time. While I could have easily stayed longer at some of the sites, an hour and a half to two hours turned out to be just enough time for each site. While I had heard that the Alabama Paleontological Society had been to two of the sites only the week prior, some recent rain had helped refresh things and there were plenty of fossils to be collected. I was thrilled to find some Mississippian blastoids and crinoids. Some in-situ photos of the blastoids Pentremites pyriformis Pentremites godoni Zeacrinites wortheni Pterotocrinus depressus Onychocrinus pulaskiensis Phanocrinus bellulus While I had added several Bangor Limestone sites to my list in hopes of finding Mississippian crinoids and blastoids, I was pleasantly surprised by the number of Mississippian trilobites Kaskia chesterensis I also found. Crinoid Cup and Trilobite Tails A visit to the Bangor Limestone would not be complete without adding some Archimedes bryozoan to the collection. I found this plate with one large piece on it. At the end of the day, as the sun was setting, I made a very quick stop at an exposure of the Hartselle Sandstone. Using whatever light I could use, I contrasted the loose rocks with the sun and added a few Mississippian ichnofossils to my collection. Olivellites implexus Lockeia cordata Lockeia siliquaria Day Four The same friend who recommended I visit several Bangor Limestone sites also recommended I visit a couple of Monteagle Limestone sites while I was in the area. While my first two full days of collecting had brought riches, including beautiful sand dollars, blastoids, and crinoids, today was the first unproductive day. Having driven quite a distance to get here and having spent by then several full days out in the field, I was ok to take a bit of a break. With a gray sky and a light drizzle, I stopped at four sites, with only one of the sites being fruitful for a quick stop. Although my friend promised crinoids and blastoids, I only found a few loose brachiopods, crinoid stems, and bryozoans, and a single crinoid plate. Schellwienella sp. Punctospirifer kentuckiensis Punctospirifer transversa Inflatia inflata Petrocrania chesterensis Hederella chesterensis Agassizocrinus conicus Seeking to not waste the day and with still many hours in the day left, I decided to make the most of things and visit the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville. When you drive into Huntsville on the highway you can see two massive model rockets standing up in the horizon- it is really a sight to see. As I learned from the museum, while Houston has Mission Control and Cape Canaveral has the rocket launch pad, it is Huntsville that builds and tests rockets. I am really glad I got the chance to visit. Full Size Models of Saturn I and Saturn V Rockets Prototype of Saturn V Rocket Used To Test Lifting Mechanism Before Sending Apollo Astronauts To The Moon Apollo 16 Command Module Day Five Today marked the first of several days I would be focusing on the Upper Cretaceous Period. Having grown up collecting in the Upper Cretaceous of New Jersey, the Upper Cretaceous has always had a special place in my collection and I was excited to see what the Gulf Coast could offer. Ralph Johnson, the curator of the MAPS Collection, had asked me to collect a few representative samples for him to compare against the ones from the Atlantic Coastal Plain in the MAPS Collection, so I had added reason to fit a few stops in. My first stop was a stream exposure of the Eutaw Formation, Tombigbee Sand Member. I had heard rumors and got confirmation from the President of APS that the owners of the property can be a little careless in their target practice, so I made sure to fit in a stop to the site in the early morning on a weekday and to wear an orange vest while there. Prepared for the worst but hoping for the best, I was happy to hear nothing while I collected. After grabbing a few echinoids and finally speaking on the phone with the owner of a property I had hoped to visit later that day, I made my way to my next stop. Hardouinia bassleri Trigonia sp. Inoceramus sp. Exogyra upatoiensis Flemingostrea cretacea Ostrea sp. My second stop was a roadside exposure of the Prairie Bluff Chalk. I was really fortunate to get permission to visit when I did because the site abounded in phosphatic molds of bivalves, gastropods, and ammonites. The ground was literally covered with fossils. I was excited to see many fossils that I recognized from my collecting in New Jersey. Discoscaphites conradi Trachyscaphites alabamensis Eubaculites carinatus Baculites lomaensis Baculites sp. C Dunnicrinus mississippiensis Ossicles Turritella tippana Turritella encrinoides Longoconcha sp. Anchura noakensis Napulus sp. Bellifusus sp. Ellipsoscapha mortoni Graphidula sp. Eoacteon sp. Gyrodes spillmani Gyrodes petrosus Anisomyon sp. Crassatella vadosa Cucullaea capax with Cliona microtuberum boring sponge trace Solyma sp. Veniella conradi Scabrotrigonia thoracica Granocardium lowei Cyprimeria alta Spondylus sp.

Prepped another ghost shrimp claw from Twin Beach last night. I think it turned out pretty well. Unfortunately, the glue I used to reattach some of the little bits of exoskeleton left a bit of residue which you can see in the picture, but I don't think it detracts from the piece all that much.

I didn't get out hunting much last year, still working on figuring out how to research and find spots, but a friend of mine invited me out to do some collecting at one of his spots up in Washington State. I took some family with me and we went out over the Winter break in mid December. Pretty cold but beautiful! We're mainly looking for concretions weathered out of the formation, but occasionally you find Callianopsis claws loose in the formation, usually very brittle and in poor condition. Lots of mollusks to be found as well as crustacean material Our most common find were these Macoma We also found some Turritella and Acila The find of the day came pretty early on, Robert found this nice leaf, apparently pretty uncommon at the site Our spoils after the first hour of hunting A giant Callianopsis claw I found, sadly the rest of the concretion has weathered away leaving only an imprint with some shell And on the other end of the spectrum a tiny one found eroded out We didnt find any Pulalius, Aturia, or vertebrate material but we had a blast and found some pretty nice crustacean pieces Here's what's almost certainly a crab carapace, have to prep it to ID And a piece that looks to have both claws from Callianopsis and maybe some other pieces from it Both of these will have to wait until my micro scribe arrives for further prep, they're both very fragile with poor separation. While we were up there we stopped at Olympic National Park

Hello, I have just received this partial lower jaw, it is supposed to be from Leptomeryx evansi, but i have seen many skulls of L. evansi on the internet, and this doesn't look similar. It comes from the Oligocene of Orella member, Brule formation; South Dakota. I have got three questions; Who did this jaw belong to? What part of the jaw did these teeth occupy? Is that hole on the first photo normal? Or was made by an animal or disease? Thanks to everyone!

I'm fairly new to fossil preparation. After a trip to the Olympic Peninsula back in November, I had a ton of concretions and no way to see what was inside. At first a tried splitting them with a hammer, but after busting a perfectly good claw into a million pieces, it was clear that I needed some actual preparatory equipment, either an air scribe or a Dremel 290. I went with the 290, and for the last month I've been working through the concretions. Most of them are duds, either empty or just a small piece of exoskeleton at the center. I unearthed a pretty solid looking defensive claw a few weeks ago, and today I finally had another success: a feeder claw! I've inflicted a pretty good number of dings on both claws, but overall I'm happy with them. My most common mistake is flaking the very tips off. Once the surrounding shale is chipped away, they tend to detach very easily. When this happens, they're usually still in a tiny chunk of shale, which I find near impossible to disassociate from the tip. At that point, getting the tips reattached has usually proven to be a lost cause. The species is Callianopsis clallamensis from the late Oligocene of Twin Beach Washington. Defensive claw. Feeder claw. Both claws mounted.

Hi all, I found this piece of bone in the Oligocene Chandler Bridge formation in an area just outside the town of Summerville South Carolina. Is this potentially one of the halves of a whale or large dolphin atlas vertebra?

I've been in the lab this fall/winter but preparation has taken a back seat to the plastics/replicas operations. As things start to wind down with plastics around this time of year, I'm embarking on my next prep project. This specimen is from the same Wyoming locality as the Herpetotherium I posted about recently but was found many years ago(~15?). It appears to just be an upper skull of a small rodent but there is some hope for lowers. I pulled this piece out of its field packaging in April but just now starting preparation in earnest. So far, all I've done is rough prep around the boundary to remove the bulk matrix surrounding it. It was attached to a larger block but there is no evidence of any additional bone fragments in the other block. The bulk removal was done with my trusty ARO but all prep going forward will be done under magnification with a Paleotool's Microjack-3 or pin vices. Identification will take a while but we'll talk about the process as I get the specimen uncovered. If I had to guess at this point, I suspect it to be Paradjidaumo. Time will tell if I'm correct.

Hi everybody, Boy, it's been a while since I made a post, but then it's been a while since I did any kind of fossil hunting. A friend of mine who I met while volunteering for a nature center invited me out on a camping trip to the Olympic Peninsula. He claimed to know a couple beaches where the concretion game is really good, and he sure wasn't wrong! The weather was mostly terrible; bitter cold and heavy rain punctuated by occasional blue sky, but when you love beachcombing as much as we do, you forget about it! This is the Pysht Formation at Twin Beach. Lots of concretions were eroded out of it, especially because of the recent storms. Before long we had filled multiple bags up with them. Callianassa ghost shrimp claws are what we were after, and we found one already naturally split open on the beach. My portion of the haul. The ones on the bottom side of the box have that oblong shape that is a good indicator of having claws inside. I did split a round one open with a chisel and hammer only to break a perfectly good claw into a million tiny pieces. My friend is a wiz with the air scribe, so at some point in the near future we're going to spend an afternoon in his garage exposing some of them that way. Those 3 on the bottom I will definitely be saving for his air scribe. I've never used one before, so I'm excited to give it a try. There were some nice fossilized clams littered around the beach. I think these are Lucina. Petrified wood with some Teredo bores. There were some awesome non-fossil finds to be had as well. Lots of small, shiny quartz pieces that I find good for fidgeting with during some of my more boring classes. I was stoked to find this absolutely massive giant acorn barnacle (Balanus nubilus). Apparently it's the biggest species in the entire world. Who knew!

In North Florida, we looked for Blue Agatized Coral and found some in a stream. At home we cut and polished them. We put together a video showing the whole process: https://youtu.be/aae9XqJPMCU best wishes, Lloyd

Serious, experienced replies, please! This 0.5 cm long object is attached to a broken coprolite from the Eocene/Oligocene of NW Nebraska. Trying hard to figure it out. Wrong twexture for a tooth and it doesn't look like a seed, either. I have a guess, but right now a guess is all I have. Any coprolite specialists out there? I know the pictures could be better, but I don't have a microscope out here in the field.

Last month my boyfriend and I went on our first ever trip to the Isle of Wight. We stayed for four full days and managed to squeeze in a fossil trip each day. On the first day we met up with one of my friends who was staying on the island with her boyfriend who is an 'islander'. We decided to visit the popular Compton Bay, an interesting and well known cretaceous site famous for dinosaur remains. When we arrived the tide was quite high and I didn't realise just how long it takes to go down (several hours, for future reference), but we were able to get onto the beach and walk a somewhat narrow strip of sand. After less than 10 minutes I picked up the first fossil! To me it looks like bone, but it has been loosely suggested to me it might be plant. It has a lot of iron rich matrix still attached to it which has unfortunately stained all my other fossils from this location as I desalinated them all in the same container (I would be glad to hear any advice for removing this staining?). Not 10 minutes after that I made the next find of the day, a small chunk of rolled bone. The tide was still very high so we decided to wander about the island and came back later that evening. Our lunch spot. The tide was lower in the evening and we had a wonderful time pointing out the dinosaur footprints, the trackway and finding pebbles full of shells, a pebbly full of bony fish bits and one more bit of bone for me and finally one for my friend as well (don't have pic of that though). Not sure how well the photos demonstrate this, but I think this may be a broken bit of a caudal vertebra. On day two we tried, and failed to get to Rocken End for some lovely ammonites. We couldn't find the right spot, so planned to try again the next day. In the afternoon we went to Bouldnor in search of some Oligocene turtles, crocodiles, mammals and whatever else we might find. However we were unlucky again and only found four chunks of Emys turtle shell. I am pleased with them though, as three of the four are really rather nice. It was a muddy but pleasant evening. Once again we had to wait a while (though 30 mins or so) for the tide to retreat. The first two pieces on the left were found within about 1m of each other. I'm not sure what to make of the 'stripe' on the top side of the third chunk. The next morning we found the correct access point and made our way to Rocken End, it's a fairly long walk down a steep hill(/mountain??) but wasn't as bad as it looked from the car park, there are steps carved into the mud at regular points. Soon enough we were scrambling over boulders of cretaceous upper greensand and pointing out ammonites that were poking out. Extracting the ammonites proved a significant challenge. They are incredibly delicate and soft. You could reach up and snap the ends out the rock very easily and practically all of the ammonites we attempted to extract came out in pieces, or broke irreperably. I did find two lovely little shark teeth sticking out, I believe these are somewhat uncommon here so I feel lucky. Just as we were leaving, my boyfriend found three ammonites practically lying on the ground in front him. They were by far the best ammonites we collected, he was very pleased with himself considering I had spent the previous two hours chiselling away whilst he sat and read his book... Prep in progress from the other side. The third one as found, just peeking out... ... and after some prep, it's still in the big block though, will (try to) cut a little pedestal out of the rock. Unfortunately the centre is missing. I also found a few beautiful brachiopods, bivalves and worm tubes - and also an echinoid! I have yet to ID any of these, but I think I actually prefer them over the ammonites, I wish I collected a few more.