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So a couple of weeks ago, I, along with my younger brother, decided to embark on our first field trip with the Dallas Paleontological Society. The destination was Moss Creek, a decently sized waterway on private property that feeds into the NSR. Just like in the main river, we were seeking a red layer exposure of the Ozan Fm (though I read that this red layer is different from the one at the river). This site is famous for its abundance of marine microfossils, namely shark/fish teeth. One of the people on the trip was a researcher (Shawn Hamm) who is currently finishing up a paper on this very site. I hope to read it once it's published! Anyways, the day was miserably hot as expected, but the scenery and air of discovery made up for it. My brother and I took a more secluded route, traveling downstream whereas most headed upstream. After a bit of searching, I came across a part of the creek bed that was red and, upon close inspection, was filled with tiny black phosphatic fossils. Because the matrix of the layer is so sticky, we couldn't really sift through it at the site. Instead, we, like everyone else, filled up a bucket and took it back to our car. It was a fun day and I met a lot of interesting people. One member told me to use baking soda to break up the matrix and that advice worked like a charm! I'm not sure about a lot of these IDs so feel free to correct me. If you know any species names feel free to drop those too . Here are the pictures of the highlight finds. Sorry the quality is bad... taking pictures of things this small was more difficult than expected: Fishes Lots of Enchodus Fangs and Jaw Sections Lots of Hadrodus Teeth Pachyrhizodus? Teeth Protosphyraena? Teeth. Really not 100% on this ID Pycnodont Teeth Fish Neural Spine. 2nd photo is compared to an X-Fish neural spine I found in Austin. Love the size discrepancy of the two. Fish Verts (Left) and Shark Vert (Right) Sharks Hybodont Shark Tooth. This is one of my favorites. Looks like Lonchidion? but that's just my guess. Lots of Pseudocorax Teeth Lots of un-ID Shark Teeth. Distinguishing between Scapanorhynchus, Carcharias, etc. is way above my pay grade . Trust me, I tried... Cretalamna appendiculata Tooth. By far the biggest tooth. Protolamna? Teeth Squalicorax Teeth. For some reason they all came out broken. Unidentified Tooth. Pathological? The crown is just a flat edge. Shark Coprolite? It's ringed like the ones I've seen online. Sawfish Ischyrhiza Oral Teeth Ischyrhiza? Rostral Teeth Ptychotrygon? Oral Teeth Cantioscyllium? Oral Teeth Misc./Enigmatic Finds Brittle Star Parts? Part of an Urchin? It's rounded and the center has a protrusion for where a spine once was. Kinda looks like a denticle, but may be some weird tooth? Bivalves If you would like any additional pics, let me know. Thanks for reading!

Hi everyone! I've made 3 trips to the North Sulfur River near Ladonia Texas so far. My son-in-law and I have found lots of baculite and ammonite pieces, along with tooth enamel and bits of bone. Found our first shark tooth on the last trip. I'll post pics when I figure it out! Everyone have a blessed day!

Hey everyone! This came from the same Ozan spot as my previous post. I found this little specimen on a gravel bar. I think it's a fossil, but it could be man-made... I'm really not sure. My best guess is a pycnodont tooth plate which would be a first for me. I have hesitations because the teeth are "holey" as opposed to little black bulbs. Maybe this is from weathering? Here are some pictures: Thanks for reading!

Following the brief rains from earlier in the week, I decided to make a return to my new favorite Ozan outcrop where I had previously found so many mosasaur vertebrae. Though I did not get to add any new verts to my collection, I did manage to come across plenty of unique fossils and artifacts that have taken up my attention for the past couple of days. One interesting thing I have noticed from this outcrop is its abundance of pyritic bony material among other pyritic fossils (including "rusty" exogyra shells + bivalves). Most of them are unidentifiable chunks, but a few have enough distinctive features that I feel hopeful they can be identified. Some give off the flaky appearance of fish bones while others are more spongy and reptilian to my eye. I wonder if any others have come across similar fossils as I haven't seen much online that resemble these. Does anyone know what these strange little balls of bronze rust are? I assume it's pyrite degrading, but I'm not 100% confident. They seem to enjoy popping up on bony bits that come from this Ozan outcrop. Anyways, I have compiled the most interesting bony oddities from my two trips to this spot. I know there's a lot to take in, so I only included closeups of the most distinctive pieces in order to have the majority of the focus fixed onto them. If you would like additional closeups of anything here, feel free to let me know! Here is an overview of the finds: Closeups and Descriptions: A: Here is a 360 view of my favorite one of the bunch. A key feature is on the sixth image, where you can see a hole that runs through the bone (the white speck towards the top end). This give off a flaky look, so I think it may be fish. Then again, I could see this being the end of some sort of long bone. There is a symmetry to the bone as well as the little rusty protrusions that are characteristic of the things I have been finding. The grooving seen towards the bottom on picture 5 is very pronounced. I feel this might be to something really cool. Curious to hear what y'all think! B: This is an interesting piece that is unfortunately almost entirely covered in pyrite chicken pox. It's difficult to tell what exactly the bone's texture is, but I would flaky as well. One side (pic 4) is mostly flat. The opposing side (pic 2) has a groove running down the middle that converges at one end. Pic 6 shows this convergence pretty well. C: The spongy texture in pic 5 leads me to think this is reptilian. I get a vague sense that this may be turtle, but who knows. At first glance, the notch in it seems like a random natural fracture. However, the grooved patterns on two of its faces radiate out of that notch, so I think it must have always been like that. D: A flat piece of flaky bone I think is from a fish E: A flat piece of flaky bone I think is from a fish F: A 3D piece of flaky bone I think is from a fish G: A spongy bone that resembles turtle in my opinion H: This is a pyritized disk that I included in a previous post. I decided to throw it in here since it is similar in nature, though not collected from the exact same location. I think it may be a shark vertebra, but its protruding center throws me off. Someone has suggested it to be an intravertebral disk. It is fairly degraded. I tried to look around the outcrop itself for bones, but didn't come across any. However, I spotted and managed to pry out a pretty little cretolamna tooth so I will make sure to always check it out in the future. Thanks for reading!

I finally took a trip to the North Sulphur river last week. There have been a couple good rains so I was hoping that would uncover some stuff. The last couple of trips in 2021 were terrible. All muddy and picked over. This trip was still pretty muddy and little in terms of quality mosasaur material. However I went low and found a lot of smaller material. I wonder if the recent muddyness of the river is due to the lake construction or if the river just hasn't had enough rain lately? Is picture 2 an enchodus jaw? I believe the pictures of item 3 are of a really chipped piece of mosasaur tooth. Still never found a whole one this color. Are the pictures of item 4 pachyrhizodus? I have seen people say these are really small mosasaur but I have always doubted this. Any way to identify item 5? Maybe xiphactinus? Item 6 are the few decent mosasaur pieces i found. Is the second one a phalanges bone? Any idea about 7? It is heavily fossilized so i was thinking cretaceous but the shape makes me think of more recent like pleistocene. And my final question. Is item 8 coprolite? Im terrible at identifying the stuff. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

With the end of the semester approaching, school has picked up and I have been too busy to embark on many adventures. When my schedule finally cleared up one afternoon following a brief rain in Austin, I jumped at the opportunity to do a bit of exploring. One of my goals right now is to check out new parts of the creek I hunt on. Scanning through my list of potential spots, I decided to try and be the first one out to a very promising location. Like my previous hunts, this place ran through the Ozan formation, so my expectations were set on some nice Cretaceous specimens as well as the usual native artifacts that Central Texas is so famous for. After I parked and carefully scaled my way down to the water's edge, I was immediately met with several pairs of shoes and jackets. Thinking I had been beaten to the punch, I decided I might as well head down the stream and meet whoever it was to discuss the location and fossils in general. Thankfully, the trip was saved when they turned out to be a kind group of fishermen. After a brief chat, I carried on to get the hunt started. The mud was an absolute nightmare. I had never been up to my knees in it until then. Somehow, I managed to trudge my way through without getting one of my water shoes sucked away into a different dimension. When I finally reached the first gravel bar, I was instantly rewarded with the nicest Ptychodus tooth (E) I have found yet. Scattered around the bar were tons of flakes and a couple of larger worked pieces (G, I) that were unfamiliar to me. Before moving on, I also stumbled upon what would've been the largest point I'd ever found (H). Unfortunately, it was pretty banged up. The previous rain wasn't that big in terms of flooding, so I spent the most time scouring the gravel still under water as I reasoned that the stuff on dry land was less likely to have been moved around in the storm. It was during this moment that I found my first mosasaur vertebra of the day (A). This one was exciting to me as I personally thought it very much resembled the verts that famously come out of the NSR's Ozan formation. Within a couple feet of it I found another half piece of mosasaur vertebra (B). With the close association of these two bones, I went into a bit of a frenzy. Nothing else came up, but I knew that there was a massive exposure just up ahead so I hurried on. Along the way I ran into a fragment of the smallest point I've come across (F). At its size, I wonder if the original piece would've been a true arrowhead. Once I reached the main exposure, I immediately got to probing around. I came across two more pieces of bone that I believe are both belonging to mosasaurs (C, D). They have bony structures, but they are also pretty beat up and may have come from a different formation in comparison to the other two verts I collected. With the day winding down I picked up a nice big Exogyra ponderosa for my dad's friend as well as a couple of preforms. I tried to look around in the exposure for any hints of mosasaur, but that shale is extremely difficult to get through. All in all, it was a great success. I think I've found my new go-to spot! With the addition of potentially 4 new mosasaur verts, that's a 400% increase in my total mosi collection! P.S. Does anyone else get "Tetris Syndrome" after scanning gravel bars for way too long? For hours after the trip, I literally could not stop seeing gravel and chert flakes every time I closed my eyes. An overview of the finds: Closeups for ID: A: First mosasaur vert of the day. To me, it strongly resembles those found in the NSR's Ozan formation. This one was covered in a clay-like matrix. B: The second vert of the day. Seems to be broken in half and from the same formation as A. Appears to have pyritization on some parts of it. C: Third vert which I believe is mosasaur. This one is beat up and seems to be of differing material from A and B. Could it be from the Austin Chalk which is present farther up the creek? D: The last "vert" of the day. This one I am least confident about. It appears to have a bony texture, but is very worn and has a confusing shape. It seems closer to C than A or B, but it also feels very distinct in it of itself. What do you guys think? I suppose it could be something else entirely! E: A nicely preserved Ptychodus tooth. I'm thinking anonymous or mammillaris, but my ID skills are pretty lackluster. F: "True" arrowhead fragment? G: Strange artifact. The angle seems too wide to be a point. I think it's too thin to be an adze. Obviously missing a huge chunk from that fresh curved break. What do you guys think? H: Fragment of a large point I: Another strange fragment. I think it may be an adze since it's a bit more robust. Fresh break on one edge. Let me know if you want any more close-ups. Thanks for reading!

Hey everyone! I thought I'd share a few of my finds from the past couple months and get yall's opinions. Over winter break, I went back home to North Texas and did some searching around Ammonite Beach at Texoma and the NSR with my family. At Texoma I had a nice time hammering out a few ammonites, collecting teeth, and surprisingly finding lots of smaller, pyritized ammonites that I did not expect to be there. The NSR was a bit slower, but I at least got a nice Squalicorax as shown in the pics below. Since school has started, I've been down in Austin. I've been finding the usual stuff, but the pyritized disk I've attached is new to me. I'd love to hear what you guys think! Austin Finds: Pictured above is the pyritized disk and a pyritized clam found in a gravel bar next to what I believe to be an Ozan exposure. The area has a decent amount of the pyritized clams and other marine fossils that I assume are cretaceous in age given the local geology. My initial reaction was that it could be a vertebrae, but the bulging center and distorted shape throws me off. It has very apparent concentric rings on both its faces. In pics 1 and 3, you can see that underneath that outside layer there is a lot of pyrite. Parts of the edges are also pyritized while other sections have an iron concretion look to them. The face shown on pic 2 resembles and feels like petrified wood. I suppose this could be a pyrite sun, but I'm not seeing anything too similar to what I have on google images. Super interested in what you guys have to say! Texoma Tooth (left) and NSR Tooth (right) Left (Leptostyrax macrorhiza?): Pretty tooth found by my little brother at Texoma in the Duck Creek Formation. Did some quick googling and found that Leptostyrax macrorhiza was in that formation and saw some pictures that were similar to what I have. Right (Squalicorax): Had a bit of a slow day at the NSR, but managed to at least find this at the end of my cold, muddy adventure there. It's preserved very nicely. Looks like Squalicorax to me. Would love to know the species. If you guys would like any additional closeup pics feel free to let me know! I might share some of my other finds later on, but I don't want to inundate the forum with my rocks lol. Thanks for reading.

I have two teeth of what I think is the same species, and I just can't decide what they belong to. The best speciman is this one: It's found in a creek that exposes both the Ozan and possibly the underlying Dessau formation. I see no nutrient groove, making me eliminate Scapanorynchus Seemingly no enamel wrinkling, making me not think Cretodus (can Cretodus even be found in Ozan aged rocks? I've only really seen it being found in Eagle Ford...) I don't remember Cretoxyrhina mantelli having cusps anywhere in its dentistry Doesn't seem like the right shape for Cretolamna (can Cretolamna be found in strata this young as well? I've only ever found it in the Waco Pit) Obviosuly not Squalicorax... I'm stumped. What do ya'll think?