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There have been a couple of small rises lately so i went out hoping to stumble upon something nice. Unfortunately the water did not rise enough to really tumble the gravel but it was still nice weather at least. Here are some pictures of my hunt a couple of weeks ago. As for my hunt a couple of days ago I don't have any pictures because i was skunked for the first time ever. No fossil or artifacts at all. I tried some of the large creeks, the ones that are basically as large as the river itself, and all i could see was dried up mud. I'm not sure if the creeks just have less material in them or if everything is just covered in mud. 1. 2. Mosasaur tail vert im assuming? 3. Not sure if coprolite or not but cool fish bones. 4. Rib of something 5. Fish jaw? 6. Turtle 7. Some cool little bone but have no idea what part or even animal 8.

I was wondering if anyone could help with some NSR IDs? I also have one item that looks like a tooth from POC. It is Item 1. All other items are from the North Sulphur River. Item 1. Possible tooth? Item 2. Calcium nondual? Item 3. Pleistocene turtle? It is extremely thick and hard. Item 4. Some have speculated it as turtle plastron bone or Plesiosaurus paddle bone. Item 5. Some type of Geological crystal nondual? Item 6. Coprolite or just rock? Item 7.

Hey y'all, here are two finds from two different trips that I'm having trouble IDing 1.) This Ptychodus from the sprinkle formation ( a tongue of the Ozan here in central Texas). I'm not sure, but I think the sprinkle formation around here is Santonian in age (~86-83 myo). (Please chip in if you actually know - google is so vague here) I have a suspicion, but I don't want to count my eggs before they hatch for this one. Any ideas? 2.) What I suspect might be a Cretoxyrhina mantelli (not sure if I see evidence of broken cusps or not, so I included many photos to help show that), from what I believe might be a permanent Eagle Ford exposure here in Williamson County, central texas (exciting stuff!). The blade seems a bit thin. Any ideas?

Hello, I found this small shark tooth near Austin. The geology of the area corresponds to the Ozan formation (early Campanian) ~78 million years. It looks like a Serratolamna serrata tooth, but I haven’t heard of Serratolamna from the Ozan formation. Or could this be a Cretalamna appendiculata instead?

Today was a memorable outing, and our net results were the best I've ever had for a single day in Austin. This morning started quickly. My step brother, Christian, was already knocking on my door at 9:30 - yes, that may be late in the morning for everyone else, but it's a full hour before I'm usually fully awake. I guess that's the trade off for late nights! Yesterday we made plans to spend our day today hunting a spot that I was used to scouring but had not visited in a while. That was not the only motivation for choosing this particular spot though. When I originally discovered this area, there were lots of associated large bones in the creek. After finding one of those water stained vertebrae, I decided "wow, that's huge! Not fossilized though.Looks bovid. Must be cow...eh " *toss* Looking back at it, I was (and am) kicking myself hard enough to break a toe. I never even thought to look for a skull, to just be sure, and the more I think about it, the more the odds fall in favor that the bones were bison, and I completely disregarded a very interesting Pleistocene skeleton. So, this was going to be an attempt at redemption - I had observed many bones downstream during successive returns (still met with more, "eh, must be cow"), but this time we were going to do something about it. The locality is cretaceous, so we'd hunt cretaceous material on the way up, keeping a look out for those "cow bones", until arriving to the site where the bulk of the skeleton used to be. At least, that was the plan... After parking by a small business (which hasn't towed me a single time- shout out to them), we made our way on foot over to a bridge, which we then started descending. The creek is on public land, but there's no parking or easily accessible points down to it. Once down at the creek, we wasted no time and took a turn left - the direction I've always gone. Christian was immediately impressed by the enormous size of the Exogyra oysters, which are abundant here. He's not an ardent fossil hunter, meaning he's never had the intent to go do it on his own, for example, but he is impressed by fossils and has a wickedly perceptive eye. We worked our way up the usual spots - it was his first time here, but probably my sixth or seventh. I pointed out to him where I made my best finds - the mosasaur tooth, the plesiosaur caudal rib, a bison tooth, etc, but in the end we didn't find much there. The "bison" skeleton was nowhere to be seen anymore, and while we found other cool fragments of definitive Pleistocene bone, none were identifiable further. One find of note however, was a echinoid that Christian spotted. I don't know how the dude does it, but he finds echinoids everywhere, it's like a superpower of his. No matter where we go or what we're doing, if it's outside, he'll spot an echinoid somehow. (Below - an interesting mushroom, which I believe to be Ganoderma sessile ) The real party started once we made it back to the bridge that we started at. Our plan was to scout the left side of the creek, the part I've never hunted before. We rounded the corner, and upon seeing the steep banks, it was clear that we had to walk across some deep creek crossings. I took point, and seeing that the water came almost to my stomach, Christian decided to settle for what he had found and instead poke around under the bridge again while he waits for me to finish scouting. Immediately after finishing my first deep crossing, and as Christian was starting to walk away, I found my first proper arrow head, ever. Previously, this creek had produced some rudimentary stone tools, one of which we even found earlier on this excursion. But they were nothing like what I had stumbled across here, sitting proud and jet black under a centimetre of water. I yelled back for Christian to come check it out - if there was any motivation for him to cross the creek and continue to scout with me, it would be this. Apparently though, he was probably a cat in his past life, because even this, found 5 minutes into this scouting run, was not convincing enough. Besides, it had started raining, so he still decided to poke around under the bridge. From this point on, I decided to make haste. I wasn't a fan of being in the rain either, but it certainly wasn't enough to stop me. I made my way down, crossing through water a few more times to avoid climbing the steep banks, and eventually came to some great looking exposures with many small, tight river bends in the creek that accumulated lots of gravel.By this time, the little cloud burst had cleared, and things were nice and cooled off. I took a video to show him for when I got back, but before that video I accidentally took a picture of the beginning of the exposures: On the walk back, I found a palm sized piece of chunkasaurus, and the mother of all Exogyra, with both parts of the shell still present, I imagine it's Exogyra ponderosa, but I know that there are some other big local Exogyra species as well, so I could be off. Scouting was successful, so I continued walking back in earnest. When I got back to the bridge, I quickly showed Christian the tid-bits I was returning with, and asked if he had any success. "Oh, you have no idea..." he replied. He then held out his hand, and we both just crumpled into another dimension. The hype was unreal. In his hand, and as the product of just thirty minutes, were two Ptychodus mortoni teeth, another echinoid, a piece of Enchodus(?) tooth, and a new shark tooth I couldn't quickly identify.It's shape is suggestive, so I'll be putting it in Fossil ID first, in the event that I'm wrong.They were small, but none of us cared - this was in AUSTIN! Three shark teeth in 30 minutes is absolutely bonkers! Furthermore, Neither of us had ever found a fish tooth, and that top shark tooth looked new for both of us. He was as stunned as I was. This was the same bridge gravel I gave minimal attention to all 6 times I've been here, and we both walked past it or spent time there already, before he really started looking as he sat around waiting for me in sheer boredom. Apparently, all he had done was assign himself to small (as in a few square feet) patch of gravel at a time, giving the smallest rocks the most undivided attention, picking up anything darkly colored. Needless to say, we both had new drive to stick around longer, now using this technique to hunt, but funnily enough (I guess I'm bad luck, lol) we both couldn't find anything else for about 40 minutes. That was until Christian then decided to uncover the next crazy trip maker of the day, a small Ptychodus mortoni still in matrix!! At this point I was reduced to a blubbering fool, and had to explain to Christian the gravity of his find. Now more than ever I had a fire under me to at least pull one shark tooth from this spot today. After another 10 minutes, my hard work was rewarded! ......with one of the tiniest shark teeth I've ever seen Some seconds after taking this picture, I noticed an echinoid just to my right, and plop! There went the tooth. I couldn't find the tiny tooth again, but it was alright, because it's sacrifice made for a sweet consolation prize Some minutes later, while I was standing up, I saw yet another echinoid, but this one was different to the others... and what a great little sea urchin it ended up being. It still had some texture on it, and despite probably being too water rolled to suite the taste of an echinoid aficionado, it was more than enough for me, as this was the first echinoid I've ever found with it's little bumps preserved. (spot the echinoid) My last find here I almost missed - it was an ammonite chunk of a species I didn't recognize. The chunk is incredibly water rolled, but still note worthy because of those distinct suture lines that I'm not used to seeing. So, while we walked away with no bison material, we at least had new perspective on on old spots, and I'm sure this place will produce many more fossils and memories in the future. Entry Actions

I've had quite the busy weekend..Saturday I returned from a two week trip to Ohio, and today I started the first day of the new semester. Due to the upcoming school schedule and two weeks without a hunt, I made sure that Sunday would be a day for a thorough, long hunt. One nice bit about being away for so long was that I had lots of time to think about new localities. There was about a three day stretch where I spent multiple hours of each day researching and investigating. I've been juggling my focus between Cretaceous to Pleistocene stuff, and after a while I settled on a possible spot (which was very close to my usual stomping grounds actually) that seemed it could offer the best of both. The search: I was amazed by how inaccessible this place ended up being- the plan was to park just under a mile down trail and split off into the thicket to reach a creek. Needless to say the plan failed - the thicket was completely impenetrable, until I found a tiny game trail a little further up. I blundered my way through until I came to the top of a vertical exposure that I had to maneuver (tumble) down , to get to another game trail that ran lengthwise along the bank. This continued for an additional 20 minutes, and my rock hammer became more of a grappling hook, but I finally made it to the water, scratched up and filthy. I took a shade break at the bottom of one of these exposures, and made my first keeper find - a beautiful coral of some variety tucked into the bottom of the cliff. (Above- my backpack at the shade spot under one of the exposures) (Above: First find! A detailed coral) Further downstream, I found an exposure of bright blue shale - it was an odd sight, and unfortunately the photo doesn't show it's brilliant hue at all Nearby, there was a pretty piece of iron pyrite embedded in shale, worth making it into the collection bag It was a nice feeling to hunt in a spot where I'm almost positive no one else explores. The location was so secluded and difficult to reach that it seemed very unlikely those rocks had even seen a person in years. After those banks turned up dry, I Indiana Jones'd my way up the exposure I came down from to try and find another access point further upstream... and I did! The approach this time was much easier, as this game trail seemed to be quite active. This was where things started heating up. I apparently had reached the end of the natural area, because in the distance I saw an apartment complex that was backed up to the creek. Several kids were playing in it over there. I turned away and immediately had that strange, powerful intuition that "there are things here somewhere" Indeed, after 5 minutes, in a corner that was riddled with rusty bullets for some reason, I saw a brown strange fossilized tooth I've never seen before. Below is the insitu I was hyped! It had beautiful colors and was still positioned in a piece of the jaw! It looked so odd that I assumed it was mammal, optimistically a carnivore. I couldn't be more wrong though - after some head scratching on the Fossil ID section, and the intellectual prowess of @Al Dente, it turned out that the tooth is cretaceous - from the large bony fish Hadrodus hewletti . I had never even heard of it (which, let's be honest, isn't saying much), but some of the experienced locals and other hunters hadn't either. In addition, the only other reference I could find to Hadrodus hewletti (from a google search) was on a single speciman discovered in the Mooreville chalk of Green County, Alabama in 1979 - the same speciman used to ID this tooth in the first place. So, I guess that makes this find pretty rare! I hope so, especially if it could even be of scientific interest. I made my way up, poked around a bit, and decided to to head back to the precise spot where I found the tooth again. At this time I still thought it was mammal, so I was keen to inspect the exposure high above in case there was more. There wasn't, but low and behold, in the same corner, a great looking Scapanorynchus was staring out at me. Even on it's own, a great shark tooth like that, especially from Austin, where they can be notoriously elusive, is a trip maker. Below is the insitu The day was coming to a close. I had spent about 6 hours trekking and exploring this new area, in Texas afternoon heat, and it made a fantastic adventure for the last day of summer holidays

Holiday weekend visit to NSR.

I found this in-situ in the Ozan formation and I can't figure out what it might be. I thought the concentric circles might point to a highly worn gastropod. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks!

I found this a while back amidst the red-zone in the Ozan. I'm not sure whether to label it as Globidens sp. or Brachychampsa sp. I'm leaning towards Globidens sp. but would like to know what y'all thought. @JohnJ Apologies in advance about the scale switching back and forth got distracted whilst photographing. Top view (scale in mm): What looks like feeding wear on the (lingual?) side (scale in inches): Feeding wear (within red indicator line) labial? side: Basal: Thanks in advance, - James

Hi Everyone, I’ve been living down in Texas with my family instead of my usual location in Missouri, and had a free day to go to the North Sulfur River (NSR). I had no idea my family lived so close to such a fun location to fossil hunt. I had a great time and have been trying to find the identity of a few of the fossils I found. I know identification posts are generally individually done, but since they were all found at the same location I decided to group them into one post. Hope that's not too against forum rules. Anyway, I’d love y'alls thoughts on what they might be! All the following were found in the North Sulfur River – Ozan formation. Number 1: This seems to me to be a jaw bone, but beyond that I'm unsure. Two possible growth teeth. What do you think? Number two: Are these bacculites end pieces? Number 3: I saw in another post these were identified as mammoth enamel. Think that is what they are or just something geological? I have a few more I'll include in a following post...

I found this tooth down in the North Sulphur River, Texas. I need verification of the ID on this one. Any ideas? Thank you in advance!!

So I have not posted in quite some time as I mostly do the Facebook updates because it is so easy to deal with the photos, but I thought I should get this one in now that I think it is over. I went on a hunt around the middle of January that turned out pretty well. I had walked a good ways and had found nothing which can quickly put me in a bad funk, but I finally came across a mosasaur vert encrusted in matrix, so my disposition changed a little. Always nice to find something to get rid of the skunk (sorry, fishing term). Not too far from the exit point, I just happened to glance across and my eye settled directly on a mosasaur tooth socket. I knew exactly what it was when I spotted it from over 15 feet away. I went straight away to collect what was a small section of jaw with a couple of broken off teeth (pretty typical of the NSR). When I reached down to pick it up, I realized that there was another piece of the jaw and that it would connect with the piece I was retrieving. Score! Now a nice 6 or 8 inches of jaw would look better all glued up, but then I gained a little more focus and realized that what I thought were rocks, were the edges of more bones, and more important was that the fact that the other bones were in the shale and not sitting on top! I gathered myself and beat away the excitement as I knew that I had just found the resting place of a mosasaur. It was getting dark and there was rain in the forecast, so I figured that I would pull out the few pieces that would get washed away. When I went for the first vert, I had totally missed that there was a visible tooth half way in the matrix. I scratched a couple of times near there and that is when it hit me! That jaw bone was going into the ground and there should be more of it! I have a long story about a hike out as I was not prepared for such that I will spare you from, but I had finally found some jaws with teeth whether I would destroy them getting out of there or not. There is more to this story, but I wanted to at least share what got me so excited and the reason I spend hours wandering around in the middle of nowhere.

Hi, Assuming this is a mosasaur tooth. I found it on the North Sulphur River. I haven’t seen a mos tooth with such a wicked curve so it had me wondering if it might belong to something else. Thanks!

Hello all! Happy Georgious December! (almost 80 today!) Anyway, I got a rare day away the day after Thanksgiving and took my oldest back to the Ladonia Fossil Park on the North Sulphur River. We normally hunt upstream of the 2990 bridge, but thought we'd slow the pace down and get into the gravel. We knew we hadn't had any recent rains to clear out all the shale clasts that have filled the river bottom for the last several months. While much of the "Mush" has either dried and crumbled, or washed away, there is still a lot of it covering the ground. We found very few actual gravel deposits around the park except where exposed by hundreds of boot prints. We did find a few various shark teeth, a broken mosasaur tooth fragment, some Mastodon tooth enamel, - the normal finds around there. We noticed a family leaving and they had been digging around the bank where the gray clay/silt turns to a tan color - well above the Red Phosphate layer. One piece they had dislodged looked interesting and as we moved it, it broke open to reveal the fossil below. I've found fragments of this before upstream of the 2990 bridge, but never this much of it. I got a couple of pics right away, since this material starts to dry, shrink, and crack pretty quickly. We then wrapped each in plastic and soft cotton to transport back. However, the side of the fossil with the shell turned to dust and disintegrated. The shell is paper thin (like some of the larger white baculite shells) and is only the surface shown (meaning it doesn't curve around in the matrix and finish on another side. It's just this surface. One side has raised bumps and the other pentagonal depressions in the cast. First glance is the shape of a paddle (like turtle), but a) it's a shell coating - and b.) it has no bones. It's purely shell. It doesn't extend further into the matrix block. I'm good on most things Sulphur River, but this has been a mystery every time I've found it. Thoughts? Texas, North Sulphur River Ladonia Fossil Park Ozan Formation

I have had this fossil from the Ozan formation (upper cretaceous) found in Mesquite, Texas for a while. It has always just been an unidentified bone piece to me, but a fossil buddy said that I should show it around. He felt that it had some features similar to a skull piece. Note the symmetrical holes/indentions noted by the arrows. Any ideas as to what it could be? The scale marks are 1mm, so it is approximately 0.5" by 0.75". Thanks

Another trip to north sulphur river and few more mysteries....Thanks in advance. 1. fish vert? 2. fish vert? (concave on both sides) 3. Stratodus jaw fragment? (1 1/4 inch) 4. coprolite or geo? 5. mystery bone with what appears to be tooth marks?

Went to North Sulphur River at Ladonia TX yesterday, found couple fossils need help ID. Thanks in advance. Got chased by flush flood twice. When fossil hunting after heavy rain please be extra careful. 1. mosasaur bone? not sure if there is enough to tell more. 2. claw? 3. fish tooth? 4. mosasaur bone? size: 1 1/2 in. x 1 in. 5. tooth maybe? 6. fish tooth? one side is more round, the other side is close to flat. 7. fish tooth? sharp edges on both side. 8. some kind of clam?