Search the Community

This group of ground sloth claws are all personal river finds from Nebraska.

Hello! I'm from Humboldt County California. I've been collecting fossils my whole life. I mainly find invertebrate fossils in my area. Most of the species are extant because my rocks are only about 2 - 3.5 million years old. Here are some picture from my most recent trip. A Giant pacific Sea Scallop, assorted snails, and what I believe to be part of a barnacle just left of the penny in the last photo.

Hey everyone! Here is the new look of the Cave Lion! With smaller mane as u see. This is something new for me,to draw animal in the other position.Also, at the end of the paper is a bison skull, example of his diet. Enjoy Darko

This comes from Centerville Beach, Humboldt County California. I've found alot bivalves and snails in the cliffs where I found this. Another Formation 5 miles away has had reports of turtles, shark and marine mammal teeth and even agatized whale bones. I'm sorry about the quality of the pictures. I do not currently have a very nice camera. Its sticks to my tongue and has a rough porous surface. The divet on the right side of the bone in the first picture is a place where is has apparently broken.

Hey guys. In NZ we have quite a few volcanoes, and luckily for me living in christchurch, the most recent eruption in the south island was about 20 mya. On the "vanished world" trail, there is a preserved basaltic volcanic dyke/sill that has been injected into the strata beneath an ancient lagoon. While I'm aware that these magmatic intrusions don't break the surface, there is a broad fossil horizon not far from the top most termination of the sill, with beautiful small spirulla (?) (Some kind of elongate fossil snail) preserved in the rock. I was wondering, that as I mentioned before that this fossil horizon is not too far from the intrusion, just how much heat or mineral replacement does it take for igneous rocks the the associated hydrothermal minerals to completely destroy/deform/disfigure fossils in these kinds of geologic environments? I have included a rough sketch. Like all great geologic exposures, it occurs at a public road cutting, to provide context.

Zdravo svima! "Hello everyone!" Again with Ice Age animals! Now with my favorite animal, the Cave Hyena or Crocuta crocuta spelaea.I've done it in my way,also using the spots of one cave painting where Cave Hyena has spots going from the head to the middle of the stomach.And,yes the ear has been bitten by other predator and now scar is visible.I hope u Will like this one Kind regards, Darko

Hi Everyone, I recently decided to start preserving all of my pleistocene fossils and feel that Butvar-76 would be the best option. My problem is I can't find it anywhere. I contacted the Florida Paleontological Society and they said they don't carry it anymore. They recommended I either use Duco Cement in acetone or to look on the Museum Service Corporation website. On the Museum Service Corporation website it says that Butvar-76 has been discontinued, but they have an equivalent called B08SY Resin. Here's what they have listed: Butvar Resins White, free flowing powders. Generally soluble in alcohols, acetone and aromatic hydrocarbons. Forms films similar to polyvinyl acetate and is suggested as picture varnishes. Widely used to waterproof textiles. The films resist degradation by sunlight and heat. Average molecular weight is 30-34,000. Butvar B-76 has been discontinued. B08SY Resin is considered an equivalent resin to Butvar B-76, from a different supplier. It utilizes the same Polyvinyl Butyral resin as Butvar B-76. B08SY resin has the same solubility as Butvar B-76, but has a smaller grain size. Contact Museum Services Corporation for additional information, or to acquire a sample for testing purposes. F4503-001 B08SY 1 kilogram $34.00 F4504-001 B-79 1 kilogram $31.09 F4505-001 B-90 1 kilogram $25.08 F4501-001 B-98 1 kilogram $46.12 Has anyone bought B08SY or know where I can still get Butvar-76? If not, are there any consolidants that you would recommend using instead?

Hunting buddy asked of I could get this tooth Identified. TFF my only chance. Florida Peace River. The curved root seems rare. Maybe an incisor. I have not seen this previously but such a small fossil would easily be missed. Thank for any comments and suggested IDs. Length = 35 mm

Complete prehistoric buffalo skull found in Cambridgeshire quarry by Jamie from Fossils Galore in March By Sarah Cliss Fenland Citizen, January 16, 2019 https://www.fenlandcitizen.co.uk/news/complete-prehistoric-buffalo-skull-found-in-cambridgeshire-quarry-by-jamie-from-fossils-galore-in-march-9059305/ Yours, Paul H.

I recently aquired these bones in a creek off the Peace River. I found it along with some other Pleistocene era things. Does anyone know what animal this belongs to or what type of bone it is? I can't find anything like it.

A friend and I headed out on the caloosahatchee this morning. We went to our favorite location hoping to find some more Lions Paw's. The start of the day was wonderful. We got on the river near Alva just as Dawn was beginning to break. There had been a controlled burn yesterday so the sky was lit up orange and gold and beautiful. The river was medium height. But there was no wind and early in the morning the big Yachts don't create so many waves. We had it down to our favorite spot checking the walls along the river all the way down. On the way down I found a couple of pieces of antler although it's not shown in the photograph. As usual we found lots of pieces of turtle shell which I've been saving hoping to set into a concrete table top. They're so plentiful but I just thought they would be really cool. Has we got to our spot and started digging my friend had a couple of strombus fall out of the wall. That was followed by the only Lions Paul we found. We found a whole range of other things as you can see from the photograph my favorite is the vasum horridum. I have a large piece of antler or horn I can't identify. so i'll be posting that this week hoping someone can help. sorry for The lack of scale. these are in the tailgate of it truck

I found this today along with a full bison skeleton in Collin County Texas north of Dallas. It is a Pleistocene lower mandible of a mammal, but I’m not sure what kind. Any thoughts? It is partially mineralized. More so than my bison. Any help would be appreciated.

It was a long day, but a good one. I took my kids to 2 museums of sorts today. I drove the 2 hours down to the Waco mammoth site, which is now a National Monument as of 2015. It was cool to see and reasonably nice. It was very clean and neat, maybe just a bit too much so since it is supposed to be an active dig site. They have a very small visitors center combo gift shop, maybe 10 people could be in there at once. There are guided tours maybe every 30 min or so. Our guide was a National Park ranger in uniform. The was one other in uniform and a third not in uniform, who could have been a student. There is a nice paved path through lightly wooded Texas scrub as I call it. The path is good for the handicapped or stroller toting parent. They had little booklets for the junior ranger sorts with pics of plants and other life that may be found along the way, with coloring pages and facts about mammoths. Dogs were allowed on a leash. Just a few yards down the path is a 250 year old Texas live oak tree. I was actually a bit on the disappointed side with it. Part of that is because I’ve been to the South Dakota mammoth site, which is well developed. Those are wooly mammoths though, not the Columbian mammoths we have in Texas, which are considerably larger. The other part that probably had something to do with me being a bit disappointed was that I had expectations of seeing excavated mammoths on display. The dig site has been open and running for over 40 yrs. The initial discovery was made in 1978 by two teens out looking for arrowheads. 23 mammoths were excavated between 1978 to 1997. Per the website "Between 1978 and 1990, the fossil remains of 16 Columbian mammoths were discovered. Their efforts uncovered a nursery herd that appears to have died together in a single natural event. Between 1990 and 1997, six additional mammoths were excavated, including a large male (bull). Crews also uncovered the remains of a Western camel (Camelops hesternus), dwarf antelope, American alligator, giant tortoise, and the tooth of a juvenile saber-toothed cat (Smilodon sp.), which was found next to an unidentified animal." So I had the expectation that at least one of the mammoths would be mounted and on display. I believe many of the mammoths are complete. Our guide, a National Park ranger was very new and didn’t know much. Her answer to where are the bones of the 23+ was “They’re in plaster casts at Baylor.” You’d think after all that time and the big paleontology program they have at Baylor something would have been prepped and put on display by now. This is one of the females that is in the process of excavation, but I have a feeling she has been in the process of excavation since she is one of the 23 and the website says the other 6 were discovered by 1997. So, it seems it is not really an active dig site. You can see her teeth there. Sorry the pic isn't that sharp. The lighting inside was very low. This is mammoth Q a male. Supposedly he died 15,000 years later than the female, but there is all of maybe 2.5 between them vertically and maybe 5 feet horizontally. There is a creek maybe 40 feet way, the Brazos River is less than a mile away and the North Fork Bosque River is on the property. Water moves dirt. I seriously doubt there was 15,000 years between 2.5 feet of dirt in a flood plane, which it is in a flood zone. The mammoth bones are not fully mineralized. They are bone and kind of the consistency of chalk and therefore fairly fragile. I think they said this one would have been 14 feet maybe 7 inches tall. He was an average size male. The males are much bigger than the females. This is Q from the other end. Two females are to the right. Parts of 2 males are in front of him. Not all of them are in the pic. The column in the middle there is the reference column. The top of which is supposedly ground level. So it does not seem the male was that deep down in the dirt. The brakes in the ribs and the crushed skull are believed to have happened at the time of his death. There is a broken rib that healed while the mammoth was still living. That break is circled in red. They believe it was most likely due to a fight between bull mammoths where another male's tusks broke the rib which likely resulted in an infection, which healed. The skull is in the foreground. You can see it is crushed in. These are parts of the 2 other male mammoths. The two leg bones together are believed to be one of the individuals. That is all that has been excavated of him from what I gathered, but the guide said those two bones had been accounted for among the other 22 mammoths. This is another female. She is actually in a natural position and they say that she laid like this, because she knew she was not well or was going to die. Sorry for the quality of the pic. But this is a camel skeleton. The skull is in a plaster cast in the bottom kind of center. Signs say as much as I can. I'll post a bit more in the next post.

Good evening, I explore sites around Travis county here in Texas and stumbled upon these three around Lake Travis area. Been having a hard time with identifying them, found inside a rockshelter nearly 40 foot back from entrance on surface

With the Peace river a bit too high to fossil hunt, I have been heading to some of my other favorite jaunts...there is a little stream ( only 2 feet wide) that meanders through Lee County just a little north of the Caloosahatchee - it probably feeds into another larger creek, though I haven't bothered finding it ...at any rate, with permission, I have hunted it for a few years now. This however is the first interesting coral head I found there. It is like iron...i know the coloration is from exposure, but the coral itself is extremely hard...those top edges are sharp like kiives. It seems to be part of a larger globular coral, as the inside/bottom has that tell tale curvature to it. I have included a closeup of the septa on the bottom, but on the top they are so deep as to not be seen...just that honeycomb effect. is that because the septa are softer and worn out, or were they naturally recessive in this type of coral...and of course, can someone tell me what it is.

Laos / Cave fossils shed light on the world of 80,000 years ago By: Uffe Wilken, Sotheast Asia Globe, January 10, 2019 https://sea-globe.com/lao-cave-fossils/ Tam Pa Ling Cave - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tam_Pa_Ling_Cave A couple of papers: Pierret, A., Zeitoun, V. and Forestier, H., 2012. Irreconcilable differences between stratigraphy and direct dating cast doubts upon the status of Tam Pa Ling fossil. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(51), pp.E3523-E3523. https://www.pnas.org/content/109/51/E3523.short Shackelford, L., Demeter, F., Westaway, K., Duringer, P., Ponche, J.L., Sayavongkhamdy, T., Zhao, J.X., Barnes, L., Boyon, M., Sichanthongtip, P. and Sénégas, F., 2018. Additional evidence for early modern human morphological diversity in Southeast Asia at Tam Pa Ling, Laos. Quaternary International, 466, pp.93-106. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/314164578_Additional_evidence_for_early_modern_human_morphological_diversity_in_Southeast_Asia_at_Tam_Pa_Ling_Laos https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320628876_Early_Modern_Humans_from_Tam_Pa_Ling_Laos_Fossil_Review_and_Perspectives https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Fabrice_Demeter Yours, Paul H.

Yukon paleontologist’s fossils are pure gold: Grant Zazula will be giving the 19th annual Dr. John Rae Lecture in Hamilton, focusing on the amazing lode of fossils and ancient DNA in the Yukon, and its connection with the hunt for gold. by Jeff Mahoney, The Hamilton Spectator https://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/9117772-yukon-paleontologist-s-fossils-are-pure-gold/ Paul H.

https://phys.org/news/2019-01-fossil-prehistoric-deer-argentina.html

Hi everyone, I'm new to the forum and figured this would be a good first post. I was wading through Peace River and found a couple items that I need help identifying. The first I'm guessing is a tooth or nail. I can't find it anywhere in my Florida vertebrates book. It has a circle in the middle, which may help the identification process, as I have never seen this before. The second item is what I believe to be a piece of Mastodon tooth. There appears to be a crystal grey emamel on the tip of what I think is the root. Any help would be greatly appreciated. .

Rockaway Beach, actually within New York City, finally yielded its first vertebrate fossils to me today: a small, beat up, weathered chunk of whale bone, and this wonderful, large bony fish vertebra. It only took 11 years of collecting... Happy New Year all and may 2019 be full of treasures from the deep past!