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Below is an unidentified phytosaur tooth from the Norian of the Chinle Formation which I've been struggling to identify to a genus or species level. Thanks in advance for any proposed ID's Othniel

Hi again Folks, the King of the Worn-Down Shark Teeth here; ’Found this among the shark teeth today and I decided to ask the Experts before throwing it away.😀 Measurement in centimeters. Thanks.

Shown below is a tooth, identified by the seller as that of a Squalicorax pristodontus, from the Demopolis Chalk. However, given the shape of the tooth, I wondered whether it could have instead come from a Squalicorax kaupi. I've tried altering the saturation and contrast on the image to make the tooth clearer, but I fear it hasn't done much. Come to think of it I should probably also have included a scale and an image of the other side of the tooth. The tooth is 1.2 centimetres wide and 1.3 centimetres tall. Should an image of the other side of the tooth prove necessary, I'll upload one. Thanks in advance for any suggestions Othniel

Trying to figure out what this is?

Hello wanting to get help with this, I’m gonna try and get good pics. It’s about two and half inches and found in quartzite Nevada. Thank you

I was doing some landscape work today and found these hoof like impressions in a few pieces of flagstone. I believe it to be sandstone. And I know for sure it’s from Oklahoma, U.S.A. Any thoughts?

Hey all, I'm a newbie and would like to ask if someone here on this forum will please assist me in I.D.ing my fossil finds 😊 I've done some research but I'm still learning. I'll post a few different fossils here but with list them by # (please refer to the # when responding). Specifics on fossil types would be great. Any help is greatly appreciated. Firstly, I apologize that I didn't have a ruler when I snapped the pics. I'll do my best to include measurements listed with the pics below. All Fossils were found in North Attleborough, Massachusetts, Wamsutta Formation, Exposure w/ red shale. Thanks in advance! 😉 #1 - Thick flat red shale rock, measures about 6 inches high x 5 inches wide with what appears to be FAINT impressions of ferns throughout as well what looks like a round shaped leaf in the bottom right corner. Very hard to photograph since they're hard to see! What am I looking at here? #2 - Interesting find between split shale layer. Rock Measures about 3 inches long. 1 side is negative impression, other is positive. It's very interesting, but what is it?! #3 - This piece of red shale measures about 3 inches long and has bumps all over it. Bark? Curious what someone thinks made this impression. #4 - Small red shale fossil measures 1 inch wide. Not sure if it's a type of grass fossil. #5 - Another tiny piece of red shale. Measures 1 inch long. Another plant?

I went down to westmoreland state park today, and I found these 4 these, the smallest one looks like a small bull shark tooth and the other 2 look like some hammerhead. The biggest one is something I’ve never seen before. It is still serrated and is sharp, I found it on fossil beach and the other 3 on the main beach. Please help as I don’t think I am right. Thank you!

Was doing some rock hounding in my yard came across unusual petrified stones rocks possibly organs from animals guessing around 10,000 years or older. would appreciate help on what these might be.

I don’t know much about fossils and I would like to know if these are. I’m not sure if I’m doing this right either, I apologize in advanced.

Hi Everybody! I'm trying to hunt down some sites for fern fossils in Northeast Pennsylvania. I have zoned in on Lackawanna county & small areas around Carbondale. I have found a shale pit area that I am unsure if it is public or private property. I'm having a very difficult time discerning whether or not the land is public or private. Any tips or suggestions on where to look? Has anyone had success with public hunting in the area?

Hello, my name is Marco and I am new to this page. I was interested in entering because 2 years ago my family and I bought a piece of land and we are building our house, and when digging for construction we found a lot of stone almost 3 feet deep, and in those stones we found many ammonites, some as big as a foot. and a half and other small ones, I will upload photos very soon, I thought they were not so important and for more than a year I used them as a path to step on. Here’s one of them but i will post more clear pictures later.

Hello! My name is Doug and I'm from South Central Pennsylvania. I'm just about to turn 29 and am really finding out what is important to me in life. I am an aspiring hobby paleontologist! I spend way too many hours researching and digesting fossil related content then I'd care to admit, but I'm sure that's why were all here! I'm often joined by my girlfriend Lauren who shares the same love for treasure and exploration. We just got back from our first ever day trip to Big Brook Preserve in New Jersey for some Cretaceous hunting goodness. See the attachments for the good stuff! The trip maker for me was a shark tooth still preserved in the matrix and an unidentified bone (going to make an ID post! Or if anyone knows please let me know in here or private message (: ). Found my first shark vert as well! My professional career is a Senior GIS Analyst (Geographic Information Systems). Basically, I make computer maps and analyze data. Recently i realized that i could combine my love for both and create some very cool resources to track my history and findings. I use this knowledge and software to log all of my findings, hunting sites, and research. Besides Fossil hunting and GIS, i am also a professional cosplayer. I have a wide variety of interests it seems! I am ecstatic to be a part of such a cool and knowledgeable community. I can't wait to hear from ya'll and learn as much as i can! - Doug filtered-60BE94DC-70F9-4A90-8A40-27EF3E96E049.MP4

Greetings! First post, so please do let me know if I'm not following any formatting conventions etc. correctly. My family recently went on a fossil hunt with Fossil Recovery Exploration on the Peace River in Arcadia, Florida. We had a great time with our guide, Sean; he was super patient, hard-working, friendly and knowledgeable. We got upgraded to an air-boat ride due to weather conditions and because of some other factors ended up being out on the water for almost 5 hours! My four year-old daughter was a trooper, but by the end when it was time for identification she was d.o.n.e. Sean went through with us quickly and got rid of the rocks we had mixed in the bucket, but didn't have time to closely identify every single object, particularly the more obscure pieces. So, I'm posting here in the hope that I can get some help in identifying my "TBD pile"! I have an iPhone 10, so did my best with the photos. My husband has a macro lens on his good camera, so can try that if some photos are too unclear. I will give my thoughts based on what else we found and identified, some guide sheets I've looked at, and what I've come across trawling through posts on the forum. 1: base of ice age deer antler (due to the three rounded protrusions in a line) 2.1-2.8: Shells? I found some whole bivalves that were definitely shells (confirmed by guide), but these look a bit different, especially given that the underside/inside isn't concave as I would expect a shell to be. Could they be bony fish parts? 3.1: toe bone (due to the 'pinched' part at the top)? 3.2-3.3: no idea 3.4: ear bone (due to the swirls visible in picture 3B)? 4.1-4.2: newer bone? these pieces are more of an amber-ish colour and 4.1 is very brittle. 4.3: large ray mouth plate (due to pronounced ridges)? But in photo 4D there is clearly spongy bone...so I don't know what impact that has on whether or not it's a ray mouth plate. 4.4: bony fish vertebra (due to circular shape visible in picture 4C)? 5: bony fish skin (due to many little bumps; I saw a much large piece with similar bumps that had been identified, but not sure if it's possible to tell from as small a piece as I have) 6.1: vertebra (due to inverted heart shaped noted in photo 6E) 6.2-6.3: broken teeth with root (they don't have the same enamel layers that I see on my confirmed horse/camelid/mastodon-mammoth teeth, though) 7.1-7.2: rocks that our guide missed? 7.2 has a a very smooth curve, though; maybe something man-made? 7.3: snail/worm trace? Thank you for reading my post!

Saw this fishing yesterday. It’s inset in a large boulder laid down as erosion control at the lower end of a dam spillway. I’m very tempted to call it a turtle shell but I have no idea what it is. It’s about 8-9” across and 3-4” deep.

Hi everyone, this is a fish I found a few years ago in Santa Barbara. If anyone could help with ID, or provide any resources on fossils in the area it would be greatly appreciated. The fossil is in very soft shale, measures just over 3 inches head to tail, had lots of bivalve and gastropod fossils nearby. I can provide additional pics/info if necessary. Thanks!

Hello! We found this in a river bed in south Central Wisconsin. What do you think it might be? Some of us think it is a mushroom and something maybe a seashell. Thank you!

What appears to be a fossil canine tooth from Virginia, USA. out of a layer that typically produces marine fossils from the late Oligocene-early Miocene. It measures ~2.5” from tip of crown to the base of the root, has some sort of cementum or ossification at the base of the root. The enamel is smooth with the presence of a carina on both cutting edges. As you can see, there is very little wear to the tooth, which makes me wonder if it was a juvenile or is that indicative of the type of prey it ate. I initially thought it had to be a whale/odontocete tooth, but the smooth enamel with the presence of the carina has me second guessing that ID. Could it be from a pinniped? Large cat? Something else? This one has me stumped. Any thoughts are appreciated.

I found this tooth a while back on a dredge system in georgia. I was wondering on its ID since im not too familiar with the area.

Looking at the rock under a microscope has been kind of interesting, though I can’t focus on much. Maybe I need different equipment as my microscope is made for flat slides and not rocks a half an inch higher than I can magnify with it. So I’m going to modify to make it work for what I want. I can see what looks like a crystallized fiber or hair. Still new at this but I am captivated. Could anyone that has seen this before, shed some light/

Hello everyone! It's been awhile since I've had a chance to give a fossil hunting update, the Holidays took over in quite a hurry, and coupled together with taking on some new responsibilities, the shorter days, cooler weather and a scramble to get the end of the year work done, it was quite difficult to get everything organized! I'm hoping to be more efficient with my cleaning and preparation this year, and though I have some life hurdles to overcome I think this year could be even better than last one with my fossil hobbies. I'm hoping to add more additions to my echinoid album, and I'd like to make some albums for some of my other fossils sometime this year. Not long after my last trip to the Waccamaw site I once again found myself out there collecting more specimens. I went with a slightly different group for the weekend, where we doubled up and went to the ever popular Holden Beach to look for some more Cretaceous goodies. And in addition, I did get to check out a different Waccamaw site at a different time as well, which had slightly different specimens, and an array of unusual color preservation. I think it was another successful month, and I found a lot of really cool specimens. I even got an opportunity to obtain some neat fossils from a fellow collector and friend in the midst of everything, and I'd like to include some of that briefly as well. While we were wrapping up for the weekend, I ended up trading him some of my Virginian Ecphora shells for some really cool Triassic plant specimens from the Pekin Formation, as well as some grey and black shales from the Cumnock Formation. It's a positive update to my quest to obtain local Triassic fossils I can take on the road to display, and with these acquisitions I was able to do just that recently! I feel like they get overlooked at times, but there are some really cool fossils from the Triassic Basins. I did manage to acquire some other cool specimens as well, but I'll save them for the mailbox scores thread. Here are some of those plant specimens and shales. Most are hard to identify, but there are some partial Otozamites fronds. The shales were a gamble, and I ultimately did end up splitting some, while retaining the last two intact, as they contained visible coal, and are somewhat significant to my home area's history in regards to the Cumnock Formation and all the historical coal mining that occurred. However, I did manage to find this little guy in one shale. I made a post a while back, and my current idea is that it's some form of Metoposaurus tooth. It's badly fragmented, though I have been offered by a friend to try and repair it, which I may take him up on. Although these second hand fossils were greatly appreciated and will serve well as display items, I also attempted to steak out a potential Triassic site right down the road earlier this week! Unfortunately, though it did indeed have Triassic geology, it was a conglomerate of Sanford Formation with a small bit of Pekin Formation mixed in, which did not immediately appear to contain much, at least on the surface. The old Triassic report mentioned it was mostly a mixture, so I wasn't too disappointed; it was still fun to check out a new area. In addition to the hunt for a fossil site, the area was also home to a small copper mine that last operated in the very early 20th century. I had not been exploring there since I was a boy over 20 years ago, so it was interesting to check out again! I ended up collecting some malachite from the spoil piles before heading home, so I at least found a few things to keep on that trip. I'm really grateful the landowner was kind enough to let me check it out. I hope to return there again sometime during lighter hours to look for some copper ore fragments as well. Now, onto the actual fossil tips! I'll start with Holden, as I have less to show off from there. It was fairly tame as far as crowds go, since the Holidays were kicking into gear. Despite a single day to collect, I think I did alright! I made a new friend during that part of the trip, and I was able to collect some nice modern mollusk shells as well, some of which could be used to compare to my Waccamaw finds. I did find an interesting sand dollar of some variety embedded in a stone, but I dropped it in the rapidly rising tide as I was collecting another specimen, so I ended up losing sight of it. To start, these are two Glycymeris americana valves, one from Holden, and the other from the Waccamaw site, as a comparison. These are some of the Hardouinia mortonis echinoids I found that day. I had many more, but it was hard to get them all pictured! On the topic of those echinoids, I found a few really good pathological specimens that day! This is the more extreme of them, with the side being somewhat compressed into the part, and the peristome off axis and off center. I'm not sure if this is something genetic, or if this was evidence of some kind of repaired biologic damage. It's probably my most pathological specimen to date. This was another specimen with similarly placed deformities, but much less extreme. And this one was a really unusual one, with an "elongated" periproct, giving it a more heavily sloped appearance compared to the standard ones. Moving on, this was probably my favorite find from the Holden part of the trip. This is a partial Anomoeodus phaseolus mouth plate and jawbone, which is a fairly uncommon find. I had previously found two teeth attached together, but this one is by far my best one yet. I found some individual "teeth" from these reworked into the Waccamaw formation site as well, but they were very small. I also found a few things I had not found myself since 2022, namely a nice, whole Mosasaur tooth, and a fragment of a Sphenodiscus lobatus ammonite. I found a few shark teeth, but I was honestly so focused on other finds I didn't emphasize looking for them as much as I normally would. I gave a few that I picked up to my new friend I made while I was hunting, as well as a small mosasaur tooth. This is an Enchodus jaw fragment with the base of a tooth I found, this might be the largest jaw fragment I found to date. I haven't found a tooth and jaw fragment attached together yet, but I'll keep looking! A turtle shell fragment I found out there. This is one of the more defined ones I've found, and appears to be from the edge of the shell. This was a cool steinkern I found, from what appears to be a Naticidae snail. This one is a bit heftier than ones I've found previously, and it almost seems to have some of the innermost shell preserved on one section, but this could be some other material. This is one Exogyra costata I found on the beach. I did pick up a number of them, but there weren't as many good specimens this trip for some reason. I took a couple of pictures of the same shell under UV light as well. And the last of my notable finds, this is a Striaticostatum harbisoni, a Peedee Formation Wentletrap Snail that was preserved due to recrystalization! Next to it is a steinkern of another one, which is usually all that is preserved; this is the first one I've found like this. It's broken toward the base, but it lets people see the tiny crystals inside the shell that grew during the process. I also found a second partial one, but it's in a much more worn condition. Now, onto the Waccamaw site finds! This site is slowly growing on me, as well as a greater appreciation for mollusks. It's becoming one of my favorite sites to visit. I've been utilizing a out a book that was published just last year titled Photographic Atlas of Waccamaw Formation Mollusca to identify my finds. It's a great resource for identifying the various mollusks of the formation, of which there are over 1000 different varieties! I found so much this time that I had to cut back on sharing them, though I do hope to do an album on everything when I get time. Starting off, here are some of the paired Lirophora varicosa athleta, AKA Imperial Venus Clams, I found. Here are a couple of pathological valves I found, as well as a sponge damaged valve and a valve with an oddly placed gastropod drill hole. Here is an intact Chama macerophylla, also known as the Leafy Jewelbox Clam. It's less common than the Arcinella cornuta Spiny Jewelbox Clams from what I've noticed. This is a Neverita duplicata, also known as the Shark Eye Moon Snail with some particularly beautiful shell preservation. This is a Naticarius plicatella, an extinct moon snail with an interesting spiral groove pattern along the whorl. Although the aperature (opening) is broken, this is my largest specimen of this snail found at the site to date. Here are two paired bivalves, a Trachycardium emmonsi (Cockle Clam) and a species of Diplodon clam (Diplodonta acclinis?) A Crepidula fornicata, also known as the Fornicating Slipper Snail. This one was unusually thick and large compared to the ones I normally find, around 5.715 cm (2.25 inches) long. Another worn Crepidula fornicata with a couple of Septastrea marylandica coral colonies growing on it. There appears to have been a third between the two but it probably broke off when it was originally extracted from the earth. Two valves from two different Ostrea lawrencei oysters that have a lot of small coral colonies and singular corals. This one is interesting because they were both attached to a relatively small scallop valve, as seen by the impression on their hinges. A really cool Ostrea lawrencei that has a Septastrea marylandica colony over nearly the entire outer surface. I didn't realize that it was covered in coral until I washed it, as the amount of sand and dirt that covered it almost covered it completely! The uncovered inner surface was the only exposed part of the oyster when I collected it. A large oyster, Ostrea compressirostra, that was found paired in the Waccamaw site, a fairly rare find. Unfortunately, the upper valve had a lot of bore damage on one side, but it's still a cool, paired find nonetheless! A Pleuromeris decemcostata, a pretty cool, small species of clam. It almost has a beaded structure to its ribs. In addition, the same Pleuromeris decemcostata under UV light. It's hard to see in this picture, but some of the "beads" in the ribbing have a UV reaction, in a somewhat random order.The Waccamaw stuff has some decent UV reaction, but it's no where near the level of the Florida Pleistocene shells of a similar age. A very small intact Arcinella cornuta, also known as the Florida Spiny Jewelbox. This is the smallest intact one I've found yet, at around 1.9 cm (.75 inches) across. One of my favorite finds from the Waccamaw site part of the trip, a Pterorytis fluviana, a type of murex with very frilly spires. Usually the spires are broken down, but this one as fairly intact aside from a hole in the side! A Radiolucina waccamawensis, an extinct hatchet clam. It measures about 7.62 mm (.3 inches ). These are pretty interesting little bivalves with a neat crossed structure to them. Some Eupleura caudata, a small species of murex snail. These had some nice shell preservation as well! A Neoterebra dislocata (Eastern Auger Snail) on the right, and what I believe is a Calliostoma tuomeyi (Calliostoma Top Snail) on the left. The Calliostoma Top Snails, like the Cone Snails and the Murexes, seem to vary a good bit and have very subtle differences, which makes it hard for me to identify. Two different extinct Nassa Mud Snails (or Dog Whelks); a rare Ilyanassa porcina on the left, and a somewhat uncommon Ilyanassa scalaspira on the right. A bryozoan-encrusted gastropod shell. I'm wondering if this is a variety of Bryolith (or Plagurized Gastropod), or if it it is simply a colony that covered an empty shell; either way it's really cool. Two Waccamaw Formation Conasprella oniscus cone snails, with a UV light comparison showing the remnants of their color pattern. This pattern can be used to differentiate the different species found in the same place to some degree. Here's a cool Arcopsis adamsi, a type of Ark Clam with an interesting beaded sculpture instead of the coarse ribs of the more common species. Next, a case of miscellaneous micros: on the right are three Biflustra savartii, a species of "Erect Form" Bryozoans, on the bottom left is an interesting and unknown Archohelia coral branch, and the upper left is some unknown, extraordinarily fragile fossil of some sort. It was probably 30-40% larger before I tried moving it to this case; it had a fragility not unlike that of the ill-fated microfossil echinoid I found on the previous trip. Another little case containing an assemblage of various paired microfossil bivalves from the Waccamaw site. The beaked Nuculana acuta (Pointed Nut Clam) are probably my favorite of the micro-sized bivalves. Kalolophus gibbesii, a medium-sized clam related to the modern Kalolophus speciosus, also known as Gibb's Clam. I've found similar clams in Virginia, but this is the first one I found in the Waccamaw Site. An Aurinia obtusa, a type of Volute Snail. This is the most common species from the Waccamaw, I've been told the other two are exceptionally rare. This is also the first mostly whole one I've found in the site. Next is a large Mercenaria mercenaria valve, which I took pictures of to show the progression of cleaning it out for it's inner contents. About halfway through cleaning I discovered a partial Rhyncholampas sabistonensis echinoid, with part of the side plating and the entire oral surface. It's overall in poor condition, but serves as another good example of the rare things that can be found inside other shells. There were quite a number of other things as well, such as whole Lirophora varicosa athleta (Imperial Venus) Clams, barnacles, and more. However, a lot of stuff was attached with a tough sediment, which made extraction difficult. The last image in this series shows the contents found inside waiting to dry off. And the last thing I wanted to share from the site is a juvenile gastropod of uncertain identity I'm thinking it's likely a Pliculofusus sparrowi (A type of gastropod related to the Tulip and Spindle Snails), but also somewhat resembles a juvenile Scaphella precursor (A rare species of Volute). While that's all the Waccamaw stuff from the normal site, that's not all the Waccamaw Formation fossils I found last month! I had a chance to check out a different location of the formation at a different time, and while there were a lot of similar things, there were some things different about this other site as well. Oysters were much more common, I found a few species I hadn't seen before, some varieties of gastropod were larger, and there were a lot of really interesting mineralization colors as well. There were a lot of red, yellow and orange colored shells, likely from iron oxides in the soil. There were also some interesting blue-grey colored shells, which I'm not too sure of the process that made them this way. Some were comparable to the blue shells found in the Bone Valley area of Florida. Here's a really cool and large Anadara lienosa Ark Clam valve from the secondary Waccamaw site. This is the largest Ark Clam I've found from the formation yet. It has some of the unusual orange-yellow iron oxide coloration. Here's a paired Arcinella cornuta (Florida Spiny Jewelbox) from the other Waccamaw site. This one came apart while I was cleaning it but I've got the two halves paired together still. I found some other paired specimens but they had a lot of spines missing. A very big Mercenaria mercenaria (Hard Clam) valve that was in the portion that had the blue mineralization. The outer surface is heavily worn but it has a very dark grey-blue coloration to it. A very hefty and thick Glycymeris americana (American Bittersweet) that has buried in the sediments containing a lot of iron oxides, and has a very cool yellow, orange and red marbled coloration. Two Septastrea marylandica corals from the other Waccamaw site. Both have some yellow coloration, and one has splotches of red, all from the iron oxide present in the site. Here's a Crepidula fornicata (Fornicating Slipper Snail) and two Neverita duplicata (Shark Eye Moon Snails) with some pretty cool blue-gray coloration. The rightmost is an especially pretty dark grey-blue! Two worn Crepidula fornicata specimens (Fornicating Slipper Snails), with Septastrea marylandica coral colonies growing on them. They also both have bryozoan colonies and Polychaete worm tubes on them, as well as a lot of boring sponge damage; These were the home of a number of animals, even after their death. An unusual paired oyster from the other Waccamaw site. Due to the larger quantity of oysters in that site, and paired ones like this could be found in a much higher frequency. Here's what I believe might be a juvenile Triplofusus giganteus, also known as the Horse Conch. It's over 3.81 cm (1.5 inches) long. A somewhat rare Trigonostoma elizabethae, an unusual type of Nutmeg Snail. This came from the other Waccamaw site, but I did find a larger specimen at the primary site that I forgot to take a picture of before storing it away. This one has some of the blue-gray coloration. Two neat Ensis clams, also known as Razor Clams, from the secondary Waccamaw site. They're usually broken like this due to their thin, fragile structure. The top one may be a Ensis directus, and the bottom may be a Ensis megistus. An assortment of microfossils from the other Waccamaw site with various mineralization colors. I'm hoping to find a new technique for extracting these, as my current method results in some of these getting broken. And my last find from the site, An unusual bone of some variety; I almost want to think it's a turtle shell fragment, but I'm really not sure. It has some odd, rib-like structuring on the longer outer edges. And that's all I've got for now! 2023 was a really fun year for collecting, but I feel like 2024 could potentially be even better. As I wrap this post up, I'll be getting ready for tomorrow, where I'll be displaying some of my finds from the last two years at a park for an event, after which I'll be heading back to Holden Beach once again for a weekend to unwind from work and hunt for fossils with a couple of friends (I'll save my modern echinoid hunt for another time). I might post an update on that here, or I might wait until I go to Aurora, NC fairly soon. Further out, I've got a trip planned for Virginia once again in the early summer (Super excited for this one!), another extended Holden Beach trip in the spring, and there's a chance I might be able to tag along with a small group to go hunt fossils in central / northern Texas around the time of the solar eclipse, with some stops in Oklahoma and Mississippi! It'll be the first time I've ventured west of the eastern coastal states, so it'll be interesting if I do end up going. It'd require a lot of time off of work, so I'm still working out the logistics of it.

Hi, I recently found this mussel in a gravel pit. Looking online it seems to match the profile of Cincinntennia meeki, but the measurements seem quite larger than what people say it should generally be. Thanks for the help.

Hi all, Hwlp with id. please:-) The first photo shows what are Hystrivasum locklinii and horridum I believe. They are all from the APAC/Newburn Pit, Sarasota, Florida, collected by E. Dunlop on January 2, 1984. I think the next three scallops are all Chesapecten jeffersonius, but not 100% sure. They were all collected from Rice's Fossil Pit in Hampton, Virginia, in August 1964 by M. Fuldner. All shells are from the Miocene. I hope someone can help me. I never got a response the last time I posted a few years ago about sharks teeth:-( Thanks, Andrew