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Four separate specimens, all partials. Found in the needmore formation (mid Devonian) near Winchester Virginia. First specimen- first 2 pictures- 1.6 cm: I’m guessing some sort of orthocone nautiloid but the evenly spaced squigly patterns threw me off (I find a lot of them but they don’t have that pattern). Also the fact that it bends a bit (second photo is taken at an angle to give an idea how the cast bends) although this could be from geologic forces. Second specimen- second two pictures- 3 mm: I honestly have no clue. Seemingly has spines? Seemingly thin bodied? Body seems like it has two lobes that might have some kind of segmentation? Third specimen- 5th photo- 4 mm at widest point: I would have assumed it was a partial of some kind of brachiopod but the pattern is checkered which I haven’t seen in a brachiopod out here. Also has those 3 main parallel ridge lines. Fourth specimen- 6th and 7th picture- 5mm: I know it looks like a crinoid stem cross section but they don’t look like that in this formation. I’ve found one other specimen that’s identical to this one but I can’t find it at the moment. Both are convex and don’t have any material continuing through the rock, it’s almost like a button. As always I’m greatly appreciative of the help I always find here. Y’all are alright.

Bone fragment found on the York River in Virginia. It is the Yorktown Formation, Pliocene epoch. I'm wondering if it is a vertebrae fragment, and what species it might belong to. It's convex on one side, and concave on the other.

My collection from the past year and a half. I have some I need help on IDing I will post soon. I just wanted to show off my spoils from hundreds of hours of searching on kayak, mud stomping through creeks and researching. All of these were found in VA

Greetings, Hopefully this will be easy since I only have one picture for now. I noticed this large fossil (?) when I was moving stepping stones. It is about 23cm long and 4cm wide. It is in a large stone I collected on the edge of a hay field, about 8 meters from the Tye River, in Nelson County, Virginia, USA, on the edge of the Piedmont, near the Blue Ridge. I apologize for not having better pictures. I noticed it back in February but gave up trying to identify it months ago when I could not find anything similar. Obviously, I do not have any fossil knowledge but I enjoy learning and it would be nice to be able to know more about what created this curious impression. Thank you for your guidance.

Found this odd 9" long jaw-like fossilized bone in a small creek within the Yorktown formation in Virginia between the York River and I-64. It is atypical of the Baleen Whale and Ice Age mammal bones I have found in the same area. Any help with identifying this specimen would be appreciated.

Hello folks! I am excited to join the conversations on this forum. I am hoping to learn, meet people, and be inspired. I am currently in graduate school at Virginia Tech, studying in a field very unrelated to paleontology or the likes. However, I grew up in South Carolina finding sharks teeth on the beaches and was lucky enough to go on a couple quarry digs with my dad when I was in middle school. I was too young to appreciate it back then, but I have recently had a rekindled interest in searching for teeth and fossils. Looking forward to beginning my search for sites and just getting outside. I frequently return to SC to visit family and plan to tie some scouting trips in with that in the near future. Cheers!

I love the ecphora for their improvisations but... I’ve searched the photos from Ward and Petuch for anything similar to this ecphora from the James River in Virginia. It’s a globose shell with six distinct costae. specimen is three inches long.

Hello! i recently found a small, broken mammal molar. The occlusal surface is worn flat partially, this maybe difficult to see from the photos, it seems small to be an older pig, but pig was my first guess. If that is correct I guess it would most likely not be a “fossil”, although it seems to have some qualities consistent with mineralization. Is it conceivably human, about the same size and in better shape than some of mine! Very curious find for me and probably obvious for some members. thanks for your time!

We recently were able to take a trip to the Miocene of Virginia along the Potomac River. We weren't sure what the conditions would be, as the last time we were here the tide was extremely high limiting the length of the beach and how much was accessible. When we got to the beach we could tell it would be a good day, the tide was pretty low with still a couple hours to go before low tide, and we could see long stretches of beach in both directions. As we walked I wasn't having to much luck, but my wife who trailed behind me was finding some good sized hastalis teeth that I had missed. Once we got to a better section of the beach with cobble and larger rocks, we really started to take our time searching. In about ankle deep water I looked down and spotted a 4 7/8 inch halved meg, I couldn't believe it! By far the biggest and most complete meg I had ever found up to this point (Previously have only found very worn bits and pieces of megs). We kept searching and stopped to talk for a bit and when I looked down I saw another very worn meg sticking almost fully out of some fallen clay matrix. We were both happy with the day so far! Between two partial megs and a good number of hemi's and nice hastalis, it was definitely one of our more productive days. We reached the end of the accessible beach and decided to head back. On the way back, I was searching up along the higher parts of the shore and saw a small clay block with some black sticking out and picked it up. Looking at it I thought it was just some lignite, but decided to look a bit closer. I picked at it a bit and it ended up being a meg! My first complete and whole meg, I was extremely happy with the find and could finally check that off my list. Overall, we couldn't have asked for a better day weather or finds wise. For teeth we ended up with a good haul of hastalis, hemis, two partial and one whole megs, and a retroflexus.The plate pictured has on it a whale vert, epiphysis, and various shark or fish verts,

I recently found this 9mm by 7mm specimen in matrix from the Eocene Nanjemoy Formatiion of Virginia. I think it is a piece of a Chimaera tooth plate. However, in collecting the Nanjemoy Formation in Virginia for over twenty years I have never found a Chimaera tooth plate or a fragment of one. For that reason I don't want to rule out a coral fragment. However, I haven't found a piece of coral in this formation before either. For comparison, a Chimaera tooth plate (25mm by 16mm) from the Paleocene Aquia Formation of Maryland: What do you think (especially the invertebrate/coral experts)? Marco Sr.

I have already posted pictures of this partial jaw in a topic “The most rare fossil on your collection” in “Member Collections”. However, I would like to start a thread here in “Partners in Paleontology - Member Contributions to Science” so I can discuss any updates with this partial jaw. I found this partial jaw ( 3mm by 3mm by 1mm) in February 2019 in matrix from the Eocene, Nanjemoy Formation, Potapaco B Member in Virginia. Below are pictures that I took of the partial jaw: I sent these pictures and then the specimen itself to Dr. Ken Rose who is a Johns Hopkins University emeritus and who is associated with the Smithsonian Institution. From looking at the pictures Ken had originally thought that the specimen might be from a hedgehog. However, after receiving and seeing the specimen itself, I got the following statement in an e-mail from Ken “I’ve had a chance to look at your jaw, and it turns out to be significant. It’s not a hedgehog. This is the first primate jaw I know of from the east coast. By all means search the concentrate for any other pieces that could relate to it (premolars would be especially useful)”. This is an example demonstrating that even very good pictures may not be adequate to get an accurate ID of a specimen. Because of the rarity of the specimen I donated it to the Smithsonian Institution. This fossil actually caused the USGS and Dr. Weems to relook at the age of the Eocene Potapaco B Member of the Nanjemoy Formation in Virginia where it was found. I sent matrix samples to the USGS from the hole where the specimen was found and they confirmed that the layer was the Potapaco B Member of the Nanjemoy Formation by looking at the dinoflagellates in the matrix samples. However, Dr. Rose determined that the features of the specimen where much more primitive than the published NP11 date of that layer suggested. So Dr. Weems looked back at all of the research and core samples on the Nanjemoy Formation and determined that the Potapaco B Member of the Nanjemoy Formation was actually about a million years older than previously reported and was in the top of NP10 versus in NP 11. So the age of the specimen was tentatively determined to be 54 to 54.5 Ma. A paper would have been published this spring/summer but Covid-19 stopped everything cold. The Dr. Rose's lab was closed and he wasn't able to compare primate specimens from museum collections because the museums were closed. However progress has been made recently and comparisons with other fossil primate specimens have been completed and a paper is in preparation (first draft is almost done). Figures have been drafted, but there is a problem with the resolution of the scanned images of the jaw, so the jaw may have to be rescanned which requires sending it back to North Carolina. However, optimistically Dr. Rose will submit the paper by the end of this year. I can't say anything about the ID of the specimen until the paper is released. Below is a figure showing representative lower dentitions of Omomyid primates from researchgate.net: Below are pictures showing an artist conception of what an Omomyid primate looked like (alamy stock photo) and a representative Omomyid skull both from Wikipedia.org: Marco Sr.

This was found in Stratford Hall, VA. Most likely a rock but would like a second opinion

I have been wondering what to do with the graptolites I have found. Currently they're scattered around the house, which I think is a sign to put them up for display. Please... help... the graptolites are taking over my house! How do you suggest I display them?

Finally getting around to posting about my recent trip to Stratford Cliffs in Virginia with the Maryland Natural History Society. It was a lot of fun, found some cool stuff, and met some nice people. Here are pictures of some of the finds I took home!

A number of Eocene bony fish specimens from Virginia that I collected and donated to the Smithsonian are described in an article by Dr. Robert E. Weems “ADDITIONS TO THE BONY FISH FAUNA FROM THE EARLY EOCENE NANJEMOY FORMATION OF MARYLAND AND VIRGINIA (U.S.A)” published in The Mosasaur Volume XI June 2020. I collected and donated the following specimens shown in the below figures: 4D thru 4F: 5A, 5C, 5D, 5E: 6A, 6B, 6G, 6H : 7B: 8A, 8B: Marco Sr.

Hi everyone, I am pretty new to fossil hunting and don't know much yet. I have found lots of shark teeth over the last year, close to 100, but don't know what a lot of them are. The vast majority of my collection is #6 & #9. Those seem pretty common. I have found around 8 of #1 (the one in the photo is the largest), four of #2, two of #3, and around 5 of #7. Numbers 4,5,8,10 are my only finds like those pictured. I would love some assistance identifying these if anyone knows what they are. Please let me know if you would like close ups of any tooth. I would be happy to add some additional photos if necessary. All the best, etj915

Hi all - I am new to the group so please forgive me if I miss any information. I found this piece in question on a sandbar right off of Wallops Island, Virginia. I believe it is some kind of tooth or claw/talon. Unfortunately I am on vacation and left the piece at home. But I estimate it to be around 6 inches long (0.15 meters) and about 2 inches wide (0.05 meters). It has a little weight to it but still light. This was the best picture I had that shows the full piece and the root top.

Most of the vertebrae that I find are 1/4” in size. Found this 2” vertebrae near the York River State Park in Virginia. Any ideas on what it belonged to?

Hi, found this tooth along the York River near Gloucester VA. Any ideas on what it is?

Hi everyone. I found this fossil while combing a fossil beach on the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia. The beach is littered with fossils from the Miocene including Chesapecten jeffersonius, Ecphora gardnerae, bone fragments of all sizes, and the occasional shark tooth. This stood out to me as being an unusual bone fragment so I picked it up. It is about 3 inches or 7.62cm in length. Is this a piece of a bone or something else entirely?

Hello fine people! I’m not quite sure who gets the credit for finding this tooth, I saw it from the canoe but was just next to my friends hand when I saw it, they won the coin toss, but I guess I still want to make a fuss about it. It’s real pretty and very sharp, like it must have just fallen out of the clay, but I haven’t seen a Mako with cusp like formations in the root. I know there is tremendous diversity in these type of teeth but I’m curious if this is indicative of a specific species variation, or some kind of pathology, or maybe all the others I find are worn off. Just curious if this seems like something that others have noticed perhaps tying this tooth to a specific age. Found on the nottoway in southern Virginia. Thanks for your time!

I just found this 17mm tooth today (see the below pictures) in matrix that I collected from the Eocene, Nanjemoy Formation, of Virginia awhile back. I thought that the tooth was an Otodus obliquus symphyseal tooth and sent a PM to Lutz Andres to get his opinion of the tooth. He responded back: “Hi, it's a lower symphyseal Otodus or Parotodus, and 17 mm is a bit large for Parotodus.” Because of the 17mm size and the fact that Parotodus is not reported from this Formation, I’m going with the Otodus ID. I have a number of Otodus obliquus symphyseals from Morocco but this is the first one that I have personally collected from Virginia. My friend Mike F. has collected two Otodus obliquus symphyseals from the same formation. Marco Sr.

I hope this is the right place. I am hoping to find some spots in these areas. I'd prefer Carboniferous as opposed to Devonian, or Miocene/Eocene. Would any of you know any spots? Maybe road cuts, or abandoned quarries those sorts of places? I'd be willing to pay for access if need be. If you don't feel comfortable outing it, please PM me. Thank you!

Thought I’d make one of these posts on the chance that I end up spending a lot of time posting here. Hey there everyone - I’m Cameron. I’ve used this site for a long time but never made an account until a few months ago. I’m from central VA and travel to the Lost river near Wardensville just to find bits of Eldredgeops, and I’d love to talk fossils with anyone on here as nobody in my offline life is very interested in the topic. I hunt marine outcrops from the Mahantango and Carboniferous swamps in Pennsylvania, and I’m building up a fairly decent collection. Ive found many fossils that I don’t have a clue about, and learning anything about paleontology makes me squeal like a little girl, so I’ll definitely be posting in the ID section a lot! I’ve even found a conulariid in WV which people seem very excited about! I look forward to posting more here, hopefully I did this post correctly.

Hey ya'll, I'm Dennis and I joined this forum because I found an interesting rock that I suspect is a fossil, maybe a lepidodendron root and came to ask for your help. I am becoming more interested in minerals and fossils with my recent addition of a nice tile saw to open some things up. Thanks! Dennis