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Showing results for tags 'Wyoming'.
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The title says it all. It’s a nice tooth, but I’m going back and forth on it because the telltale wear patterns for either group are not present as far as I can see. I apologize for the poor quality of my camera phone picture.
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A presumed horse metapodial from the Eocene sediments of the Big Horn Basin (Wyoming). Post some other things from here as well, but was wondering if anyone could narrow down this ID. Thanks!
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So, I was going through my fossils from my last trip to Kemmerer Wyoming. One of them accidentally split, revealing this. It looks like a kind of Coprolite, but I’m not sure. It’s got scales in it, but it’s too flat to be regular Coprolite. I suspect it is stingray Coprolite, as the people there told us to watch out for it, because they have been finding a lot. Can someone help me ID this? Jared
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Mammal Proximal tibia and distal femur (unrelated individuals)
acetabular posted a topic in Fossil ID
Two limb bone fragments from the Eocene deposits in the Big Horn Basin. Mammalian, but don't know anything more beyond that. Would really appreciate help!
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From the album: Prae's Collection (REMPC)
Phareodus testis Eocene Green River Formation Kemmerer, Wyoming, USA-
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Three New Species of Primitive Ungulate Ancestors Identified from Wyoming
Oxytropidoceras posted a topic in Fossil News
Three New Species of Primitive Ungulate Ancestors Identified from Wyoming University of Colorado Boulder , Sci News, Aug 18, 2021 Post-Jurassic Fossils Uncovered By CU Boulder Scientists Danielle Chavira, Channel 4, CBS, University of Colorado Boulder, August 18, 2021 The paper is: Atteberry, M.R. and Eberle, J.J., 2021. New earliest Paleocene (Puercan) periptychid ‘condylarths’ from the Great Divide Basin, Wyoming, USA. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, pp.1-29. Yours, Paul H.-
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- beornus
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I was recently out vacationing in Wyoming and spent Saturday morning (7/24/21) hunting in the badlands. As I sat down to rest for a moment, I looked down and saw what I thought were a radius/ulna pair from a small mammal. Upon closer inspection, it was a pair of lower jaws freshly exposed on the edge of a nodule and on the backside, a small skull. Needless to say, I was ecstatic. I spent a bit of time making sure the specimen was consolidated (Paleobond Penetrant, wish I had brought some 4417) and packed it up for the trip home. I was thinking it would make a great Vertebrate Fossil of the Month but as I am unsure of my identification and being a skilled preparator, I thought it would be more interesting to show the process. I do suspect the specimen to be the marsupial, Herpetotherium fugax. However, without seeing the teeth, this is mostly a guess. I do have another specimen with a similar endocast which is what I am using as my basis for an identification at the moment. Though I am quite unsure if the endocasts of the Insectivores have the same character. Pardon my anatomy if I get this wrong but there is a fold between the parietal lobes and the occipital lobe that you can see in the above photo and that is what I'm guessing my ID on. Once we get the teeth exposed, we will know for sure. Here are the pieces on my desk with some better lighting and measurements. A bit of cranium on the negative. The top of the skull. And the lower jaw that was seen exposed. The plan is as follows: 1. Clean the blocks of any mud/loose chips 2. Glue the blocks solidly back together 3. Bulk matrix removal with pneumatic tools (ARO/Paleotool Microjack-3) 4. Fine matrix removal under a scope/micro abrasion I'll write up each step as I progress. Enjoy! And @jpc I apologize for not visiting you, but it was a whirlwind trip. I'll catch you next time!
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University of Wyoming's Fossil Fish Expedition to Kremmerer to be Aired by Public Broadcasting Service
Oxytropidoceras posted a topic in Fossil News
UW’s Vietti Leads Student Expedition into Four Kemmerer Fossil Fish Quarries By Aaronm Brown Wyoming News Now, August 111, 2021 UW’s expedition into four Kemmerer fossil fish quarries to air on PBS Rocket Miner, August 11, 2021 UW’s Vietti Leads Student Expedition into Four Kemmerer Fossil Fish Quarries University of Wyoming Yours, Paul H,-
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- american fossil quarry
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Hello, and thank you for taking the time to have a look at these fossils I've come across recently. I live in the Red Desert of Wyoming and these weren't too far from where I live. Very unique, haven't seen quartz veins like this in fossilized wood aside from some small examples here and there. The other I do believe to be bone, possibly a vertebrae? Also think it may have had opal included in its mineral replacement. There's an area on it exposed to and shows impressive mineralization. Your professional input is greatly appreciated! Again, thank you!
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Given the success I had in the White River fm. the week before, my third and final outing of the summer was just icing on the cake to an already phenomenal fossil hunting session. But what I would come to find is that this figurative cake would be getting a massive dose of that sugary goodness, and man it felt sweet. This time around I would be joined by my best friend Michael (@Mickeyb06)who would be taking on his first ever fossil hunting adventure in Wyoming's Lance fm. While it wasn't my intention for this to be his first experience in the field, we made the most of it and it was great to have him there (we had wanted to take a preliminary trip down to Jersey to get some hunting under his belt before graduating to dinosaurs & arid badlands, but work & life got in the way). I've had great success on this ranch before, so I was hoping for the best & that the fossil gods would smile upon me once again. Day 1 began at a hillside microsite which I had visited in years past. Ceratopsid/hadrosaur spit tooth A view of the site The view from the site of the gorgeous rolling plains. Michael & I moved down the slope away from the main layer to an anthill I wanted to check out. Among other small fossils. my best find was a Richardoestesia tooth. Not far away I found this strange bone which someone thought could have been a turtle vertebra, but thanks to some guidance on the ID section of the forum, I've been able to determine is likely a crocodilian metacarpal/tarsal. Ceratopsid spitter. Two crocodilian teeth. A small piece of ceratopsid frill & a worked piece of stone.
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2 week exploration and collecting trip, on to the fishes
hadrosauridae posted a topic in Fossil Hunting Trips
Day 5 in South Dakota was a total bust for my son and me. The section of the quarry we worked has large ironstone and clay boulders, but also has large bones. We sat next to a jacketed femur and worked back the wall face. We didnt find more than a few small bits at the end of the day, but I said that something big was there. Big rocks = big bones. Sure enough, Walter sat down in our spot 3 days later and immediately uncovered a ceratopsian dentary! By this point were were already on to our next destination in Kemmerer, Wyoming. 3 days of splitting shale for fish, hoping for that elusive stingray! Like last year, day one was kind of slow. We were also much more picky in what we packed in the truck. No more partial fish this time, I wasnt going to fill my back set area with slabs unless they were quality. Day 2 produced a lot more volume of finds, and the biggest and best find was a huge palm leaf! The only problem is that it has no coloration to it. I'm still happy with it! My plan was to glue this to a piece of plywood to help stabilize it for the 1100 mile drive home. It had a block of matrix left on the back, so on the morning of day 3 I carefully split that chunk off. Now I had to change my plan! It revealed a large fish on the back of the slab! Most likely a Phareodus, and looks in beautiful condition. Of course, the fault crack runs straight down the spine, but I used paraloid to help glue the fault line and give it some more stability. Since I couldnt glue it down, I cut 2 pieces of plywood, wrapped the slab in a piece of packing blanket, and then used ratchet straps to hold everything tight for the ride home. After 3 days we did have quite a lot of material to haul home, but I had enough boxes for it all, and so far everything seems to have arrived some safe. I havent opened up the palm/pharo yet. fingers crossed. We still didnt find our stingray this year. I guess we'll just have to keep trying. Edit to add, I almost forgot to mention that I got the chance to meet up with @Ptychodus04 in Kemmerer. We were both in the area for fish at the same week, but in different quarries. We had a chance to meet up for dinner with crew (I'm sorry, I'm terrible with names). It was great to meet you Kris, I hope you had a fabulous hunt! On the trip home, I made a detour to visit the Dinosaur National Monument. It wasnt originally planned, but when I noticed how close we were to Vernal, UT, I coudnt pass it up. Covid prevented me from visiting on my last trip to Utah, but no this time. If youve never been, I highly recommend a visit! Its a truly incredible sight to see so many articulated bones in one place, still in the matrix as discovered. Even more impressive is that a lot of specimens actually have already been removed, and the site was originally so much bigger.
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What a trip my son and I had this year! We started out in the Hell Creek fm of South Dakota. This was a special trip through Paleo Adventures for his "veteran" guests who have already spent a few years with him and could operate without supervision. We started out hunting a new ranch. This property is virgin ground with LOTS of acreage that needed exploration. The group was split into 3 teams, each taking a different area. Our team was further split into pairs. So, it was my son and me, exploring for new outcrops. The sun was intense, the temperature hot, and hours of hiking and staring intently at the ground for float and possibly something sticking out of a wall. Eventually we worked our way down into a draw and found an ironstone layer. Closer inspection revealed a large amount of fossil material. There were bits of turtle shell, croc scutes and small bone bits all throughout. The only complete bone was this distal caudal vert my son found. The sight was thus named "Mitchells Micro Site". We bagged a selection for further study, marked the location and continued on. From the draw, we worked our way up to the main butte. Another pair was investigating the east side, so we began working the west side. Only a few minutes later I spotted a small sun faded bit of float. I began looking up the slope and saw another, and another. As I climbed the side it was obvious that I was on a hot trail, and then I found it, a bone sticking out of the wall, just below the surface. Sadly, the only thing left was about the last 8 inches of the bone (like Edmontosaur), and its full of root rot so the prep is going to be ugly. Just around the corner I followed more float down the slope and found an Ed vert centrum in the wash. The processes are gone, but surprisingly the broken edge seen in the pic, was laying on the surface up-slope, so its reattached and the prep has begun. Walter's team found a large surface exposure, about half a mile away and determined that my Ed finds, and another team's finds were all the same horizon of large multitaxic bone bed. My son ended up finding a nannotyranus tooth in the large exposure site, the only tooth found there that day. And then a call came across the radio "we've got 11 vertebrae in the wall and they just keep popping out". Of course, everyone went to check it out! It appears to be a juvenile Ed. with caudal verts exposed so far, but Walter is hopeful the most of it is still in the ground. Even though it was already late in the afternoon, I'm sure we would have stayed on the site much longer but a wicked looking storm was building fast and moving our way. So the race was on to recover what was exposed so far and get out while the getting was good. We barely got out too. As soon as we got to the pavement, I could see a lowering coming down from the storm, and it wasnt much longer someone said they could see it sucking dirt up. The last place I want to be during a tornado is in the middle of the prairie and stuck in bentonite. So that was the end of the first day. We headed back to town tired, sweaty, but ecstatic after an incredibly successful day.
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With a week of collecting under my belt I felt ready and excited to take on the next, this time exclusively on the White River formation. All factors being considered, the White River is probably the most difficult formation to hunt among those I've been lucky enough to explore thus far. For one, the terrain is often very rough, with all sorts of ridges, rises, washes and gullies to hike through. Another issue to account for is the reflection of light off of the white sediments, meaning that ample sunscreen is a necessity if you don't want to burn to a crisp. That harsh sunlight can lead to temperatures regularly topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit, with the highest I endured this week being 115. To say the least, the word exposure out here lives up to both of its connotations. Despite the challenges, the fossils can make it all worth it. While the expansive white moonscape may be poorly suited to growing grass and raising cattle today, the former inhabitants of these lands show that it was once a more hospitable place, supporting a diverse ecosystem teeming with prey and predators, with lineages represented that would be familiar to us today. With that little preface out of the way let's jump into the action! Week 2, Day 1: We started the day with the 80 mile trip south towards the town of Lusk, Wyoming, which eventually led us onto the back roads of this massive ranch & finally to our destination. Our first designated hunting area was a large series of exposures, accessible through descending from the grass line into this depression. My first couple finds were the typical jaw sections, mostly small artiodactyl. But as the sun climbed higher in the sky, I crossed over a wash and saw what would be my find of the morning: A complete oreodont jaw with both sides preserved, plus the articulating ends. Following the jaw, I came across a spill of titanothere tooth fragments, so I collected everything I could find in hopes I could reassemble most of it at home. About a half hour passed with me not finding much until I spotted some bones eroding from the surface. Unfortunately it appeared that the elements had gotten to it before I did, so I kept some of the more interesting pieces and moved along.
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I thought I'd try my hand with this Kemmerer Cockerellites liops this time around. This took me a looooong time because of the fine differences in shading, but I'm pretty happy with it. As you can see when compare to the original photo, I cheated a bit on it by filling in the missing parts of the fins.
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Earlier this month @JD3B and I went a incredible fossil hunting road trip. The title may be a bit misleading, as only one day was actually spent in the badlands. There were however, plenty of good times. We were lucky to have the opportunity to visit a few storied formations, and even luckier to have a couple tff legends to guide us. The first morning was an early one with a 3:00 am wake up. I was at Jacob's (JD3B) by 4:00 and on the road before 5:00. First stop, the Helena, Montana area to visit the world renowned @RJB museum of natural history. We arrived late in the afternoon and honestly, this place alone would have been well worth the long drive from western Washington. One of my few regrets from this trip was not getting any pictures of Ron's amazing collection. If you know where to look however, pictures can be found elsewhere on the forum. Ron, you could charge admission! After touring his prep lab and drooling over display case after display case, it was time for a couple frosty beverages. Over the course of a couple cold ones and a lot of laughs, we went from online acquaintances to friends. He was a gracious host who not only let us park our RV in his yard for the night, but gifted us with some beautiful fossil to remember our stay. The next morning we bid Ron a short lived farewell. We were to meet up again in few days to do a little "fishin". But in the mean time, we set our sights to SE Idaho to try our luck hunting trilobites. Here are my first fossils of the trip, acquired from the "gift shop" at the RJBMNH. Thanks again Ron, you're all right. I don't care what Jacob says about you.I didn't get specific IDs for these, but first one is bird tracks, second is sand dollars, then pectin and cockles.
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- green river formation
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From the album: Lance fm. Microsite Finds
I found this tooth while looking through matrix from a productive conglomerate site while at home. At first I had no clue what it could be, but the consensus on its ID thread was that likely belonged to Avisaurus. While its hard to conceptualize birds with teeth from our modern perspective, that was the norm for many genera in the Cretaceous. Glad to have found this one and recognize it as a tooth. -
From the album: Lance fm. Microsite Finds
Another shot of the Pectinodon tooth featured earlier in this album, this specimen was found by my dad and is one of two Troodontid teeth in my collection. -
From the album: Lance fm. Microsite Finds
While far less famous than its horned and frilled relatives, Leptoceratops were interesting small herbivores in their own right, likely utilizing their deep set jaws as a deterrent for predators. So far this is the only tooth from this genus I've found so far. -
From the album: Lance fm. Microsite Finds
Most people think of dinosaurs when they hear Lance formation, but I've found that in many of its channel deposits, freshwater mollusks are incredibly common, like this bivalve. -
From the album: Lance fm. Microsite Finds
My first definitive coprolite from Wyoming, could belong to any assortment of animals so I won't slap a label on it to avoid being inaccurate. -
Hi everyone! Recently I bought this piece of blue petrified wood. In the process of cleaning, I have soak the whole piece in muriatic acid for about a day and half, and in water with baking soda for about 2 days to neutralize the acid. To my surprise the whole skin turn white and the dark blue part has turned much pale in color. I have attached a few photos below for your reference, please noted that when the whole piece is dry the white part is complete white and opaque, but when I added water, the white part became translucent. I am not sure if I have somehow damage it, or if I need to do more to remove this 'white skin'. I would appreciate anyone's advice on what is this white stuff, why adding water would change the opacity and what I should do next. Thank you. These are the photos when I first bought the petrified wood, note only the top part was cut and polished, no treatment done as yet This is after soaking in the muriatic acid for about a day and half, and in water with baking soda for 2 more days, the whole piece turned white, even the polished side change from dark blue to pale white brown color. This is after adding water, you can see the polish part has turn darker brow and the white part became translucent.
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Block sliding, Heart Mountain Detachment, Wyoming High-temperature faulting, Heart Mountain Detachment, Wyoming Steven Losh, Faculty at Minnesota State University, Mankato "3400-square kilometer by 1.5-kilometer thick block of rock slides 45km..." Utah’s Ancient Mega-Landslides by Robert F. Biek, Peter D. Rowley, and David B. Hacker Utah Geological Survey Yours, Paul H
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Found this three years back in the Lance Formation. About 50 miles out of Newcastle, WY on a dig trip. Going through some bones I haven’t tried to ID. Any suggestions on this one? It has nice bone surface in a few spots, but isn’t familiar to me.
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Hi everyone, I'm hoping to be able to find out the identity of this tooth I found in the White River formation last summer. It has an odd triangular cross section and doesn't seem to match anything I've seen so far. I was wondering if it might be from the ancient peccary Perchoerus as I saw some similarities online when I was exploring that option. I would be interested in reading all of your opinions. The tooth is approx. 4 cm in length and 1 cm at its widest point. Photo from the field
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Hi everyone, So, I’m going back to Kemmerer, Wyoming for the third time on August 12, 2021. My entire family will be going as well as two friends from Japan. I’m going, courtesy of fishdig.com. I know the two from Japan will have a great time. I’m sure I’ll have a good time also. I wonder what I’ll find this time. Last time, I found an awesome Mioplosus labracoides. Picture attached. Jared
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- green river
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