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Hi guys and girls just to introduce myself I’m a biomedical scientist from Sheffield England I’ve recently been to Whitby and found something I think hopefully is bone I will take some photographs tomorrow and upload, nice to meet you all Chris

Hello all. New here from Illinois.

Hello all, newbie here. Primarily a artifact/rock hunter, I find all sorts of fossils here in So. Illinois, usually cronoid related. I think. Anywho, any ideas on this guy, this is on a scraper/tool.

Hey all! I've been a paleo-enthusiast for about 25 years but this is the first time I'm joined a forum for it! My name is Bill, and I'm glad to be here! I've been a fossil shark tooth collector for 6 years or so, I love the ancient yet subtle power of them and the science behind it as well. This year, I followed a hypothesis about a particular river valley thinking it would be a good fossil bed. It has been! I'll be posting here for fossil ID and tips on how to proceed. All feedback, experiences, and advice would be welcome! And thanks for taking the time to read this.

Hello friends! I am experimenting this period with my new Haufwerk W224 air scribe. It is recommended as ideal for beginners and rated for medium to fine preparation. My first lab rat turned out above my expectation. First attempt was done without press. regulator and without filter, since I did not know I needed these. Lab rate Prior preparation and After. Soft limestone for your reference. After having finished the above and onwards I work with pressure regulator (never above 5bar~70psi) and water separating filter to ensure I am using dry air. The next one turned out really bad. One side was already exposed 100% due to weather erosion. The other side was fully covered except the edge. The beginning seemed promising. The first material was removed around 2 o'clock and started chipping away easily. After that I lost my path completely. I couldn't define what is material to remove and what is ammonite. The stone is quite hard limestone from the Jurassic of Bulgaria, Ammonitico Rosso. I believe that with air abrasion with hard material the result would be totally different, but I do not have yet this set up.

I found this in my back yard, it appears to have three tiny fossils (approximately 1cm in size each), getting pictures is hard! I am a very amateur collector, so I really don't know much. I live in Roxbury, Morris County, New Jersey, USA.

Hello from Central New York! I've always had an interest in the geologic history of New York State, and now that I'm retired I have the time to explore and learn more about our natural world. Originally from the Finger Lakes area, where we would hunt for arrowheads in the woods around our house when we were kids. I know very little about fossil identification but am excited to learn.

Hey Fossil gang, I went out into the hillside forest next to my dorm and found some shells scattered about. It's very possible they're simply snail shells - I'm very novice. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

Hi all, I haven't been on the forum recently, which is a terrible shame, but I will make much more of an effort to be online in the future! I am currently sketching out a small project that, in part, addresses why people collect fossils. At this point I am mostly interested in very brief, oral-history style vignettes on what kinds of fossils you collect, your self-assessment of you collect them, and your knowledge of and experience with fake fossils. If anyone is interested I would love to hear from you!

Hi all! I'm a super amateur, as in I just decided to try my hand at fossil hunting after being obsessed with PaleoCris's youtube for a couple of months. I'm a college student studying environmental science (as of now) and I'm hoping to discover some cool things around North Carolina!

Hi all, I'm an extreme amateur looking to try my hand at fossil hunting. I live in the triangle region of North Carolina and I've been trying to do some research about what I can expect to find. I live in an undeveloped area and have lots of woods and several creeks around that I was planning to explore. Does anyone have any suggestions about what I should look for or what there is to find in this area? Also, if there are specific things I should look for, what's the best method to find them?

Hello! I’m an amateur fossil lover/collector that got interested in fossils 3 weeks ago. I don’t know that much about fossils but I’m eager to learn more about them in this forum! Cheers!

Moved to Arizona from Chicago after I retired. Bought some land that I hoped would have some interesting finds. I’ve been obsessed with fossils and archeology since I was a kid, so I am living my dream here. Hard to believe that when the fossils I am finding were formed the world was Pangea! Really happy to find this forum so I can share my finds and get information.

Hello everyone! I am a brand new member and I find myself here mainly (though not completely) because I moved to Fort Worth, TX a couple years ago and I keep finding fossils in my yard. My curiosity, which usually starts with me picking up a rock and saying to myself "What on Earth is this?" finally drove me to the internet to find some answers. I identified (sort of) a couple of things but others not so much. Anyway, I stumbled upon his form, decided to join, and am genuinely enthusiastic about it! I have always been fascinated by fossils...and now it looks like I'll be able to learn a few things as this appears to be a very well organized group. Thank you for allowing me to join!

I'm not sure if this is a fossil, but i have been looking at this rock for a few years wondering if it may be a fossil or part of one. I have taken a few pictures to help anyone with potential ID. It is clearly quite porous, which makes me think it is either a fossil or an old bone that has been weathered, but then it almost seems like there are some rocks in it. Any ID help is appreciated.

Hello all, I arrived here thanks to a strong interest in paleontology in my younger son, and together we have started to research possible fossil hunting sites within an hour or so drive. We are both very new to this and want to learn, and we appreciate this forum and look forward to being a part of it and contributing. That's said, last week in Calvert County, Maryland, along the Chesapeake, we came back with a few finds, went to the library and can't say we know what if anything we found and was not sure if this is the right place to post to ask for some help, but here it goes anyway...

So my 8 year old son and I did our first ever trip to go find fossils. Attached is what we found in our very untrained 2 hour trip! Haha I literally have no experience outside of reading on this forum from time to time. We may have just picked up some rocks but they looked like fossils to us. I know most most of the teeth are probably goblin and I believe we found 2 Ptychodus. The main things I’m wondering about are the long piece slim piece next to the Ptychodus (possible whale tooth?), two vertebrae looking pieces, the egg shaped piece, and the white pieces. Not sure if they are bones of if they are just random trash we picked up thinking they were treasures. Haha All our tooth fragments Item on right? Egg shaped item Vertebrae? Vertebrae? Cant tell if this tooth is broken or just worn Cool little shell in a rock formation No clue? Looks like bones in rock but could be just river muck This looks like a little flipper but not sure

on this piece, there are several various fossils. I beleive they are all encased in this clay rock. Found in Dresden Tn 38225 in a old creek.

Howdy from the frontier country of New Mexico! I'm Tammy. I stumbled upon this forum while trying to categorize a very large collection of interesting fossil specimens collected in the mid to southwest of New Mexico, by our daughter Carol (an avid fossil collector). During her last visit we separated some of the largest specimens, revering some more than others, discussing the cosmos and the earliest life forms on planet Earth. We recalled that Carol collected rocks as souvenirs from vacations. On a vacation to Minnesota, Carol collected a '(flat) rock'; it was a decade later when she realized it was actually a prehistoric tool! I'm positive that's what started it all! I hope you can forgive our lack of 'technical' terms and a few run-on sentences now and then, as we attempt to analyze and understand this collection. I'm off to read and learn! Sincerest gratitude, Tammy

Howdy All! Been a couple of months since I have posted anything. Work has kept me more than busy with travel. BUT, I wanted to share a quick day trip to my dig site yesterday in northern Cincinnati. I explored far left into the hillside I am excavating to see on the surface what Gastropods, Brachiopods and Bryzoa I could see and I was happily surprised that I found the mother-load! This area of my site was covered by a lot of growth and the runoff of water was less than in other areas I have been digging. I have attached a couple of pics and some real quick finds I cleaned up last night... sorry about the pic quality, I do not own a fancy camera. I love when I am lined up with conference calls and I can enjoy my hobby why listening to statistical analysis (actually mostly ignoring). I will try to save more pics in the comment sections. One specimen has me confused. I found a number of trilobite pieces throughout my day and collected around 25 hash plates with several in them. I have yet to clean them up. But pictured below (if it lets me) is what appears to be the bottom portion of a trilobite but I'm unsure.

Hello Fellow Forum Members, I am a rank amateur from New Jersey, twenty minutes south of Trenton on the Delaware River. While maintaining an extensive rock collection since I was a kid I just recently started looking into collecting fossils. I started this primarily with my 13-year-old daughter as a way to generate interest in our fascinating world and to spend time with her doing something a little atypical for that age range. Being an avid outdoors person, hiker, photographer, and plein air painter I figured that this would be a great way to teach her some important outdoors skills with a really cool reward system. I, of course, go out on my own now and I am hooked. My daughter, caught up in the binary world that most teenagers are so prone to dive into readily, initially found the idea unappealing. However, upon finding a series of sharks teeth and many other interesting fossils (many of which we had to put back due to limits), I know she's hooked as well. Her reaction when she found her first tooth was nothing short of priceless. It's too long to include here but let's just say it was equally rewarding for the both of us. I hope some of the finds on our hunts and the validation (hopefully) of those finds we might find here might spur her on to further interest in whatever capacity she determines is appropriate for her. In the meantime, I'll keep taking her out on hikes and fossil hunts despite her hesitancy. She really is the best kid in the whole world and I am clearly a doting father.

How an Amateur Collector Changed Paleontology Forever To those of The Fossil Forum, I wish to share with you the story of Maiasaura peeblesorum and Marion Brandvold, both good mothers. Maiasaura was discovered forty years ago in June of 1978; this is the month and year of the Maiasaura. Marion and her son, David Trexler, found fossils fascinating long before Jurassic Park popularized dinosaurs. They would often take a vehicle out and go prospecting in their backyard geologic formation known as the Two Medicine. One hot summer evening when walking back to the vehicle, Marion took a small detour and came upon some tiny fossilized bones. In 1937, the Trexlers had opened a rock and jewelry store, and over the years had created a successful jewelry manufacturing and wholesale business along with their ranching interest. However, Marion's heart was always with the land and the animals, and when her husband passed away, she opened a retail store for her merchandise rather than try to keep up with the wholesale business. That way, she still had time for the ranching and rock hunting that she loved. Marion and David had discovered a partial dinosaur in 1971, and they traveled the State of Montana to compare it to all the wonderful previous discoveries they had read about that had been made in Montana. To their surprise, the only dinosaur on display in the entire State was in a little museum in the basement of the high school in Ekalaka, Montana. It had been assembled by a couple of ranchers who had worked with paleontologists from elsewhere who had come to the State, collected, and left. Chagrined that nothing was left behind when professional work was done, they decided to start a small museum in the back of the family store. The goal was to display a dinosaur skeleton from their local area. After all, if ranchers from Ekalaka could do it, so could they. As far as professional training was concerned, Marion had to rely on her familiarity with the ecology of the modern world, as she had no formal education on the subject. However, a ranch foreman when she was young had taught her the art of tracking, and had shown her how each organism interacted with other organisms and its environment. So, when looking for fossil skeletons, Marion expected to see very young and very old animal pieces, but not much in-between. On the fateful evening mentioned previously, Marion, Dave, and Dave's wife, Laurie, were out collecting what they believed to be a fairly complete duckbilled dinosaur skeleton. It is a long, tedious job collecting all the bones present in a dinosaur, and they had uncovered 15 or so at that point. As tools were being put away, Marion went for a little walk, and when Dave and Laurie caught up with her, she was sitting on a small mound of dirt with a big smile on her face. She said, "look what I found!" She was holding several baby dinosaur vertebrae. Within a few minutes, they had found many more, and Dave had found a piece of a jaw with obviously duckbilled dinosaur teeth attached. However, the entire jaw section could be covered by a nickel! They had a baby dinosaur to go with their adult in the museum. Bill Clemens, a mammal paleontologist from Berkely, had stopped in Marion's shop on his way to dig on fossil fish with some colleagues, and was impressed with what had been done in creating a fossil museum without any formal training. At the fish site, he encouraged Jack Horner, then a fossil preparator at Princeton, and Jack's friend Bob Makela, a high school teacher from Rudyard, Montana, to stop at Marion's shop and see the displays. A few days later, Jack and Bob left the fish site and visited Marion's rock shop and museum. Jack introduced himself to Marion, and for the next few hours, they had a wonderful time going over the specimens Marion had on display. Jack then asked if she had anything else, and she showed him a couple of the vertebrae she had picked up from the baby site. Jack's interest was immediately piqued, and he asked if she had more. Marion directed him across the street to where Dave was reassembling the baby bones they had collected. Jack realized immediately that Marion and Dave had something they didn't understand. He asked, "do you know what you have here?", and Dave replied, "Obviously not, since you are so excited." The concept of babies and old animals dying and being preserved in the fossil record, it turned out, was only partially correct. While that cycle probably did occur, baby bones were generally not preserved in the fossil record. The bones Bob and Jack were staring at turned out to be the first baby dinosaur remains known from North America. Jack asked to be allowed to borrow the fossils in order to write them up in a formal publication. The bones were carefully wrapped and placed in a coffee can, and Jack transported them to Princeton. A visit to the site was also in order, and Marion and Dave took Jack and Bob out to the site. Dave also showed Jack a poorly preserved skull that Laurie had discovered, and Jack offered to try to remove it and clean it up for display in Marion's museum. However, after a few years and the specimen was recovered and prepared, it turned out to be the type skull for Maiasaura, and Laurie donated it to Museum of the Rockies, where Jack was working by then. Baby dinosaurs together in a nest past hatching showed a totally different picture of what dinosaurs were thought to be. Jack returned for many years, and eventually the Museum of the Rockies purchased the land where the babies were discovered. The area has become a mecca for paleontological research. The discovery of all this led to a massive shift in the view paleontologist and indeed science as a whole had for extinct animals and modern reptiles. A realization occurred that dinosaurs were truly living, breathing, majestic animals who cared for their young, much like the life we often see around us today. Hungry and thirsty, often looking for a mate, just trying to stay alive in an unforgiving world were the dinosaurs. Far from terrible lizards, they were much like animals and we humans are today. All this came from Marion’s tiny little find. It was her tiny find which led to a surge of interest and public attention. It was her tiny find which started Jack Horner’s career. It was her tiny find that indirectly caused Spielberg to help create Jurassic Park which in turn inspired many into paleontology and many more into other sciences. Those she indirectly inspired have contributed a near inconceivable amount to mankind through science. They range from medical researchers curing diseases, to those looking for extraterrestrial life, and all the way down to myself. A great many started their interest in the sciences with an early love of fossils and dinosaurs. A love Marion Branvold started and continues through her past contribution. Sadly, I never had the opportunity to meet her and she passed away in 2014, at the age of 102. Over the course of my short time in paleontology, I had the honor to stand where her tiny find was made. As the search for more discoveries continues I have been privileged to search with both Jack Horner and Dave Trexler. In the great quest for knowledge, she played her part well, now it is for us to carry on with the next act. What a massive contribution from an amateur and so tiny a find. As others ogle over the next major discovery, keep all this in mind and tell us more of your own tiny find. Eric P. Made with great assistance by David Trexler

Hi all, I’m new to the forum, based in London UK. I’ve collected fossils for years, favourite haunts are Walton-on-the-Naze, Charmouth and Isle of Wight. My dream is to find a lovely big megladon tooth....... cheers Dirk

I am definitely an amateur when it comes to collecting and need some advice: I recently purchased my first 'larger' Spinosaurus tooth from a small gem/fossil shop in Seattle. The owner told me that it had no repairs or restorations, and that it of course came from Morocco. I tested the tooth under a UV flashlight and there were no anomalies, but I just wanted some more experienced opinions. The enamel looks good- no apparent cracks or suspicious color variations, root still has some of the matrix on it, but the tip seems a little suspicious to me... maybe I'm just being paranoid, but I have read so much about fake fossils and just want to be sure! Let me know what you guys think- Thanks!

I preped this cute partial trilobite last month. This bug was from by secret Santa in Canada . . . I worked with engraving pen! Not a perfect tool for prep but also not bad for starter.(Sadly, I don't have enough money for air scribe and compresor.) . . . After prep. REALLY amateur job... white spots are my mistakes.... I hope I can do better next time. I believe the more practice, the better.... Thanks!