Search the Community

Hello fossil folks, Me and my fiancée will be in Austin, Texas from January 8-13th next year visiting one of her best friends. During these few days I will have time for myself to go fossil crazy haha. I will probably have to ship whatever I find home and I’m ok with that as it opens up possibilities for me to collect more material I've done some research and there seems to be almost too much information for me to make a real educated decision. I read about a lake you can collect at but you need a permit...the finds are great. I’d get a permit if I had to no grip there. I have 1 day do hunting and I’ll want to try to maximize my efforts. Several years ago my paleontology professor showed me some jaw dropping ammonites from Texas he collected at rivers but I have no clue where. I’d love to get into some ammonites and maybe some Cretaceous material with possible mosasaur teeth/verts? I reached out to @KimTexan because I saw her comment on a post of mine in the past and she was very kind! Kim is from much further north but said we have some great forum members and admins from Texas! So I guess I’m just trying to make sure I pick the right spot or spots for my 1 day of fossiling lol. Maybe I can meet up with some members who want to teach a Paleozoic New Yorker what the Mesozoic is all about . I would bring a nice fossil from New York as a gift! Thank you in advance for any advice I may get! Al

I did another ammonite hunting trip to South Dakota this last September with my youngest son and we brought home a ton of rock. Last week my son came over and we got to work. He set up my tile saw with some hot water and I started marking rock where it needed to be cut. We cut a lot of crab concretions too but thats for another thread. I have to say it was a very fun day but now I have my work cut out for me, pun intended. There is some easy stuff to prep and of course some harder stuff to prep. I will start with an easy one. This little ammonite came apart and part of the living chamber was on the opposing piece of rock. I marked that hunk of rock, my son cut it and after it had dried I glued it back on and after 24 hours I scribed off the rock and WaaaaLaaaaa!! This piece is still not done. Im going to cut off a bunch more rock and finish it up so it stands nice and is still in part of the matrix. I believe this is Discoscaphites conradi found in the Fox Hills Formation and is Cretaceous in age. RB

Friends, I seek help to classify them, I have acquired them over the years without any reference. What I have been able to investigate is that they are from the Kimmeridgiano-Portlandian, probably from the formation "cañon of las lajas" (San Luis Potosí, Mexico) .I look for your name and surname.

This all started over a year ago. I was selected as Member of the Month and a couple of TFF members from Texas invited me down to the big state to collect. I primarily collect in my home region, the northeast, but I've taken fossil forays to New Mexico, Kentucky, and Germany and was willing to consider a trip to Texas and the opportunity to visit some classic fossil sites and collect fossils that are outside my usual focus. I began planning this about ten months ago, contacted potential fossil collecting partners and did my own research on fossil sites, geology, and the types of fossils I would likely encounter. I had never been to Texas let alone fossil collected there. From the Forum I knew there was a lot of great hunting. Then there was all of the logistics, what to stay, what to bring. Since I wanted to bring back a lot driving appeared to be my best option, but I hadn't driven that far solo in over thirty years. Timing of my trip; mid-late September, came right after my daughter went away to college and I was in the middle of moving to a new place. So things couldn't have been more hectic. Finally, early in the morning on September 8th I set out. Things went okay until I was in Kentucky. Just as it was turning nightfall, torrential rain hit, traffic was stopped on the interstate for two and a half hours, and the last two hours of the trip I struggled with wet conditions and poor visibility. I finally arrived at my parents' house just after one in the morning. The next day on my way over to my sister's I took a small detour and stopped at an outcrop I was well familiar with in Leitchfield, the Upper Mississippian Glen Dean Formation.

Hello to everybody! I'm kinda new here, but before I start I must say I really love this forum! It has really great vibes and you instantly can tell that this is a good and friendly community! So, I am ziggycardon, I live in Belgium, close to the border of the Netherlands and when we start speaking geologically, I live on the same cretaceous sediments as where the first major Mosasaurus discoveries where done! Unfortunatly I have never been on a fossil hunt myself and everything currently in my collection was bought or given to me. But I hope to change that soon, as I am dying to go hunting myself. Maybe the Chalk sediments 3 km from my home would be a good place to start! For the rest, my job, my major hobby and my other main interest besides fossils are living animals. I currently work as the head of terrarium & aquarium in 3 different pet stores and I have quite a collection of reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates and tropic fish myself. In my spare time I often take my own living animals along with my fossils and other educational natural history material to schools so I can teach kids about nature and it's history and hidden mechanics. For the rest are my other hobbies mainly based around movies and televisions as I collect a lot of stuff drom my favorite franchises like "Lord or the Rings" & "The Hobbit", "Game of Thrones, "Pirates of the Caribbean", ... And I also attent a lot of comic cons and other events related to those franchises. But then this topic! In this topic I will show my collection of fossils (and also minerals, stones and meteorites) as it is right now and then I will highlight each group of fossils bit by bit. I am currently starting with a own specialized fossil room, so ofcourse the progress and end result will also be posted here! And ofcourse when something get's added to my collection, I'll show it here as well. Sometimes a photo of my "special" pets or taxidermy specimens might pop up, but this topic will mainly be about the fossil room and my fossil collection. For the rest, if you have any comments or questions about the collection or about me or about anything, feel free to ask! I'd love to reply!

Wonderful trip to the South Ram River in between camping and kayaking. While the rest of the group went to see Ram River Falls I elected to check my favourite spot for any scaphites that may have popped up since my last visit a couple years ago. Lucky day.

I had the day off of work on Memorial Day and I didn’t have my kids, but I was on call. So once again I couldn’t go too far. I decided to head back over to the Benbrook site. It was going to be another scorcher. So I brought along about 40 ounces of fluids. I drove the hour over to west of Benbrook Lake to the new subdivision going in, turned into the development and parked near where I had found the 2 smaller ammonites the previous Tuesday. Before getting out of my car I covered my exposed areas with sunscreen. Sun damage will age you quicker than almost anything and also increase the likelihood of getting skin cancer. Now that I had my sunscreen on I got out and started hunting. I walked around a few undeveloped lots for a bit and was only finding partial ammonites. I found one small echinoid urchin and nothing else of note. I walked back to my car to get a drink and my bag. Then I searched on the opposite side of the street. I didn’t find anything there either. I guess the first trip I was just lucky to find 2 decent ammonites within 5-7 minutes. Since I wasn’t finding much in that particular area I walked down the street a bit and then crossed it heading towards a rock pile. The lots in this area had not been smoothed over yet. The back side of the lots sloped downward. More rocks had been pushed over the edge of the slope. I had stepped up on the curb and walked maybe 15 feet when I found what looked to be a small Mortoniceras about 5 inches across imbedded in a larger chunk of rock. You can just see the edge of it poking out of the rock below my hand. I didn’t have my hammer with me. I put my bag down by the rock and I walked back to my car to get my hammer. I couldn’t find it. It dawned on me that I had taken it into my house, shoot. I keep most of my hunting tools in my trunk with my rubber boots and a pack at all times. You never known when you might see some spot that needs investigating. So, no worries I had my little sledge hammer and some chisels along with a number of other tools. I was dripping wet from the heat and losing a lot of fluids. The humidity was at 70% and it was 94 degrees. I can take the heat, but I don't do well with high heat and high humidity. The humidity is what does me in. I got the tools and walked back to where the ammonite was. The limestone there was kind of chalky and reasonably soft. Within 2-3 minutes I had it popped out of the rock. One side free of matrix, but the other still had a little on it, but at least I wouldn’t have to carry the whole 40+ pound rock back to my car. The side that was free of matrix looked like it had a touch of pyrite disease. You can see how it is kind of flat on the bottom edge and reddish from oxidation. This is just another chunk of rock with 2 Morts in it. They look like fragments so I didn't bother with trying to get them out. It looks like there is a third fossil between them and possibly another small one below them that is hardly noticeable. I am not sure what this is. It looks a bit like some burrows, but the other burrows I was seeing were 3 to 5 inches in diameter. It may be a little burrow of some other creature, but there is something else going on there too, but not sure what. it almost looks like large leaves fanning out to the top and bottom. the burrow overlays whatever is fanning out. The burrow to the bottom left looks kind of like it is a corkscrew patterns. Then there is a burrow looking thing above those that has a ribbed pattern on it. Hum, now that I think about it, this did not look like the other rocks. There were building a stone wall nearby with sandstone blocks. This may not even be from the formation. This is just another fragment with the septa showing. It is about 8 inches across. This is one of the little Morts that was just laying around. I thought the thing below it was an urchin. Turned out to be a pebble with concrete on it. I just gave the ammonite away to the guy who came and fixed my AC unit today. He is the grandfather of a couple kids my kids were friends with. We actually kind of hunted a little together back in March when I took a group of scout kids, my daughter and his granddaughter out on a little hunt. He had never found fossils before or been hunting for them. He walked over as I was finding echinoids, gastropods and ammonite fragments. He was immediately sucked into the hunt and fascinated with them. This ammonite was kind of cool, because the matrix on the edge had the impression of another little ammonite. It is about 6 inches across. I'll be back in a few with more of the story.

Hello all, I recently saw a whole lot of collections on this forum, and they were all beautifel. Now I cleaned up my room (what's a hell of a task to me, I spended 8 hours) and I deceided to take pictures of the nicest part of my fossil and mineral collection. It's by far not as nice as most members here, but I still have decades to get a nice collection . It's a bunch of everything older then the cenozoicum, because I find it hard to choose what group of fossils I want to collect, trilobites or dinosaurs/ reptiles. Dinosaurs are pretty hard to get here without paying high import and shipping costs. So let's start then. The trilobites are the firsts. Selenopeltis longispinus. Upper: Flexicalymene ouzregui 2 X Elrathia kingi Flexicalymene ouzregui Lower: Minicryphaeus sarirus Cyphaspis agayuara Crotalocephalina gibbus Upper: Cyphaspis walteri Boeckops boecki Combination of Cyphaspis sp., a very tiny kettneraspis sp. and two phacops sp. Coltraneia oufatenensis Lower: Kettneraspis pigra Cornuproetus sp. Gerastos tuberculatus Stapeleyella inconstans Trinueleus fimbriatus Elrathia kingi Phacops latifrons Foulonia sp. Right upper corner: Phacops sp. with bite mark A whole block with partials of Stenarocalymene celebra (I don't find much about this species so I'm still not 100 % sure if this is correct) and a ventral prepped Ogygiocarella debuchi The personal high-light of my trilobites (pictures don't do it justice). A Kettneraspis williamsi with a couple of free-standing spines. Personally the best I have ever seen. So far my trilobites. Next my Khouribga fossils: Lytoloma elegans ( a bit of restoration but most is real) A roothed Mosasaurus globidens tooth. Enchodus fang (there is a jaw in the stone also) Pretty big Mosasaurus sp. tooth Two verts of Otodus obliquus. Partial Mosasaurus globidens jaw Mosasaurus sp. partial jaw. 3 Weltonia ancistrodon teeth Otodus obliquus tooth Roothed Prognathodon tooth a box with misc fossils from Khouribga My two only teeth that are not from Morocco or Europe Denversaurus schlessmani Indet. Croc from Patagonia More to follow

Hello everyone! I had already posted a short introduction on the new members subforum, but then I thought it might be nice to start a diary of our latest adventure here. I am an amateur fossil hunter and prepper from Belgium and recently have been put in charge of securing my husband's grandfather's secondary fossil collection, together with my husband and little brother in law. Or in other words; the non displayed and non prepped fossils which he collected during the sixties and seventies (although we did find some younger specimens as well). The task is a daunting one, and very challenging as well, since the fossil storage is very poor, and there is little to no light or heating when we work. The picture above shows a very small fraction of the attic as we found it after moving piles of other things. As we dug through boxes who haven't been moved in 50 years, we discovered most of the boxes and covers used to store the fossils had been eaten by rodents. Boxes soaked with feces and moisture, others completely filled with what once must have been beautiful pyrite samples, completely oxidized and obliterated through the ages. At some points gloves and masks had to be worn to dig through it safely. Apart from fossils the collection also includes minerals and shells of amazing quality, though many of them have broken due to instability, and some boxes had been caved in because they had been stacked so high the boxes touched the ceiling. Once aware of the actual size of the secondary collection, we decided upon buying several magazine racks just to be able to store it all. This is about 1/4th of the racks set up. As of today 3 of them are up and almost completely filled, as I guess we have secured 60% of the collection... Since a good number of fossils have been moved, and we are working with a tight schedule, I won't always be able to take pictures of my finds, but I will try to post some shots of the most interesting finds of the day as we progress. Same for when I start prepping the specimens collected. So, without further ado, onto today's finds. Enjoy! Crates full of Dinosaur poop! I found a couple of bags full of nodules containing ammonites. These were found in 1974! Fern leaves from a nearby coal mine. Shark teeth! I'll be back soon with more discoveries during our different kind of fossil hunt!

I ran into these the other day and have no idea where I got them. I got these many many years ago. Im hoping someone can tell me more info? I know, tuff to tell without formation and all that, but really have no idea. Im thinking north africa? Gots about 200 or 300 of these little things. I dont want them, just tryiing to figure out all the info so i can sell them. RB

Cold blustery day on the north coast of Normandy at Villers sur Mer The rock strata starts with upper callovian to the middle Oxfordian Jurassic capped with Lower cenomanian upper greensand Cretaceous

I found this ammonite when i split some shale at runswick bay. It looks different from the others maybe because it has been crushed? Can anybody ID? I wet it to try to make it easier to see.

Well Hello everyone.. As promised here are some of the pictures of our finds with a group of about 25 at the Ladonia Fossil Park on the North Sulphur River. We had a great time searching thru the pebbles and edges of the cliffs. a couple of bone fragments were found but nothing major. We found several gastropods in some matrix and did some sifting at the gravel bars. We did find a broken arrow head but no shark teeth in the area. Here are some pictures of our finds. Enjoy as I do have some questions i'll ask on the ID Forum.

Looking for an ID on two tiny ammonites that I have had in my collection for a long time. The id that I have on them is "Acanthoceras worthense" from the Cretaceous of Roanote, Texas. Just looking for confirmation or correction. Thanks.