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I recently went on two fossil hunting trips to Cretaceous sediments of Eastern North Carolina, the second of which was earlier today. Today’s trip to the Bladen formation yielded baculites ammonites, some worn mosasaur teeth, the nicest goblin shark teeth I’ve personally collected, some fish mouth plates, turtle shell fragments, and some other goodies. My first trip a couple weeks ago was to Tar Heel formation sediments and I collected several small mosasaur teeth, a mosasaur vertebra, a piece of petrified lignite, lots of goblin and crow shark teeth, lots of turtle shell, a very worn Deinosuchus tooth, and some coprolites (I’ve posted a few of the images from this trip in the ID section of the forum already). North Carolina is an amazing U.S. state for fossils, it has loads of fossils from the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic (although if you want Jurassic look elsewhere). If you haven’t already, you should come check it out! Pics from today’s trip: Pics from the first trip:

Hi, I split flint pebbles on a beach at Wherrytown, Cornwall, UK to use as chisels to carve granite and dolerite sculptures. This one cleaved nicely and on each facet had near identical patterns. I have seen thousands of flint facets and expect a few fossils, however this looks like a soft bodied creature; Annelida hirudinea. It looks segmented and has iron compounds within as though remains of blood. Have I been fooled by banded flint or is this remarkable preservation of something like a fish leach? Graham

A friend uncovered this oddball today in the Late Ordovician (Sandbian) of eastern Missouri, in the uppermost part of the Plattin Group (a Platteville equivalent) or possibly the lowermost part of the Decorah Group. He's been finding a lot of weird fossils in that zone, including articulated cyclocystoids, but this one I'm at a loss on. Too wobbly for an orthoconic cephalopod, too much space between calcite elements for a crinoid column. Given the size, is machaeridian a possibility? What other ideas should we be considering?

I am a novice.I live in south western Ohio (Ordovician). I have some acreage and lots of hills and creeks. I have been picking up what look like sedimentary rocks and many are loaded with marine fossils. The photos below show a piece of soft rock (sandstone I think, maybe shale?) with apparent bore holes (photo 1). I whacked this piece along the edge and a chunk popped off and some brown stuff was in between the layers (photo 2, close up photo 3). Are these spots the remains of the critters that made the holes in the surface of the rock or just some brown gunk? Under magnification the U-shaped brown blob on the left in photo 3 appears to be segmented. Any comments would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!