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Hi all, I found a small fossil bone near Airey's Inlet. It was located in the scree slope ~3m above the beach, in material that appeared to be eroded from the sandstone cliff (mixed in with fossil shells, sea urchins and sea urchin spines - one of these is pictured). It looks like there is also a possible bryazoan or sponge on the surface of the bone. Thoughts on ID/age? Cheers Oli IMG_9484.HEIC IMG_9496.HEIC IMG_9493.HEIC IMG_9491.HEIC IMG_9500.HEIC

Hi all, We spent yesterday in a different section of the quarry I posted about here. This section yielded some nice fish, plants and even another temnospondyl! Phyllotheca or a different horsetail Xenacanthid pieces Various fish bits A nice nodule with a fish inside I will post some more photos of the temnospondyl once it gets excavated, but here is a loose section from the rear of the skull. After our quarry visit we went to a terrific Eocene plant locality, will post some photos from there next!

Could anyone help with identification of this fossilized fish head section which looks like the upper palate & eye sockets. Found QLD Australia Jan 2024. Some type of gills seem to still be present. Thanks for any information 😄🙏 Kate

I found these fossils in the cliffs here in Victoria. I was told by a fossil collector that they are fish earbones/otoliths. Can anyone confirm what they are? Thanks, Manfi

Hello everyone! A couple of weeks ago, I traveled to Turimetta Beach, a Triassic fossil locality in the Sydney Basin. I found several plant fossils. Some were too fragmentary for ID, but if possible I would like to know people's opinions on the ID of these three. I've read through previous forum posts and am aware these might not be able to be ID'ed. Fossil plate which I found as a rockfall near Turimetta Headland. A relatively large stem which was found in the same rockfall. A small leaf I found at an outcrop on the beach itself. Thanks for any possible help!

Recently we had a quick exploratory trip just south of Sydney in search of Triassic fish and Tertiary leaves. Our first stop yielded a terrific but partially weathered nodule exposed in an outcrop of the Ashfield Shale. A clear layer was present in the cross section so it was likely to yield a fish! This is it after most of it was removed, unfortunately I don't have any before photos but the layer through the middle is clearly visible: Will include photos of the prep later in this post. Our next stop was the main focus of our trip but wasn't too eventful unfortunately. We drove around back roads looking for new outcrops of an unnamed Tertiary formation which sometimes yields very well preserved leaves and insects. We found a few outcrops of it but only one section of road yielded any good leaves. The site: A freshly broken rock with leaves: As soon as we got home I started on the fish nodule. The fish layer had already partially split which was helpful, but meant the inside was quite weathered and covered in calcium carbonate. Splitting the nodule carefully with a knife: A fresh split. Note the white calcium carbonate encrusting the surface: Soaking the pieces in acetic acid (8% vinegar) to dissolve away the calcium carbonate: The same piece I showed before after acid preparation, the fish are now clearly visible: Splitting the rest of the nodule: Reassembling after acid prep: The rock is a thick siderite nodule so is very heavy once all glued together. With pieces this large I usually make a spray foam cradle for the pieces to sit in, meaning I can disassemble it to move it around. Loosely assembled and starting with the spray foam: Surprisingly, this nodule ended up being packed with fish. The main large fish in the middle is likely a species of Elonichthys, but throughout the rest of the nodule are several other genera including Saurichthys, Cleithrolepis and Elpisopholis. Overall I can count just under 60 individual fish on this one rock, many are just small sections of scale pattern though. The Cleithrolepis is likely complete but sits underneath a couple of other fish, and the Saurichthys is tiny and incomplete but its long snout is unmistakable. The preservation in most of the specimens is poor, as with most other Ashfield Shale nodules, but the association of so many fish is of interest! One half of the nodule, I haven't quite finished the counterpart yet but it does have slightly better preservation. Note the partially exposed Cleithrolepis just in front of the pectoral fins of the largest fish: A small but particularly densely packed section: Will include more photos in coming days!

I went fossil hunting on Susan Gilmor Beach Newcastle N.S.W and found this. Can anyone help with identification I am a complete noob

1.75-Billion-Year-Old Fossils Are Oldest Record of Oxygenic Photosynthesis The preserved structures show a process that gave rise to life as we know it. By Isaac Schultz, GIZMODO, January 3, 2023 Photosynthesis Evolved as Early as 1.75 Billion Years Ago, Microfossils Suggest Jan 3, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro. SciNews The paywalled paper is; Demoulin, C.F., Lara, Y.J., Lambion, A. et al. Oldest thylakoids in fossil cells directly evidence oxygenic photosynthesis. Nature (2024). Yours, Paul H.

Hi all, posting some of the photos of fossils I found at Turimetta Beach in NSW. Can anyone recognise any plants or animals in any of these? Would love to know some more about them! Thanks # 1 #2 # 3 # 4 # 5

Over the last month I've been staying with my partner in Queensland who lives close to some amazing fossil sites, namely the Redbank Plains Formation. This formation is well known for its Paleocene/Eocene plants, insects, fishes and turtles. It was extensively collected from during the 1900s when the area was mostly comprised of pastures and bushland. Most of the fossils were found in iron-rich mudstone nodules which weathered out of the soil and gullies, although many plants and insects were collected from a clay pit and found directly in white mudstone. Nowadays, much of the formation has been covered by housing development, making it difficult to collect from. One exposure was protected within a council reserve, but fossils in there were difficult to find as they had to naturally weather out of the formation. I didn't have high hopes for finding anything in the area but after scouring geology maps I noticed one exposure which looked promising. It was mapped as Redbank Plains Formation but easily could've just been part of the surrounding Triassic/Jurassic sandstones. After finally being able to visit, we found it to be a new exposure of the Redbank Plains Formation! It didn't yield many fossils but the geology was terrific. At the top, a sandstone horizon which I think still belongs to the Redbank Plains Formation overlies the fossil bearing black carbonaceous shale, with a white clay type horizon below. Some more interesting geology just to the right of where the previous photo was taken. Just above the white clay horizon is a thin layer of tuff, overlain by more carbonaceous shale, then overlain by a thin layer of basalt, with more carbonaceous shale above. A different part of the exposure which was very rich in nodules. Fossils in these nodules were very rare in comparison to other Redbank Plains Formation sites, with just occasional plant material or fish bits. After suffering in the 34˚ summer heat for a few hours, we left in search of a different site a few hours away which yielded nothing. But then, on our way home, we noticed another potential Redbank Plains Formation exposure. This one was much more successful in terms of fossils, and also previously unknown! A partial fish as found in situ. Note the characteristic black shale it has weathered out of. The cross section of fish bones can be seen in this weathered nodule. A leaf, perhaps a Banksia sp.? A mash of fish bone in a nodule we split. Our best find of the day, a beautiful articulated fish! In situ: After some preparation (will post photos of it finished when I complete it). Unfortunately the nodule this was in fractured in many places, a result of the drying mudstone matrix. A tiny fish before and after preparation (also not finished, waiting on a replacement tip for my airscribe). This species is Notogoneus parvus. That is all for now, will update with more photos as I prepare everything! The Queensland Museum has been made aware of this new and potentially significant site, so hopefully it can be protected.

Hi everyone! Looking for help in ID-ing a found object from the beach. We are absolutely bewildered as to what this is! details: -Found 1 hour north of Sydney, Australia on the beach -Heavy, fossilised object with very distinct “ribbon” like formation patter on end -texture is reminiscent of a claw or tusk -plaque-like material in crevices (it is not sand)

Hi i found this maybe pleciasaur opal bone inside an opal i bought can u tell me if it is a pleciasaur or other marine creature looks like either a rib bone or tail its about an inch in size

Hello everyone and hope you're all having a wonderful day. Recently, I had the brilliant opportunity to volunteer at the Australian Museum in Sydney. It has definitely been a highlight of this year for me, and I thoroughly enjoyed it! While I was there, I spent a lot of time exploring the museum, and eventually saw and took photographs of every palaeontological item on display I am aware of, and would like to show them all to you now as an early Christmas present. I do know @Notidanodon did get to share some photographs of the museum a while ago. If you're wondering why the opalised shells Notidanodon shared are not in this topic, they are no longer on display as far as I know. I did also get to see some fossil specimens behind-the-scenes, but I did not get to take pictures of them, so these are only the fossils and replicas on public display I do have a lot of photos of other things as well, particularly the Rameses travelling exhibition, as well as labels of the palaeontology items, so if you want anything in particular, please PM me. I also have a lot of similar photographs of the Australian Fossil and Mineral Museum in Bathurst, and will probably post those next year. This will be a long topic, and I doubt I'll finish it all today, but here goes: Dinosaur Gallery Entrance Replica skeleton of Jobaria tiguidensis and Afrovenator abakensis, originally discovered by Paul Sereno. You'll see that a lot of Sereno's skeletons are on display in this gallery, as he was involved with its creation. The Jobaria mount from behind; note the upper floor of displays no longer accesible which the sauropod's head reaches up into. From talking with the other volunteers I'm pretty sure this upper floor used to be part of the 'More than Dinosaurs' gallery which the current Dinosaurs gallery replaced, but I cannot find any images of the older gallery to confirm this besides a close-up of a Stegosaurus (which is still in the museum). Mesozoic Plants Pretty nicely, there is a decent amount of space in the gallery dedicated to non-dinosaurs. While I would have preferred a simple 'Fossil Gallery' with a variety of extinct organisms on display, this is still a good compromise. Photograph showing how the plants section, labelled 'A Changing World', is presented. Each of the large windows is into a cabinet displaying the real fossil plants, and are accompanied by a reconstruction of terrestrial life at the time at a child's eyeline, so they can get a better idea of how life on land looked in each period. You can look into them through the small rectangles below the large windows. They all appear in '3D'. The orange circles cover up areas where children can smell what certain plants would have been like (the Triassic one is of a conifer, and the Cretaceous one is of a flowering plant). Australian Triassic plants. Top left is Rissikia media, bottom left is Dicroidium zuberi and right is Cladophelbis australis. Here is the reconstruction of the Triassic. Australian Jurassic Plants. Left is Agathis jurassica, right is Osmundacaulis sp. Here is the accompanying Jurassic reconstruction. Early Cretaceous Australian plants. Ginkgoites australis at left and Phullopteroides dentata at right. Fun fact; this is where I first learned that seed ferns survived into the Cretaceous, as most dinosaur books simply seem to forget about them after the Triassic period. I guess you can also see my hand here. That's one of the annoying things about all of these items being behind glass; it's difficult to take nice photos of them without getting yourself into them. Still, it's better than the alternative, as you'll see later... Here is the Early Cretaceous reconstruction. Weird how there is a stegosaur, when stegosaurs easily reached their peak diversity and abundance in the Jurassic. Only one plant is in the Late Cretaceous cabinet, and ironically it is unidentified. The final reconstruction, which is of the Late Cretaceous. Interesting how this is the only one to not have a Theropod or Sauropodomorph. Non-Dinosaur Mesozoic Animals Opposite to the plant display, there is a section dedicated to the animals the dinosaurs shared their world with. Interestingly, this section starts out with an Eoraptor lunensis cast, to highlight certain features unique to dinosaurs, such as their hollow hip sockets. You can see parts of the herbivores and carnivores sections in the background. Over my many trips, I often seem to gravitate to this specimen, as besides the Jobaria, Giganotosaurus and Archaeopteryx it is easily the one I have the most photos of on my phone (obviously more than two, don't want to clutter the page). Properly starting off our journey on non-dinosaurs is a display of terrestrial animals. All fossils are real except stated otherwise: Skull of an unidentified Dicynodont found in Zambia. Cast of Rhamphorynchus muensteri from Solnhofen in Bavaria, Germany. Parotosaurus wadei skull from Brookvale, NSW, Australia. Clarotitan andersoni from Brookvale, NSW, Australia. There is another specimen in a different gallery which I took a better picture of. Cleitholepis granulata from Somersby, NSW, Australia. Cavernericthys talbragerensis from Tralbragar, NSW, Australia. It is overlaid on a leaf. You'll notice some other fossils from Tralbragar in the Jurassic plants cabinet, as well as in another gallery. Left is a nymph of Promimara cephalota, found in Koonwarra, Victoria, Australia, and right is an unidentified cockroach from Brookvale, NSW, Australia. Aeschnogomphus sp. from Solnhofen in Bavaria, Germany. This specimen was special, but very annoying to get a photograph of. Cast of lower jaw of Teinolophis trusleri, a monotreme mammal found in Inverloch, Victoria, Australia. According to the label it is the oldest known mammal in Australia, even older than Steropodon. I'm going to start a new post now so that I don't run out of space.

Hi everyone- absolute Newbie to the forum here. Excited to be getting geological. From what I have seen it looks like this is probably Fossiliferous Limestone as it was found on a South Australian beach. It does however smell rather of gunpowder and is a bit darker than the limestone specimens I've seen. I do wonder what I have found here xAlex

Hello, just recently I did my first fossil hunting at Turimetta Beach Sydney around the exposure of Triassic shale. I found a nice dicroidium fossil I think (after seeing some similar posts from this location) and two more which I'm unsure of the species (picture below and sorry one is without scale). Any ideas would be appreciated of what species or plant group these two fossils are from which look very much like a leaf or stem stem structure. Thanks!

This is a shell from Lightning Ridge, Australia. It had something on it. Is this periostracum? if so how was it preserved in 3D. All images but the first one were taken under a microscope. Thanks!

Here is a boulder opal from Australia. The first image shows the whole specimen , all others are microscopic images. Dimensions are 78.540 x 58.070 x 28.670 mm what do you think? Thanks!

I recently discovered an opalized fossil from Lightning Ridge, Australia, available for sale online. The seller asserts that it is either a mammal or primate tooth fossil. As I'm unfamiliar with fossils from the Lightning Ridge region, identifying it is beyond my capability. Can anyone help me in determining whether it is a mammal or primate tooth fossil?

George E. Mustoe and Elizabeth T Smith, 2023. Timing of Opalization at Lightning Ridge, Australia: New Evidence from Opalized Fossils. Minerals 13(1471):1-43. Christian Voiculescu-Holvad, 2018. The Opalised Fossils of Australia: Mineralogical and Paleontological Treasures from the Australian Outback Yours, Paul H.

We were recently granted access to a terrific site south of Sydney. This quarry extracts Ashfield Shale for the manufacturing of bricks and has been operating for many decades, some fossils from here housed in the Australian Museum were collected in the 1960s. To my knowledge, nobody has collected here for quite a long time, so we were excited to have a look! The area is mapped as Bringelly Shale, but I think the lower section of the pit is actually Ashfield Shale. The upper section of the pit is a finely bedded sandstone and shale rather than the black shale characteristic of the Ashfield Shale. Our focus was in this lower black shale where we looked for ironstone nodules which can contain fish, temnospondyl amphibians, sharks, bivalves, etc. Here is a nodule where the cross section of a fish can be seen (the thin line just above my pick): As can be seen in this photo, the pit is huge! Much more of it is out of view. My dad and some cars in the background for reference. The back section of the quarry was actively being worked so a lot of fresh and unweathered shale was exposed. This made it hard to spot the nodules we were after since they often split through the middle and blend in with the surrounding shale. Our best luck was in a section alongside the road where a huge wall of shale was presumably exposed many decades ago, allowing the shale to weather away leaving protruding nodules. Unfortunately, many of the nodules had been split through the middle and broken up. Extracting these nodules from the sheer rock face was very difficult! Fortunately, the quarry manager was super generous and helped us remove some with an excavator. The next problem was actually removing the nodules in one piece. They aren't like the beautiful ammonite nodules found on the Jurassic Coast, these are filled with vertical fractures and are a nightmare to remove and split open, even when unweathered. A real nightmare to work with! This rock face yielded some great finds. Lots of smaller nodules contained fish, but one contained a xenacanthid shark and two contained temnospondyl amphibians! The xenacanthid nodule was already mostly gone (probably for many decades) but the characteristic spines and cartilage texture was unmistakeable. Xenacanthid bits: One of the temnospondyl skulls freshly cracked open. This specimen and the other temnospondyl skull are at the Australian Museum currently, will prepare them soon! On our next visit (yestderday) we came much better prepared. We hired a jackhammer which made short work of the shale, much better than scraping away the surface with the bucket of an excavator. Here is dad working on exposing the rest of one of the temnospondyl nodules (note the markings to help us put it back together when it inevitably broke during the extraction): Here is the same nodule BEFORE we started with the jackhammer (photo taken on the first visit)! Once we got that nodule out, we had a bit of spare time before we had to leave. I had a look in the freshly dug section of the quarry for any nodules we might've missed and found nothing of much interest other than a nodule containing a bivalve coquina. That was until I noticed one more tiny nodule, which was empty. But upon exposing the surrounding shale I noticed some fish! This is highly unusual considering that most of the vertebrate fossils here are found in nodules. The small section of shale I exposed had quite a few fish, all stacked on top of each other. In the same chunk of shale was also a few horsetail stems and a (conifer?) cone. Here are some in-situ photos of the fish and some after I put them back together at home. The shale is very fragmentary so it was difficult to extract them. Will update soon with better photos of some of our finds!

Hi All, Found these while gardening today in my backyard in suburbs in adelaide, SA. Are they fossilised bone? Of any significance?Both pieces are heaver than expected, the small fragment is kind of shiny. Both are quite hard and solid and make a tapping sound when tapped against something hard. Any guesses as to what they could be from? Thankyou! :-)

Six new species of Western Australian trilobites discovered by Patrick Smith, Heidi J. Allen, Australian Museum PhysOrg Article the open access paper is: Smith, P.M. and Allen, H.J., 2023. Early Ordovician trilobites from Barnicarndy 1 stratigraphic well of the southern Canning Basin, Western Australia. Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology, pp.1-58. Yours, Paul H.

Hello everyone, and hope you've all had a good day so far. I am currently having a break after putting most of my bookcase together. Here are some fossil plants found in the Triassic layers of the Sydney Basin I would like identified if possible. As before, I would like the most specific identification possible, but don't mind genus or clade names if they'd be more accurate. I know the general location for these, so don't worry about that. If you need more photographs for a proper identification, I can take more in a couple of hours or tomorrow. Specimen 1: Shale plant fossil This fossil was found by a friend in the shale rock layer in the Northern Beaches region. This makes it Triassic in age. I read this document (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gregory-Retallack/publication/241677571_Geological_excursion_guide_to_the_sea_cliffs_north_of_Sydney/links/55d2119008ae0b8f3ef776a9/Geological-excursion-guide-to-the-sea-cliffs-north-of-Sydney.pdf) and after comparing the plant to various images on the document, I came to the conclusion that the plant was a specimen of the seed fern Dicroidium. Is this an accurate identification? Specimen 2: Plant Assortment This assortment of various plant fossils was found by another person I used to know in the Sydney Basin. I assume it is Triassic, as the vast majority of exposed sedimentary rocks in Sydney are of that age, although it might be Permian. I do not know the exact region. There seem to be multiple different plants on the slab, and they seem to be more poorly preserved than the shale layer plant. Does anyone know what they are? Also, do any of you have any tips for getting better images? If I take any more, I'll probably use my SLR camera, as my phone's camera is terrible. Thanks for the help! Edit: Changed the title to make it more obvious this is a new thread.

Fossils show giant spiders have been creeping around Australia for 16 million years (msn.com) Amazing fossil, are these real fossil color ?

Earth's biggest cache of pink diamonds formed in the breakup of the 1st supercontinent 'Nuna' by Stephanie Pappas, LIveScience, September 19, 2023 Geologists Unravel the Mysteries of Australia’s Rare Pink Diamonds The dazzling, blush-colored gems likely emerged from Earth’s mantle some 1.3 billion years ago, when a supercontinent named Nuna broke up, study suggests by Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian, September 20, 2023 The open access paper is: Olierook, H.K.H., Fougerouse, D., Doucet, L.S. et al. Emplacement of the Argyle diamond deposit into an ancient rift zone triggered by supercontinent breakup. Nat Commun 14, 5274 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-40904-8 Yours, Paul H.