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Hey guys, took the daughter down to Beaumaris for a quick look today & I found this piece which reminds me (I'm sure), of a fish jaw I've seen posted somewhere else. If anyone can ID I'd be grateful. Have a horrible feeling that my daughter may have trumped me with this bone fragment, any clues?

Hello all, picked up a few bits from Beaumaris the other day & was looking for ID's Firstly this bone fragment. 110mm/85mm I'm thinking land mammal as the inner structure doesn't really match that of the local cetacean finds but I'm happy to be put right. The outer surface which is very worn but where you can still see the preserved outer layer, has an unusual texture which I'm not familiar with. As this is my first post & undoubtedly I've stuffed something up along the way, I'll post the other finds as I go. Thanks for the time & any thoughts are most welcome.

Hello all! Recently, I went down to Beaumaris to look for fossils. We were there for a few hours and only found the usual fossils (Lovenia Woodsi) But as we were making our way out of the site, I spotted a large and unusual rock laying in the sand. When I picked it up, I was surprised to find it was filled with a number of fossils and fossilised imprints of shells and over invertebrates. Does anyone know a good way to clean the fossil or should I just leave it? Thanks, Dan

Hello. I am quite new to fossil hunting and would like some help. I am going down to Beaumaris next week to go for a fossick. (The fossils you can find there are from the Late Miocene to Early Pliocene) Can anyone give me some tips on how to look for fossils effectively and what I should be looking for? Thanks, Daniel

Hello, I found the following specimen at Beaumaris today. It has a bone like shape ....looks like the end of a long bone, but it's hollow. Can anyone assist with an identification. Thanks, Daniel

Hello TFF! I went exploring the cliffs at Beaumaris (Melbourne, Australia) recently and found some small fossils. While I recognise the Echinoids from other posts, I was wondering if the piece in the bottom right is also a fossil of some sort? Also I found a shell that's stone/rock - is this a fossil?

This bone fragment was collected on the beach at Beaumaris in Victoria, Australia. The site is latest Miocene to earliest Pliocene in age (5 - 6 million years old) and consists of the Beaumaris Sandstone formation. Fossils of bony fish, sharks, whales, dolphins, seals, penguins, flying birds and terrestrial marsupials are all known from the location. This PDF gives a great overview of the Beaumaris fauna for those that are unfamiliar with it: http://www.marinecare.org.au/images/Fossils_of_Beaumaris_Feb_2015.pdf I am thinking possibly some kind of jaw fragment just based on the shape, but from what i am not sure. The best match i can see in the document above is the base of the Albatross beak on page 13, but i am not holding my breath on that one. There is dark coloured bone along the edges on both side faces, separated by sediment in the middle. The sediment gap between the bone is larger on one side than the other. The whole piece measures 30mm long, stands almost 20mm tall and is 20mm wide at the widest end. Any ideas?

This shark tooth was found on the foreshore at Beaumaris in Victoria, Australia. It is 5-6 million years old. I am confident it is a mako shark tooth but i am trying to decide which species to label it. The following shark taxa are listed in the fauna found at this location: Heterodontus cainozoicus, Carcharias taurus, Carcharodon megalodon, Parotodus benedeni, Isurus desori, Isurus oxyrinchus, Isurus hastalis, Isurus retroflexus, Lamna?, Megascyliorhinus sp., Carcharhinus cf. brachyurus, Carcharhinus sp., Galeocerdo aduncus The majority of teeth at the site are from Carcharodon hastalis (or Isurus hastalis depending on who you believe). However i feel like my tooth is too narrow to be a C. hastalis tooth. Even the first lower anteriors of C. hastalis that i have seen are somewhat proportionally wider than my example, hence why i am leaning towards one of the other species of mako but i want to know what the shark tooth experts on this forum think. I had a look in the book 'Vertebrate Palaeontology of Australasia' (which has a nice section on fossil chondrichthyans) and the closest match i could see was a first lower anterior tooth from Isurus paucus (tooth A on page 552 if anyone has the book) but this species isn't listed in the fauna for Beaumaris. Might it instead be an Isurus oxyrinchus or desori tooth? Additionally my tooth is fairly straight, and most of the other mako specimens i am seeing are more curved. It measures 24 mm long and 11 mm wide.

G'day all! I have just returned from a three day collecting trip to Beaumaris, a coastal suburb of Melbourne in Australia. This report acts as a pictorial overview of the trip and provides an insight into what collecting at this beach location is like. A similar trip was undertaken by@digit late last year (http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/70070-quick-trip-to-beaumaris-cliffs-australia/). I too had previously spent two days at this location in early 2016, during my first Victorian fossil hunting trip. Pictures of the finds from that trip can be found in this thread: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/61248-fossil-hunting-holiday-in-victoria-australia-dec-2015-jan-2016/ I decided to return to Beaumaris for a second time as i haven't been collecting for quite some time and i wanted to find more vertebrate material from this location, as i knew the potential that the site possesses and didn't manage to do it enough justice on my first trip here. All of these finds were collected on the shore across the three days that i spent here from the 14th through to the 16th of February. I spent most of that time rummaging on hands and knees in the beach shingle near the Beaumaris Motor Yacht Squadron. As mentioned my main goal was to collect vertebrate material and i was especially interested in finding shark teeth. The fossils come from the Beaumaris Sandstone formation and are between 5 and 6 million years old (latest Miocene or earliest Pliocene). Most of the vertebrate material is derived from a phosphatic nodule bed at the base of this formation, just above the unit contact with the underlying Gellibrand Marl. This nodule bed outcrops only at the very base of the cliffs and on the shore platform which is normally covered by the sea except at low tide. Because i was collecting loose material from the beach shingle a lot of the bones and teeth are heavily worn and fragmentary, but they are still very cool! Beaumaris is highly significant as it is one of the only places in Australia where you get fossils of both marine and terrestrial animals from this period of time, capturing a snapshot of almost the entire ecosystem from fish, birds and mammals to corals, gastropods, echinoids and many others. It is also one of the only places where you can collect vertebrate fossils so close to a major Australian city (only about 30 minutes drive from the centre of Melbourne). The Location: Fossil bones in-situ and in my hand (these are most likely from whales): Many more pictures still to come!

These are from a trip to the well-known Beaumaris Cliff formation in Victoria, Australia. This is a sea cliff site, generally dating 5-6 million years old. Most finds here are marine or coastal, though diprotodontid fossils have been found from time to time. All of these finds were in the nodule bed at the base of the cliff. Bear in mind I haven't been fossil hunting since i was 9 years old, so I have literally no idea what I'm looking at here and it's very possible I've mis-identifed pseudofossils or oddly-shaped rocks. It's a great site. Pity there's a dirty great car park built over 90% of it...

While my wife Tammy and I were down in Australia celebrating our anniversary (we honeymooned down under way too long ago), we looked around to see if there was a quick place we could indulge our passion for fossil hunting while we were there. I found a lot of great information on TFF (valuable resource that it is). In addition to many fine offers to be shown the fossil goodness around the Queensland area and excellent suggestions from Dave (@sandgroper) on what to see on the western coast of Australia, I was able to plan a short fossil excursion in the Melbourne area. I had searched TFF before the trip to see if anybody had posted information on trips that were fairly quick and easy without needing to setup permission ahead of time or trudge through the countryside looking for the exact locality. What I found was a posting by @Paleoworld-101 detailing a trip he made back in January which included a stop at the Beaumaris Cliffs near Melbourne: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/61248-fossil-hunting-holiday-in-victoria-australia-dec-2015-jan-2016/&do=findComment&comment=653003 While the less commonly found items such as cetacean bones or shark teeth would be fun, what intrigued me was that a particular species of irregular (heart) urchin called Lovenia woodsii seemed to be there in some abundance. This is just what I was looking for--a target on which to focus my hunting in the limited time I'd have there and something that would display nicely. Another forum member, Tom (@Seve78) was incredibly helpful in providing us some detailed information on where to hunt at the site (and sending us tide tables for the dates we'd likely be able to be there). I was also able to contact Dr. David Holloway, Senior Curator, Invertebrate Palaeontology, Museum Victoria ahead of time and inquire about legally taking my finds out of the country. Australia (rightly so) has put in place the Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage Act 1986 which requires that objects such as antiques, artifacts, fossils, meteorites and other objects of cultural significance be verified to be adequately represented in public collections in Australia before they are allowed to be exported. The fact that Lovenia echinoids are very common at the site made me certain that there would be no issues exporting them but making contact before collecting allowed me to receive a letter of authorization shortly after collecting at Beaumaris. A little planning saves a lot of effort in the long run. So with all my preparations made we flew off to Australia for our extended (and busy) tour of southern and western Australia. The day we flew back into Melbourne we picked up a rental car at the airport and set the GPS for our destination in Beaumaris. Having spent the previous week in relatively sparsely-populated Tasmania, the traffic around Melbourne was hard to get used to (especially driving on the opposite side of the road ). In time, we finally made it to the site by the Beaumaris Motor Yacht Squadron. I always think of jet fighters when I hear the word 'squadron' so a 'yacht squadron' always make me grin with silly images in my head. We parked the car in an appropriate location on one of the residential streets and followed the instructions to the site. When we arrived the tide was out but was slowly returning. Having access to the further reaches of the site is only possible during low tide (unless you want to get wet from the knees down). We spent a few minutes at the first beach area and then proceeded to further down the beach. Here are some photos for those not familiar with the site. The area just past the section roped off with orange netting becomes unpassable at higher tide. You can't walk further up the shore and the water comes to the base of this area so you'll get wet if you attempt crossing at anything but low tide. The cliffs are composed of a bright yellow sandstone material (Beaumaris Sandstone) but did not appear to show much in the way of fossil material. I was told that the best place to hunt was in the 'shingle' or broken rocky area at the base of the cliffs. Even if the cliffs were better hunting (and they're not) there are usually laws about digging into cliffs and causing erosion so I never do that anyway. Here is the first part of the beach (accessible at any tide and likely hunted more thoroughly due to that fact). We didn't spend much time there and moved on further. The second beach was where we started to find Lovenia. We just started looking in the rock rubble (shingle) till we got the search image. This is what that beach looked like: The beach was well full of enough rock to search through for some time: We ignored the sandstone cliffs and instead hunted in the gravely area near their base (and all along the beach):

Hello, recently I went down to Beaumaris and found some fossils. I was wondering if anyone could tell me what they are? Thanks

Hello, I found this at Beaumaris today. I think it might be a fossil coral. What do people think? Regards, Dan

Hello, I found this at Beaumaris today. I think it might be a bone? What do people think? Thanks, Dan