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One week fossil collecting trip out west, my sixth time in the past six years. Flew into Denver. Rented a car and headed down to Castle Rock where I spent the night at a motel. Next day drove up to Florissant Fossil Quarry. It was Wednesday and they're normally closed during the week in September, but I made special arrangements for a few hours visit. Compared to my two previous visits there, didn't do as well. The other times, I was there for the whole day, this time was just for three hours, and they had had a considerable amount of rain recently and so the shale was more crumbly and more difficult to split. Here are some of my finds. Plants:

This trip was planned for last weekend but my wife was scheduled to fly home and the kiddos were working or busy so I get the pleasure of picking her up. The foul weather extended the flight plans from mid morning to 5 pm. I could have had my cake and eaten it too. Oh well, I picked the better choice . So this morning I got up at 5 AM, grabbed my gear and nutritive goodies and hit the road. South by South East to Price, UT- 129 miles/207 km from home. A beautiful day was forecast, but I was quite surprised at the temperature drop as I went over Solider Summit pass. 32F read the dash light. Enough about the weather...it did indeed bloom into a beautiful late summer day. Blue skies, 80F. I flubbed a few turns onto BLM land and had to U-turn it back 2 miles to get to one of my Google Maps pinned favorites. In reality, it wouldn't have made a difference. I checked the map with my destination pins and one fav was 22 miles from the first one and the last one was 50 miles from the first. It looks way smaller online than in reality. duhh! My favorite new Spanish word is "Cuesta" . pronounced coo-esta. Wiki says-A cuesta (from Spanish cuesta "slope") is a hill or ridge with a gentle slope on one side, and a steep slope on the other. To me it looks like a perfect surfing wave, nice face in the front and lot of water behind it to power it along. Here's one in the distance. Imagine 50 miles of these beautiful land waves spitting out lovely fossil filled concretions right down the the face of the wave. Kinda like the shores of England. You can see the two lines. It's the cuesta in the distance, not the gully wash below my car on the left foreground. I parked there and hiked down the gully across the wash keeping an eye on the banks and wash debris. Nothing. Then about 200 meters to the base of the closest cuesta for some scouting. That took about Five Minutes. First brown concretion I came upon at the cuesta base got a taste of hammer. Bam! Fossil Bomb! Bivalves, Gastropods and my target fossil Ammonites! Double bivalve is number one find of the day. Same concretion rewards me with my first ammo. The two species reputed to be in these concretions and stratigraphy are prionocyclus hyatti and prionocyclus wyomingensis. This one is the former in robust form. I actually kissed this one I was so stoked. lol. After that I started scouting for concretions and well...let's just say there is no shortage. I then surveyed the immediate landscape and decided to go south first to walk the base and ridge of this rather short cuesta and try to determine the best source. After too long of a hike I found the distribution to about the same. So instead of north I hiked up the face of the slope and checked out the layers. The top had no particular showing of concretions eroding out so that put them coming out a little lower down. The top had shale or sandstone looking material all over the edge. Nothing was showing so I flipped a few of the larger layered slabs. Sure enough the underside had something completely different. So please throw in your best ID names at will. There was a shaley patch on top of these things like smashed potato chips/crisps which brushed off easily revealing the forest of something unfamiliar to me. Crinoids? maybe, IDK. A marine coral? maybe, IDK. Something else? Well I should do my homework. The slab panel and a closeup of the left section. Any ideas? Or expert ID? Cretaceous is the period. Here's the result of one concretion revealing its innards. At least 5 species. And a little friend/distraction. Bottom of the card. Closeup of previous concretion contents. The concretions were sometimes extremely crumbly with most every fossil breaking with the exception mostly with the bivalves. Ammos broke about the same ratio as the gastropods. A small pile of concretions to break open. There were a few other side adventures while scouting the cuesta but I'll end with the very last concretion I struck open. It made my day! One hit on the widest circumference. CRACK! It split open just as you see it. To wind up the commentary, I had Pete and Repeat in the boat with me again. Just like my second trip to Kemmerer, WY, fossil quarry. If you're not familiar with Pete and Repeat, it's a simple annoying joke. I say: Pete and Repeat were in a boat, Pete fell overboard. Who was left? You say: Repeat. I say: Pete and Repeat were in a boat, Pete fell overboard. Who was left? You: either say Repeat again and I repeat the joke or you get it and roll your eyes. Connect the joke to my two fossil hunting trips. Higher altitude, warming sun, dehydration, too much fossil enthusiasm = I gas out by 1:30 PM and running on stubborn and will power, I make it back to the car. Same this trip as the 2nd Kemmerer trip. Except there was an audience at Kemmerer. Just me and lizards this trip. My intention was to fill a bucket or milk crate with fossils; reality-a partial fill. Left the mystery marine fossil above my base camp. Will need to go back with cooler weather and carrying more H2O with electrolytes and not one Diet Dew with Pineapple juice mixed to carry to the digging site...NOT in the vehicle which may as well had been on Mars. I had 3 gallons of ice water, two Capri Suns, a 16 oz water bottle and another Diet Dew or three for the ride home. Plus lunch. Barely made it to the vehicle with a couple stops to cover the 300 yards. Two pounds lighter than yesterday. More pics if interested. PS -Roger (Ludwigia) pack your bags, book a flight. This destination is at 6,000'ASL, flat ground for the most part, multiple trips to the vehicle with the finds, free transportation from the airport & fossil site plus room and board! I'll be going back a number of times this season and post winter snow melt which is usually minimal down south in Utah. The name of the area is Mounds Reef if anyone is curious about it. Not the specific hunting sites, just a big chunk of desert real estate. Approx. 100 sq miles of not much but cuestas, yeah!

All of these were found in Southeast Florida. Likely from the Pleistocene Miami Limestone (West Bryozoan Facies). Thank you.

The first images are of a bone i am almost certain is non-fossilized but i could always be wrong! can anyone ID the species? Next images are of what i assume may be petrified wood, any chance it is? Its quite heavy for its small size, and has a wood-like texture. Then i have this black shell-like thing, unsure of it’s species but it is certainly something. Lastly i ID’d this tooth as a cretaceous thresher shark tooth- am i right? thank you for your help!