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In other publications I already spoke about some fossil leaves found in an area called Carrizal, here in Nicaragua, and which belongs to the Brito formation (A section of the country's southern Pacific). This formation, thanks to different studies in the area, was determined with a stratigraphic range of approximately the Eocene (between approximately 56 and 34 million years). There is not much information about studies of fossils or sediments in this area (Except for a few studies on mammals, which in fact was where I got the information about the age range of this formation). I explain all this to enter into the context of the little stratigraphic information in the area. I recently found out from my brother and from an acquaintance who collects fossils and minerals that in a municipality close to where the aforementioned fossil leaves were found (both places contained in the Brito Formation), there are also a lot of fossils of bivalves (near this same area the leaves were found, as well as some small pieces of fossil wood). The place is called San Juan del Sur, a place well known here for its beaches and tourist centers. I will put some photos of some of the pieces collected in this place. I comment on all this trying to provide as much information as possible for a possible identification of the fossils. As always thanks for your help I even have a very large piece that contains a huge number of bivalves. One of my favorite pieces from my collection by the way

Hello everyone, it's been a while since I've been a while since I've been out to collect fossils but yesterday I finally got to enjoy some time collecting and had some interesting finds I thought I'd share. Yesterday morning I got to meet up with @Jeffrey P who showed me his vast and beautiful collection of fossils before we went to collect two locations nearby in Eastern NY. The first location we visited was the Glenerie Limestone, a very interesting location due to the diversity of organisms found there and the unique preservation which results in many silicified shells a number of which are completely out of matrix. This was my second time collecting at this location and as it had just been snowing and everything melted, there was a lot of nice freshly washed out material to pick through. By far the most abundant fossils here are brachiopods and of those, the most common is probably Leptocoelia flabellites, I collected a few of these and some appear on the larger matrix pieces with other fossils but they're really common so only a few were kept: Meristella sp. are also pretty abundant, I picked up a few that I thought had nicer preservation, or were complete as those are not as common at this site These are the shells of two spiriferid, I collected a number of these last time, the most common ones are Acrospirifer sp. and Howella sp. I believe but I do not know how to differentiate between the two This piece of matrix had some particularly nice spiriferids, one was pretty big for the site and another on the side of the piece has really nice preservation of some of the finse structure on the outside of the shell. I also found a Rensselaeria sp. Terebtatulid brachiopod, my second from the location, this one has more of it preserved although it is quite distorted and with little of the shell material but I still kept it as I like these Devonian Terebtatulids and they are not as common. Here's a tiny complete brachiopods I picked up, not sure about the ID yet, the detail preserved on such a small shell is actually pretty nice but the camera doesn't show it that well. Two of the brachiopods found appear to be inarticulate brachiopods, although I'm not sure if it's possible to put an ID to either of them, the first is preserved as an impression, I did look at some of the internal anatomy of lower Devonian inarticulate brachiopods and this does look a lot like Craniops sp. but I don't know if I could call it that without further evidence The other has some shell material but it's small and not completely exposed so I am not sure if it can be identified or even if it is an inarticulate brachiopod And some miscellaneous brachiopods I haven't yet Identified: Here's another item that confused me, it appears to be a brachiopod from the overall shape, as it is flat on one side and is in the shape of a semicircle, but if it is a brachiopod it has some kind of unusual epibiont on it with an unusual structure unlike anything else I've seen, does anyone know what this may be? Other than brachiopods, gastropods are also fairly abundant at the site, last time I was here I found a couple but nothing too special. This time, I don't know if it was the freshly washed out material, a better pattern recognition or just pure luck I found a lot, of different sizes and different quality. I was very happy to find these they're really interesting and I love the way they are preserved here, here is most of them: most of not all of them are Platystoma sp. I believe. And finally, I also found a coral, the first time I was at the site I found a tabulate coral which @Jeffrey P told me is the first he'd seen ever from this site, and this time I found a solitary rugose coral. Unfortunately it is cracked as it was laying on the surface, exposed to the elements but I was able to safely get it home and I'm currently trying to stabilize it with some glue, hopefully it will remain intact. I believe it might belong to the species Enterolasma strictum. After Glenerie we stopped at a site not far away which was in the Middle Devonian, lower Hamilton Group, part of the Marcellus Shale, also a very interesting site which was new to me, and we had some nice finds there too which I will post later once I get them photographed. Thanks for looking! Misha

Found in the Calvert formation of Virginia. I think it’s a Mercenaria sp. but would love some thoughts.

Hello and Happy New Year to all of my Fossil Friends! Yesterday and today I put in my first 2 hunts of the year. The weather here has been mild and I almost went fishing instead. But the fossil gods were calling to me and I couldn't resist their siren song. I decided to visit a site that I haven't been to for awhile. I am sorry but a have made a New Years resolution to no longer name locations for the world to see. This is a site that I have gone a few times with minimal results. Mainly it is a rather large site and the rock is hard to work. But I knew the potential for nice finds were there. So, Yesterday I arrived in the afternoon, planning on putting in a few hours. I started off on a lower layer. Now there is multiple layers of shale mixed with slate and limestone. The way this material fractures is rather strange. Which makes recovery of specimens rather tough. So while I found many cool things most where damaged in some way. Crinoids, brachiopods, bivalves, gastropods, nautiloids and trilo Cephalons were fairly common. Some were even pyritized. I must have been there for a couple hours before I decided to explore farther up the slope. I noticed a different color rock closer to the top, but there was really no where to stand. I grabbed a couple loose pieces and started seeing parts of corals and crinoids that were larger then any I have found before. Also partial trilo bits and pieces of Eldregoeps. I looked for a way to get to the very top of the slope and found a way that was not at first obvious. And then bingo! I found a small section that was easier to work and I immediately was rewarded. I started finding abundant amounts of horn coral, large crinoid segments and a nice slab with a horn coral with a trilo right next to it and possibly more. Then I removed a chunk of rock and uncovered a huge tabulate coral about the size of a dinner plate. Unfortunately this specimen was fragile and was broke into a million pieces. But I recovered some of the larger pieces. It started getting dark so I left for home with plants to go back this morning, which I did. Today was much of the same tons of corals but one horn coral was about the size of a grapefruit. This is definitely a different species than I am used to seeing. Most if not all need to be cleaned up and possibly prepped. So I plan on trying to clean up and get the mud off. I will post pics later this evening. It looks like this year has started off with a bang. I hope it is a sign of things to come.

I've had some beautiful little hikes around a sandstone outcrop and I've stumbled upon some very decent bivalves

Rare fossil clam discovered alive by Harrison Tasoff, University of California - Santa Barbara The open access paper is: Valentich-Scott P, Goddard JHR (2022) A fossil species found living off southern California, with notes on the genus Cymatioa (Mollusca, Bivalvia, Galeommatoidea). ZooKeys 1128: 53-62. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1128.95139 Yours, Paul H.

Hi Everyone, Last month I took a trip from New York to Elizabethtown, Kentucky to attend my parents' 70th anniversary. My sister and her husband, two of her adult children, and my parents, both in their 90s have all resettled there. I try to visit them at least once per year, but my parents' 70th wedding anniversary could not be missed. It is a very long trip from the suburbs of New York City to E-Town and a stop along the way was the sensible thing to do, so I spent the night in Harrison, Ohio near the border with Indiana and only 15 minutes from St. Leon, the well known Ordovician roadcut. I've been there twice before. It is a huge outcrop, fossiliferous from top to bottom, with plenty to explore. With even a full day it is impossible to do justice to the site. As it was, I spent a half day. Most of you I'm guessing have been to or seen pictures of the roadcut. Here's a couple anyway:

So this trip report is a little late in coming, but it's because the week before last was a lot to process! Just saying it was amazing would be an understatement. The Sunday before last I found the Xiphactinus with @Jared C that I've already posted about (and plan to provide an update on as soon as I'm done writing this). On Tuesday I had a job interview at the Waco Mammoth Site, and on Wednesday I got the job! Then I spent the weekend in Glen Rose, joining other volunteers from the Dallas Paleontological Society in helping Glen Kuban clean and map the dinosaur trackways recently uncovered by the horrible drought Texas has been experiencing this summer. Each of these three by themselves would be a huge highlight on my path to (hopefully) becoming a professional paleontologist, but to have all three happen in the same week? The stars must have aligned! I got more experience doing real paleo work in one week than I've had at any other point in my life, and with the new job and the fish excavation seeming like it'll be soon it looks like there's a lot more to come and I couldn't be happier about it. On to the trip report! As I said, last weekend I made the trip up to Dinosaur Valley State Park to help with the dinosaur footprints before the rain finally decided to make its way back to Texas and covered them up again. I left before sunrise on Saturday morning so I could arrive before noon while also leaving some extra time to make some stops along the way. I was hoping that I'd have some luck in the Glen Rose formation as my only experience with it before was in exposures of the lower half of the formation in Austin. Unfortunately, I didn't quite do enough research beforehand and ended up skunked - apparently the Upper Glen Rose is notoriously lacking in fossils aside from the famous dinosaur footprints. For once I was glad that I couldn't help myself when it came to making stops at every good-looking roadcut I saw. The slightly older and much more fossiliferous Comanche Peak formation is exposed almost everywhere you look closer to Waco and I had much better luck there. Here's a decent-sized Oxytropodiceras I found at one spot but ended up leaving behind since none of the fragments were very large on their own. I still want to find a complete one! By the time I got to Glen Rose I had a nice assortment of irregular echinoids (all Heteraster texanus I believe), gastropods (Tylostoma tumidum and Turritella seriatim-granulata, the latter represented by both external and internal casts), and one bivalve that could be Protocardia that I decided to keep because one side preserved both upper and lower valves and retained the original shell material which isn't very common. Of course, even though I told myself I wouldn't be tempted I did wind up taking home a different Oxytropidoceras fragment. What can I say? I'm a sucker for ammonites! I was hit with a flood of memories when I arrived in Glen Rose. I used to spend a week with my grandparents every summer at their house near Tyler when I was growing up, and they knew how much I liked all things dinosaur-related. When I was seven they took me to Glen Rose for the first time and it completely blew my mind. I liked it so much, in fact, that we went back every summer for the next five years. I hadn't been back to Dinosaur Valley State Park or the town it calls home in a while before last weekend. A lot was just as I remembered it: the Dairy Queen with its dinosaur mural, the Stone Hut Fossil Shop, and Dinosaur World with its array of concrete (and charmingly inaccurate) dinosaur statues. Even the woefully fossil-barren roadcut that I had begged my grandparents to let me explore once upon a time was right where I had last seen it. What I definitely didn't remember was the over half a mile long line of cars bumper-to-bumper trying to get into the park! It seemed like the national news coverage of the newly-exposed dinosaur tracks had been bringing people from all over - I saw more than a few license plates that were from out-of-state. As soon as I realized just how long of a wait I was in for I understood why the DPS had asked for people to begin arriving at 9 - both to beat the heat and the lines to get into the park. One fifty minute wait later and I was finally rolling up to the visitor's center. A sign out front that looked like it had just been set there said that the park was at capacity for the day, and unless visitors had prior reservations they would have to be turned away. I'm sure there were more than a few exhausted parents that were not at all looking forward to the difficult explanation they were going to have to give their dinosaur-obsessed children. After explaining to a ranger that I was there to help Glen Kuban and the DPS with the track clean-up a very friendly park ranger directed me where to go. On the way to the track site I passed the famous T. rex and Brontosaurus statues that the park was given after their debut at the 1964 New York World's Fair as part of an exhibition put on by the Sinclair Oil Corporation (their logo has been a sauropod for over 100 years!). While many of the tracks at the park are from theropods and sauropods, the park staff are keen to remind visitors that T. rex and Brontosaurus were not the trackmakers. Since their discovery the long-running theory has been that the theropod tracks were made by Acrocanthosaurus and the sauropod tracks by Sauroposeidon. The most famous tracksite is that first studied by American Museum of Natural History paleontologist R. T. Bird, showing a lone Acrocanthosaurus pursuing a herd of Sauroposeidon across the Early Cretaceous coastline. There are also other tracks made by an ornithopod similar to Iguanodon. Following the ranger's direction took me through a bumpy stretch of dirt road winding through a pasture on the western side of the park. The track site where I was headed, the Taylor Site, is easily accessible by hiking along the riverbed from the center of the park, but driving there was a lot more difficult. When I finally arrived I could already see crowds of people down in the river. I had never visited this spot before in my previous trips to the park since there were so many other track sites that were more well-advertised, but it seemed like the news coverage was drawing people out to the less-visited areas. As soon as I made my way down to the riverbed I was blown away. The DPS volunteers had clearly been busy the previous weekend. A huge pile of mud and sediment was stacked to one side, revealing a neat line of giant theropod tracks so pristine it looked like it could have been made only hours before. Thankfully there wasn't an Acrocanthosaurus lurking nearby! Ripple marks were also preserved alongside many of the tracks. I made my way over to the EZ-Up tent some DPS members had set up and introduced myself. It was surreal to meet Glen Kuban, as I remembered reading an article of his when I was only 12 and curious about the "human footprint" controversy. The Taylor Site is actually the exact spot where the misidentifed human trackway is located and so Mr. Kuban generously offered to give me a short guided tour. He was quite the character, full of obvious passion for the tracks he's spent over four decades studying and willing to answer any question asked of him by interested passerby. I asked him to set me to work and he directed me to the spot where you can see a bunch of people standing in the picture above. It turns out that there is a separate set of tracks preserved very differently from the rest at this location. The tracks were also made by a theropod, but instead of appearing as indentations in the limestone they are instead raised "casts" - the result of infilling with a sturdier sediment than the other tracks close by. When the river eroded away the layers of rock covering up the tracks it also eroded out the weak sediment that had filled many of them; however, the opposite happened to this particular set. The sediment that filled them in after they were first made over 113 million years ago is actually stronger than the limestone that makes up the river bed and is thus much more resistant to the Paluxy River's currents. As Mr. Kuban explained to me, the orange-ish coloring you can just barely see in the picture below is the result of iron present in the sediment that's slowly been oxidizing as it's exposed to the air. I joined several other DPS members who were diligently scrubbing the tracks so that Mr. Kuban could get better photos of them for the grid map he was planning on making of the site. I was told that that was the real reason the effect of the drought had been so significant: all of these footprints had been visible at some point or another, but it had been many decades since they had all been visible at the same time. No "new" tracks were discovered recently despite what the news had been saying. After several cycles of dumping buckets of river water on the tracks, then sponging them, then scrubbing them, the tracks were finally ready for their headshots, which was then followed by an hour's worth of measurement-taking and documentation. Below is a picture of the dream team at work! From left to right: Joe (a graduate student from Columbus who knew Mr. Kuban and who flew down just to work on the tracks), me, Murray (a DPS member and volunteer fossil preparer at the Perot Museum in Dallas), and Mr. Kuban, with grid paper and trusty clipboard in hand. I felt guilty not doing much more than scrubbing limestone and holding a tape measure for the rest of the day (not that I wasn't having the time of my life doing it!), as I could imagine just how much work had gone into shoveling and sweeping away all the mud that had been covering the main trackways. Major props to the hard-working members of the DPS that spent the weekend prior doing all that labor in the Texas heat! The tracksite looked amazing, and many of the visitors to the park passing through where we were working agreed. I had to deflect more than a couple of thank yous - what I was doing didn't hold a candle to the mini-excavation that had been done before I ever showed up. I ended up spending the night in town at the Comfort Inn (behind which forum member @LanceH actually did discover new dinosaur tracks). Although I tried to see them the next morning before I drove back to the park, it seems like the elements haven't been kind to Lance's discovery. The footprints are in a drainage ditch and were preserved in marl that is far weaker than the limestone in the river and so were probably only visible for a couple of years at most. Sunday was spent sweeping away some of the sediment that had already been moved just in case one of the dinosaur trackways extended to the area underneath it. As it turned out, it did! After that was done I went to another spot in the park with some other volunteers to see if the tracks there needed cleaning as well. This was the tracksite I remembered visiting with my grandparents. It's called the Ballroom because unlike the Taylor Site the tracks here are a mix of overlapping trails that don't form clear pathways. Maybe the Early Cretaceous was characterized by frequent dinosaur dance-offs. The scientific community may never know. Here's one of the largest Acrocanthosaurus tracks with my size 12 shoe for comparison. The clawmarks at the end of each toe where the theropod dug into the silty earth to keep its balance are still visible after all this time. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the sauropod tracks, but there were several nice ones at the Ballroom made by a juvenile that showed each of the strange curved toes very clearly. Speaking of sauropods, the last thing I did in town before I headed back to Waco was try some of the best good old Texas barbecue Glen Rose had to offer at a local joint named Hammond's (not a Jurassic Park reference, but I like to think it was ). Out front was a statue of a sauropod complete with horns, cowprint, and a brandmark that made me ask myself what they would have tasted like if they were still around. And that was it for my weekend! It was incredibly fun to visit one of my favorite places in the world again after so long away, and even more rewarding of an experience to get to do some real paleontology work with people that I was able to learn a lot from. Hopefully it won't be the last time- I think I'd like to make a habit of this sort of thing. Now to get to work on that fish update! - Graham

Cephalopods Bivalves Brachiopods Gastropods Coral(wearing a sponge hat) Geodized sponge Geode

On my eighth trip to the locality, I collected fossils at the famous St. Leon roadcut. Exposed were the Waynesville and Liberty formations, which date to the immense coral reefs of the upper Ordovician, or 450 ±5 MYA. The site was heavily picked, its erosive forces slowed during Indiana's summer heat. My drops of sweat evaporated on the sun-tempered limestone faster than I could count to ten. Despite the setbacks, acquisitions were generous. Best for last. Behold my brachiopods. The top row is Strophomena sp., the top-left sample demonstrating encrusting bryozoan. The second row is Vinlandostrophia ponderosa. The third and fourth rows are Lepidocyclus/Hiscobeccus, though I am of the opinion the genera are synonymous and are just sexual dimorphs given their identical ages, appearances, and regional occurrences. I am curious what other brachiopod enthusiasts think of this similarity. (Four boxes on the grid is 25 millimeters.) I continue with the bivalves. The top row is Caritodens sp, the top-left sample being a particularly well-preserved example. The bottom-left sample is Anomaladonta sp., and the bottom-right sample is a near-perfect Ambonychia sp. Life is incomplete without the gastropods! I didn't take French in high school for nothing! The top sample is unknown to me, despite being the second I have found of its type. The middle-left sample is too buried. The remaining four are all Paupospira sp., the middle sample being a good example. Interestingly, the bottommost Paupospira has a partial Flexicalymene sp. trilobite cephalon on it, which makes me question if the trilobite was consuming the calcium to augment its own development. However, considering the sample is a messy storm deposit, it is likely pure luck. I have to mention the numerous Isotelus maximus fragments at the site. When looking for fossils at St. Leon, one must wonder how many beautiful I. maximus lie under the surface, only to crumble down the slopes of the roadcut and into my hands. Of interest is the long, delicate genal spine on the top right. Now to the more interesting fossils. I follow with three of six total straight-shelled nautiloid cephalopods. The middle sample is a rare, (calcified) Anaspyroceras sp., and the right sample is also calcified. The beautiful, ancient calcite crystals within the dull-appearing right sample: Now to the next three. The left orthocone is all associated and is very large. The middle sample is also quite large. Species-level identification of orthocones can be difficult even with a clear cross-section of the siphuncle, so "straight-shelled nautiloid cephalopod" will have to suffice. However, I suspect these three samples are likely Treptoceras sp. Excellent samples to say the least. I kept saying "straight-shelled," so perhaps some of you guessed it: I found a coiled nautiloid cephalopod! These are very rare. I have found only a handful of these. Behold the curved Beloitoceras sp., a member of Oncocerida, to which the modern nautilus owes its existence to! It's unbelievable how this rock from half a billion years ago directly led to the existence of modern nautiloids! The continuity of life is incredible. The penultimate is a bryozoan fan. Yes, a fan! The bryozoan tapers off at the upper edges. I have never seen anything like it! It is 8x4 cm. And finally... ...a giant bryozoan! This is my biggest single fossil find ever! The caliper on the left is set all the way out to 15.00 cm! It is easily 15 inches in diameter and four inches thick! After crashing my bicycle a few weeks ago, this immense find could be my new wheel! Hear me out. In ten years of collecting, I have found many rare trilobites, behemoth cephalopods, and more, but this colony of tens of thousands of individual animals takes the cake for the most interesting fossil I've ever had the privilege to collect. On top of being huge and complete, it's riddled with trypanites (trace burrows for you bone hunters out there) from all a manner of creatures that used to reside in the Ordovician. I'm sure my fellow amateur paleontologists appreciate that this isn't just a fossil coral, it's an entire ecosystem! It's literally a window into life 450 million years ago! It's riddled with traces left by crinoid stems, scolecodonts (boring worms), parasitic encrusting bryozoans, brachiopods, bivalves, and so much else! I'm considering donating it to a museum. Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed.

In the summer of 2020 jpc and I had planned to get together in Eastern Wyoming to collect. That trip was unfortunately aborted by the coronavirus outbreak that year. This year, that conversation resumed and a new plan for a three day excursion in June emerged. I decided to make it a two week long car trip, driving all the way from New York, a longer car trip than any I've made in the past 25 years. That would afford me the opportunity to stop at some other sites on the way there and back, plus see some family. Another big reason for driving was an opportunity to visit and collect at the Big Cedar Ridge Cretaceous plant site. Having the car would afford me the opportunity to bring the necessary tools and be able to transport the fragile specimens safely. The rising price of gasoline certainly had an impact, and my plan was to cut costs as much as possible wherever I could. Part of that plan was camping 10 nights I departed the suburbs of New York City on Saturday, June 11th. That evening I arrived at Sturgis, MI, just off interstate 80. Spent the night in a motel and headed off the next day, driving through the heart of Chicago enshrouded in mist. It was my very first time driving through that city. I headed north and in the middle of the day arrived at my cousin's place in Madison, WI. He had moved there from Manhattan five years ago to teach music at the University of Wisconsin. This was my first time visiting him there, my first time in Wisconsin, actually. He took me on a lovely tour of the school and the town. I spent the night and was on my way again just before noon the next day. It rained off and on as I drove through Western Wisconsin and crossed the Mississippi into Dubuque, Iowa. From there it was a short drive to my first fossil stop- at Graf. This Upper Ordovician site in Maquoketa Formation is famous for its nautiloid death assemblage. I have found quite a few nautiloids over the course of my collecting career, but I've never encountered a site where they are thoroughly dominant. There was a layer of limestone, a few feet thick that was in many places just packed with their shells.

Do these get much larger than this one at around 6.7 cm. Found in Tarrant Co. Texas 20-30 years ago.

First, if anyone in the Toronto area is interested in going fossil hunting along Mimico or Etobicoke Creeks, I'd welcome the company! Before I get to a couple of better finds, I'm curious to know what the black fragments are below, which I often find embedded in the shale. Can someone please give me a clue about these? Some orthoconic cephalopods: The next two are the same fossil from different perspectives: Some bivalves: Bryozoans: Cheers, Camille

I was able to take another trip to the Leighton Formation today! It's been a while since I've been able to visit (months and months), but I've finally been able to. Unfortunately, during the winter the place is completely covered in snow and ice. Not really the best collecting conditions... My last trip there was in August of last year, and the spring has been very busy. Today it was time. It was supposed to be overcast with a chance of rain, but it came out sunny and bright. Absolutely beautiful day out. The collecting was very good. I unfortunately forgot to take a picture of the site. I was working in the same spot as last time, and at another outcrop a little farther down the shoreline. Place hasn't changed much, still as minuscule and weathered as ever. I had a better idea where to look though. Last time, I collected a lot, but I was mainly working in layers where the fossils were very evident. These layers contained a plethora of brachiopods, ostracods, tentaculites and other invertebrates - plus my first conodont. This time, though, I was going to try something a little different. The layers between the extremely fossiliferous layers had finer sediments, and generally seemed to keep the specimens intact better. I chose to mainly work in what I now call the "Chonetes layer". It's the only layer in these outcrops that contain Chonetes bastini brachiopods. The layer doesn't shatter as much as the other shale, so the pieces come out without a lot of cracking. It was also the same place that I found a nice trilo-bit, and I was hoping it would pay off. It did... The best finds of the day went to the trilobite cephalons. I found two Acaste cf. zerinae sp. - mostly intact, but an eye cracked off on the first, and both on the second. I was (luckily) able to find them, and I intend to glue them back on. At least the external molds are completely intact. In all of the following pictures, internal molds come first, external molds second. Cephalon #1, the one-eyed wonder. Cephalon #2 - missing both of the eyes. Sad, it would have been so nice too... Then came the pygidia - four of them! I believe that they are all the same species as the cephalons - A. zerinae - but I could be wrong. I'm sure the trilo-experts here can help me with that. Pygidium #1, the nicest one. Pygidium #2 - this little guy got a bit beat up when the rock split. Pygidium #3 - little bugger needs to be prepped a bit. Pygidium #4 - the internal mold of this cracked in half - and it's missing a piece. This one's a neat little trace fossil. It looks like an infilled burrow to me, but I'll set up a separate thread for that - with better pictures. And this very odd little guy. Another one I'll have to take better pictures on, and as soon as the matrix is pared down a bit I will scrutinize it under a microscope. It's not very evident, but it feathers out at the right end. It could be mineral staining or something, but I'm not sure yet. Then the stuff I couldn't bear to leave behind. I was trying to keep my collecting to new stuff, but some of them just sneaked in there... I feel like we've all experienced this before. Orbiculoidea sp. brachiopod. Lingula sp. brachiopod. Leiopteria rubra bivalve. It was a pretty good day. On top of these finds, I brought back some promising shale pieces to look for micro-fossils in - and a few more interesting unknowns. But that's for another time.. Thanks for reading!

Found some nice oysters, bivalves and possibly brachiopod (?) in Cierbo Sandstone (Miocene) at about 1800 ft. elevation. The largest oyster measured near 7 inches long and weighed 4 lbs!

Anyone know the species or genus of these?