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Hi All, Recently I purchased some Shale from U-Dig, UT. The trilobites inside were super swell, but one of the more interesting finds was this...thing... It appears to be a circular mass, with some veins or something radiating from the center. My hopeful brain began to think it could be a jellyfish, though realistically it is highly unlikely, and I've never heard of anything like that being preserved in the shale from U-dig. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated, as I am at an ABSOLUTE loss. Thanks, -Snag

I found this in creek below Permian/Carboniferous boundary. I've not seen anything like it before and was wondering if it might be an algae.

Hi everyone! I've been going through a few piles of all my pretty things I drag home from the wilderness and came across a few of these peculiar looking blobs I found last summer in Kentucky. They're pretty boring, and I figure if they are even fossils at all, they're still not quite as fun as a shark or even a pretty shell or coral, but still figured I'd see some opinions before I go too happy with my diamond bits to see what's inside. I've thought these were just quirky little round geologic blobs but then found that the smaller one does appear to have some sort of influence on the material throughout as I was grinding around it. I got this in the same area of central Kentucky (Hart County region) where I grew up and periodically re-visit family. I picked them up with the typical little shell and algae type patterns I always find there. I've gotten a few like this, various sizes though they range between the two examples I'm showing in the photos below. Like the ones in the photos, they appear to have been broken off of a shelf type rock. They are surrounded by a smooth type of rock, that is not quite all sandy/grainy, and rather solid compared to the more light type of material that is so common there. They're usually pretty solid and while I thought originally the rock was the very dusty type of sandstone that would chip away easy, I found when I tried to grind it down that it actually becomes much smoother below the crud layer on top. The photos show the look of the rock that is around the actual knobs--I have not yet messed with the blobs themselves because I wanted to see how they may differ from the surrounding rock if at all. I hope that I have shown the area on the side of the rock. The side cut is natural, these are exactly as I picked off the ground, so the sharp cuts are as found, though I'm obviously grinding away in thin layers. It may be a coincidental artifact of normal geological design, but the round "circle" on that sharp straight side appears to be what you'd expect if the round blob were indeed a separate material that was stuck in matrix? I get so frustrated with the inability to just snap photos of exactly what I think I see with my own vision sometimes. I know the photos are not great--I need a new camera and these are taken with my cell phone and quick crops with Picasa. I didn't take them with intent on posting here originally but had thought to use them for my own reference. Since I'm an ignorant ijit about the geological technical details, I usually have no idea what I'm doing when I'm playing around with my tools. I would love to one day have the skills to bring out natural interesting things, whether fossil or geologic, so for now I practice on seeing what I can do with regular boring "leaverights". They actually often give very pretty results if they're in the right materials, and so the value is there for me to play with and see the results, and that's all that matters, right? I will post a couple more photos of the better snaps I have next post. Thanks in advance for any help & comments! I am so impressed with this board and have always received such patient and informative responses. If there is any way I can ever help any of you, I hope that I am in a position to do so, though my own areas of expertise consist mostly of a good imagination in terms of useful fossil info... lol

OK, I am new on this forum here, and here's a thing that I found and can't figure out. This is a round, flattened hemisphere about 2.5" in diameter that appears to be half of some kind of concretion or nodule. I'm not sure about the stone it's composed of (forgive me, I'm a complete amateur and not a great geologist) but it feels flinty and shows faint concentric rings on the exterior/rounded side. The interior/split/flat side is a dark charcoal color, more porous than the exterior, and in the center is a vaguely triangular patch that is lighter in color and rougher/more irregular in relief. each corner of the triangle appears to have sort of a conical prong. I have no Idea what I'm looking at: I'm not even sure it's biological, but it looks like it might be. I did not split this concretion open - I found it as the half you see here, already split, presumably by natural means. I found it on the surface in a ravine in a bluff here in Peoria, where the surface most places consists of glacial till piled pretty deep, so this thing's original placement is unknown. You see all sorts of rocks eroding out of gullies around here, up to big granite boulders that didn't originate anywhere nearby and that probably got bulldozed all the way from Canada by glaciation, so unfortunately, even though I know where I found it, I have no idea where it came from. I looked all around for the other half, but couldn't find it. Here are some photos and flatbed scans of it. The file "hemisphere2.jpg" is a larger file, but I thought it would be good to include a "detail shot" for sort of an amorphous blob. Thanks Chris Hutson