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Hello! I found this fossilized bone a few days ago after the big tides in the Jurassic of the Boulonnais region (North of France). I can’t seem to place it… The cell structure looks dinosaur to me, not marine reptile. Would anyone be acquainted with this type of material and have any idea? Thank you very much! IMG_0855.mov

Hello again, Does anyone recognize this fossil? Found in late Jurassic rock of the Boulonnais, France. Partly marine and terrestrial conglomerate. Its symmetric and the underside is flat. I feel its either some sort of scute or a steinkern or imprint of something. But of what? regards, Niels

I am struggling to find proper information on how to identify different brittlestar genuses, so if anyone has a good resource for that, that would be great as well! Found at place de la Crevasse near Equihen, when splitting open a fallen block of layered, clayey shale. Scale is in cm.

The second day was in the Jurassic cliffs of the Boulonnais,Northern France,with a famous local hunters who took with him! Ludovic was born on the top of these cliffs and is a real passionate ,it was hard for me to follow but i saw stunning fossils !

Hello all, I found this bone fragment many years ago. I'm afraid this will (as usual in this area) be a difficult one. This was found in the Boulonnais area in the North of France. Jurassic, marine sediments. This was a coastal area in the late Jurassic, so also rare dinosaur bones can be found. I included an in situ picture. Hidden in the rock was an ichtyosaurus vertebra. I therefore assumed this to be a piece of ichtyosaurus bone. However, I can not think of a bone in the Ichtyosaurus skeleton that fits. The bone has a kind of socket which, I guess, was connected with a ball joint. So perhaps a part of a mandible? But it seems to robust for a mandible? Also the end of the bone has a particular structure, like an undeveloped bone? Another idea is that it's not ichtyosaurus but maybe an ulna of another reptile or mabye dinosaur? It does not look much but I hope that the "ball joint" is somehow characteristic (if it really is a ball joint off course). I apologize for the bad pictures. I have trouble making sharp pictures of this piece. Maybe the video is better: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vj1CfKZuWggOV7KMiNj4qsFPig_qYDrG/view?usp=sharing Regards, Niels

Hi all, Back once more with a find from the Boulonnais. This time found between Boulogne-sur-Mer and Wimereux. The geology there is Kimmeridgian marine deposit, and the fossil presented here derives from a block of yellow sandstone with marine inclusions. It was embedded in an enclosure of soft, porous sand, which I hadn't quite expected and is the reason it's currently in the state it is in. I managed to find a rock with a pycnodont fish tooth and some similarly coloured (i.e. white) bone fragments in the area, in comparable yet harder sandstone. So my first impression was some kind of fish bone. However, I'm having a hard time figuring out what kind of fish bone, seeing as my piece is flat on one side and appears to have a bit of a twist (or may be a depression where another bone would have gone) on another. As such, the flat side made me think of a jaw bone, of a marine reptile in particular. Yet, the bone seems to extend away from it's flat side, which wouldn't quite fit what one would expect of a jaw bone. My third guess, based on the slight depression on one side of the bone and the rounded end at one of the short sides (which kind of reminds me of the epiphysis of a long bone), was some kind of long bone - lower arm or lower leg, where you'll typically find two bones lying closely together - but I'm not sure of this either. Moreover, this would be the feature of a terrestrial animal, not a marine one - with the exception of crocodiles (which lower extremity bones, however, are not closely spaced together, so wouldn't match my hypothesis). I realise the bone is fragmentary and not even in the best of states. But I hope enough has been preserved to determine something of it's origin, if even just in terms of marine vs. terrestrial, reptile vs. fish or mammal, etc. Dimensions: 86.5mm/3.40" long, 42.6mm/1.67" wide, and 23.5mm/0.92" tall Thanks in advance for your help! Don't hesitate to ask for additional details.

Hi all, Found this stone at Pointe aux Oies in Wimereux two days ago, amongst the pebbles collected next to a shelve down towards sea from the spot where I had found an ichthyosaur vertebra (on matrix) two days before this find. I picked it up because 1) the stone is unusually flat; 2) has exactly the right shape and thickness to it for an ophthalmosaurid ichthyosaur paddle bone (see picture below); 3) has certain ornamentation top and bottom; 4) seems to be of a different type of stone than I've generally come across in the area; and 5) has some weight to it. It vaguely reminds me of paddle bones found in the Oxford Clay at Peterborough. Yet, what makes me doubt, though, is that there is no clear radial ornamentation on either top or bottom of the piece, as would by typical for an ichthyosaur paddle bone. A friend of mine, more familiar with fossils from the region, suggested it could be a crocodile scute, as the ones found further up the coast, but this, to me, seems unlikely, as 1) the ornamentation on my find differs significantly from what's typical for crocodilians; 2) the underside is not flat as it would be for crocodile; and 3) the piece seem to thick for a scute. Size is about 4.4 x 3.4 x 1.4 cm (1.7 x 1.3 x 0.6 ") Brachypterygius extremus paddle from Ichthyosaurs: a day in the life... My piece reminds me of the radius. Now my question is: Is this just a rock - i.e. am I seeing things because I really want to - or is it an actual fossil? Is this an ichthyosaur paddle bone/phalange or something else?

Hi all, Found this pebble on the beach close to Audresselles (Cap Gris Nez area, Boulonnais) amidst the heavy rain and wind yesterday. Initially, I thought it was just a piece of odd-looking fossilised plant-material, with a faint thought in the back of my mind that may be it could be a fish skull. When I checked it this morning, I was able to confirm the piece is smooth on the outside, and seems to have what appears to be bone fibres on the inside. In other words, I'm convinced now that it actually is bone, though still have no idea what kind...

I put this before on the FB page but like to try here as well. This partly eroded bone was found in Jurassic sediments in the Boulonnais area in the North of France. The sediments are marine but the sea was not far from the beach and sometimes terrestrial animals (dinosaurs) can be found. I thought this a vertebra; but no neural arch showing and the shape is weird; it looks a bit like a carpal/ tarsal bone of a big animal but I may be seeing to much. Perhaps a paddle bone of a marine animal is another option? Hope you can help me. Regards, Niels