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A few weeks back, I happened to accidentally find a fossil while out trail running - my first ever! I found this forum to get help identifying what it was, and figured that would be the end of it. But it turns out that the trail I have been running on for 20 years has lots of fossils, and now I can't stop seeing them! I have been reading this forum and following up with other resources to try to educate myself a little. My mother-in-law was super interested when I showed her a couple that I had picked up, so we decided to go back out there for our very first newbie fossil hunt. My MIL, in her late 70's, hiked up to the top of the mountain with me like it was nothing, and we had a great time poking around. The area we found these in is Devonian, Foreknobs formation. Here are a few of our finds - lots of brachiopods, more crinoids than you can shake a stick at, and some bryozoans! And it sounds like my MIL can't wait to go back - I think this will be a fun activity for the two of us.

Hello, all! As my first submission for identification, let me present to you the first fossil(?) I collected from the field. I feel I should apologize for several things right now: I have very little functional knowledge of local geography, especially as it relates to this specimen. In truth, I wasn't hunting for fossils when I found it; I was fishing for catfish. Since childhood, my favorite fishing spot has been at the junction of a local creek (Indian Creek, if anyone happens to know the geography of South-West Iowa) and the Missouri River. Good spot for big catfish, and plenty of limestone boulders to brace against while fighting them. It's easily accessible via bicycle trails. In July of 2018, I had hooked a sizeable fish when he snapped my line around a snag. Enraged (that was my dinner swimming away, after all), I hurled an apple-sized rock at one of the limestone boulders, hard enough to split it along a fracture line. Intending to release more frustration by reducing it to gravel, I yanked the crack open. Inside the fault, I saw this perfect-looking shell. I hadn't really thought it was possible to collect fossils locally, let alone find one with color. So, I gently pried it off the limestone matrix with the blade of my Leatherman, tucked it in my tackle box, and peddled home. When I got home, a cursory Google search of local fossil assemblages led me to believe I may have found either a brachiopod or some kind of oyster-like bivalve. Recognizing that the thin shell was brittle, I immediately applied a coat of 50/50 cyanoacrylate glue and clear nail polish (a mixture I now favor for finishing). In summary: The specimen itself measures roughly 36 mm wide by 24 mm deep. It is concave, with a deep fold to the midline. Slightly pinkish-brown with white speckles, which may be early (and incomplete) calcification. It was found at GPS coordinates 41.1890, -95.8741, encased in a limestone boulder. The boulder itself may have been deposited by the action of the nearby Missouri River, or washed out of the surrounding geography. Any conjectural identification is welcome and appreciated.

About 10 days ago @Jeffrey P and I collected at an exposure near his house that is full of Lower Devonian brachiopods. I was amazed by the diversity of brachiopods at the site. But what makes this site so special also makes it tough to identify everything. I did my best to identify many of my finds, but I am a bit stumped on several others. A lot of the sketches in Linsley's plates are starting to look alike. I could really use some help, even if it is a guess on the family or genus. Please let me know what you think. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you! #1- Spirinella modesta? #2 #3- Cyrtina varia? #4 #5- Nucleospira ventricosa? #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 #11 #12- Cloudella stewarti? #13 #14 #15- juvenile Meristella laevis?

Making replicas of my fossils has always been something very interesting to me, but for the longest time I wasn't sure about how it should be done, casting although it could preserve a lot of detail can be pricy if you want to make replicas of multiple different fossils and it is something that I am just very unfamiliar with. From that point my attention turned to 3d printing as this technology can allow us to replicate objects fairly inexpensively, but when I started to looking at 3d scanning for actually making the models I found that scanners were not all too cheap either ranging from about 500 dollars into the thousands. This is when I discovered photogrammetry, which allows you to make 3d models of objects with just a number of regular photographs taken from different angles, no need for expensive tools to scan the object. I found a free program called 3DF Zephyr that allows me to upload up to 50 pictures of a certain item and construct a 3d model from them. Yesterday I installed the program and immediately went to find one of my fossils that would be good to start off with, I wanted something where I wouldn't need to scan it from the bottom and something with good surface that would work well with the software. I thought that my Flexicalymene ouzergui from Morocco should be perfect for this. I read that you should take pictures so that every desired point of the object is seen from at least 3 different angles and so I took the bug and started doing that, I used 3 different elevations for the camera and rotated the bug taken pictures from many different angles, I ended up with a total of 45 photos. I then uploaded all of these directly into the software and it used all but 1 photo. It took a few hours to construct point clouds of a bunch of different points on the bug and some time after to reconstruct a mesh from that. What I ended up with looked pretty good and I was really happy with it for my first attempt, especially since I have heard that it may take several for you to get the model looking correct but nonetheless there were some issues with weird floating geometry around the bug. To address that I first selected everything disconnected from the model and removed that, then I took a lasso tool to select and remove all of the blobs attached to the bug that I didn't need. Here is what the model looked like before and after this: Now I saved the mesh as an OBJ and brought it into a different program to fix all the holes in it, make it solid instead of just the hollow shell I got from the scan and smooth over certain parts. This step was very successful and the model looked great, now it was time to print it. I took it into the next program to scale it properly and slice it for printing, I scales it roughly to the same size of the original bug and added all the needed parts to print it. The first print got disconnected and failed but then I made some slight changes to the model and leveled out the print bed, after that it was very late and I went to sleep but woke up today to a perfect copy of my Trilobite, it had some supports holding it up which were a bit reluctant to disconnect but after a bit of cleanup it looked great. Here is the finished print alongside the original: This has been a really fun thing to try out and now I want to do it with some more fossils, I think the next one I am going to try will be a small crinoid and then a more challenging model like a brachiopod where I will need to do some processing with photos as I will be taking pictures from all sides of the object. I encourage anyone interested to try it for themselves, if you want any help or additional information as to how I did certain things here I would be happy to discuss that with you. Thank you for looking, Misha

When I found this small piece - I was sure it is a brachiopod... But now after looking on many other things, I am sure it is not a brachiopod. I am thinking about the base of a coral. Please help to identify it. This should be Ordovician. N.1 N.2 N.3 N.4 N.5 N.6 N.7

Found in creek Eagle Ford Kef and possibly some Alluvial gravels. I think I'm looking at 2 different fossils, can't really tell what belonged to who but on the whole one I'm wondering if I'm seeing a valve or two. One is about 1 inch from umbo maybe another smaller one on side. Last image is close up of what I'm thinking is valve.

Please help to identify what kind of Brachiopod is this: N.1 N.2 N.3 N.3 N.5 N.6

This was found in the Pennsylvanian LaSalle Limestone of Illinois. My best guess is that the "top" specimen is a fragment of a conulariid, and that the "bottom" specimen is a fragment of an inarticulate brachiopod. But as I have never found any trace of a conulariid at this site, I was hoping to get a second opinion. It measures about 0.75cm at the widest dimension. Inarticulate brachiopod? Close ups of the "conulariid"

Visiting the Osha Canyon Formation in the Jemez Mountains, New Mexico. Upper part of the formation. The massive sandstone is the Sandia Formation. Underneath is the Pennsylvanian Osha Canyon Formation. FInds: Crinoid stem segments, a rugose coral, a couple of echinoderm plates, and a worm burrow cast. Whole bed of brachiopods: Composita brachiopods? I was shown this site by a semi-professional geologist who calls it The Nursery because there are huge numbers of unusually small brachiopods. Spirifers? some are silicified

My recent trip to the Maquoketa Formation of Iowa produced a brachiopod that baffles me. It appears to have both shells but it is extremely flat. Help needed with ID!!! Mike

Is anyone familiar with the Paleozoic formations on Bear Mountain, just northwest of Silver City, New Mexico? I have collected there a couple of times but am unsure as to which formation I was sampling. My first guess is that it is the Andrecito Member of the Lake Valley Limestone (Mississippian (Early Osage) but I know that there are also fossils found in the underlying Devonian Percha Shale, especially east of Silver City. There are a variety of brachiopods, bryozoans, rugose corals, and some crinoid bits. The photos show one of the larger brachiopods. Do you recognize it? Thanks.

We are avid winter skiers here in NYS. As soon as the temps are above freezing, the snow is gone, we are on the hunt for those Devonian fossils. A nice day trip to Canandaigua Lake, we ventured up a gully that is open to the public. On the south wall we began finding shale and limestone slides. Immediately after fanning away the leaves of fall past, the fossils presented. Many brachiopods, crinoid pieces and a few trilo butts. Our find of the day was this great little complete curled trilo and iron enriched brachiopod. We definitely will be returning. loop

Some interesting finds in the field today, but this one made me wonder if this was a brachidium or some other related feature. It looks like a trilobite, so naturally I picked it up. The piece was long exposed to the elements. Length: ~3cm Age: Mid-Devonian (Dundee Fm, Ontario, Canada).

Hi, just wanted to show you prep of a quite nice preserved Lacunosella cracoviensis - endemic specie of my Jurassic area prepped with a Engraver and a little bit of vinegar for surface cleaning. Started as a 20 pounds chunk