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Hello, I found this really nice shell today. I've seen you can tell bivalves and brachiopods apart by symmetry, but I'm not sure with this one, I thought bivalve, but I'm not certain. Also if anybody could tell me the genus or species, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.

Hello, I found this rock this morning behind my house and I'm drawing a blank as to what it could be. There are lots of brachiopods, bivalves and gastropods in this particular area but nothing that matches this. It kinda looks like an end view of a coral but I only find those about a mile away and not preserved like this. Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks for looking. Northern Arizona, Mississippian, Redwall Limestone, Mooney Member.

Today I decided to revisit a stream exposure of the Upper Ordovician Maquoketa Group in northern IL. I believe these outcrops are all Brainard Shale, which is the second highest member of the Maquoketa in Northern Illinois. The olive-gray shales exposed at the base of the outcrops are packed with Tentaculites, and the few times I've been here I've always searched for those. Today I wanted to explore more of the creek and see what else I could find. The stream was running pretty fast but wasn't too high, despite all the recent rain. Shale and dolomite outcrop for quite a distance along the stream, although the water is usually too high to get to many of them. I probably won't come back until the water level drops quite a bit so I can wade through, the stream isn't super deep. The stream runs near shops and well-traveled footpaths, so to be respectful I don't hammer here. That makes it a little tough since most rock faces are highly weathered and covered with vegetation, but some nice things can still be found. Water-worn brachiopods are common sights, though rarely worth collecting.

Hello, everyone! I found this forum while researching for fossil hunting places in my area. I am a newbie, so I will spend a lot of time reading here at first. And, as a newbie, will be posting for help at the ID section of the forum Fossil hunting is exciting!

Amateur here; turned over a rock in our landscape for 20+ years, to find this. Obtained at Duff’s Quarry in Huntsville Ohio. What kind of seashell is this - strange circular arc on hinge side?

I was able to get some much needed "me time" yesterday. With all the worries of the world I have been in a foul mood lately, but I am happy to report that my mood has brightened significantly. . There is nothing like crawling around on a road cut, and hunting fossils, to really lift one's spirits! I spent a couple of hours at an upper Ordovician road cut that has been on my list to check out. It is an exposure of the Grant Lake Limestone. Shortly after I arrived, I realized that I was in for a real treat! This particular exposure is more fossil than limestone. Brachiopods are everywhere! Vinlandostrophia dominate the exposure; with Hebertella coming in a close second. Other brachs are also found, but less abundant. Orthoconic nautiloid fragments are frequently found and bryozoan encrusting is a common sight. I also found a few gastropods, and one trilobite piece that I am excited about. Unfortunately I did not take pictures in the field. It was a conscious decision. I just wanted to enjoy my time, relax, and focus on the hunt. I'll get some next time as I will definitely be going back. I did take a few pics of my better finds at home. Enjoy! First up are the Brachiopods. I found some nice whole Vinlandostrophia, and Hebertella, and what I think is Rafinesquina ( @Tidgy's Dad ) . I also took home a few single valves for study of the internal structure. I think with a little bit of clean up these will look great! I was happy to find some orthoconic nautiloids. They have been sorely lacking in my collection. I will have to research what species are found in this formation to come up with an ID. I have a few ideas, but need to confirm. Here are a few gastropods and bryozoans. I can't resist the alluring whirls of a gastropod. They seem to be uncommon in the areas that I hunt so I grab them whenever I see them. I believe these are new species of bryozoa that I will be adding to my collection. Which is exciting! Here is a tril-o-bit that I found. I'm very happy with it. Typical trilobite fragments from this area are not usually identifiable. Except to say they are possible trilobite pieces. This is a cephalic doublure of an Isotelus. Thanks to @piranha for help with the ID. All in all it was a great time. I got to relax a bit, forget my troubles, and brighten my mood. I also added some nice pieces to my collection. It was a good day!

Folks, These photos are from a small section of shale I picked up in Northeastern Oklahoma. The shale contains marine fossils of Pennsylvanian age. I have questions about a couple of the labeled objects. I’m thinking the center one may be a brachiopod (or possibly a bryzoan--it's hard to tell because of the crinoid plate resting above it). The one on the right looks to me like a bryzoan. However, I’m a novice at identification so I’d appreciate any opinions. The putative bryzoan appears to have grown on the crinoid stem. Best wishes.

Ordovician inverts are not my specialty, and thus I have a few that I would appreciate some help narrowing down the species on. The first three are from the Upper Ordovician Platteville Group (Mifflin Member I think). 1) A large cephalopod section. 2) What I think is a bivalve steinkern. Not sure if a species can be ascertained. 3) A tiny trilo pygidium. 4) This last one is from the Upper Ordovician Maquoketa Group. My guess is Eochonetes? Any thoughts @Tidgy's Dad? Thanks for any help.

I went on a bit of an unusual fossil hunt this morning--in my office closet. I'm getting things packed up for a move next month to Gainesville, FL. We're moving up there from South Florida because I've had my fill of hurricanes (and year-round yardwork). In Gainesville I'll be able to volunteer more with the FLMNH. So I'm slowly repositioning the contents of my house into a growing stack of moving boxes. I got to the bottom corner of my office closet today and found a box that had some childhood memories in them. No favorite stuffed animals, no catcher's mitt and baseball, no cheap trophies for athletic prowess demonstrated. Nope, this was MY childhood and it was slightly (or more so) more eccentric than portrayed in Leave it to Beaver. My childhood contained as many science books as comics or Mad magazines. I had access to my dad's workshop and knew my way around a soldering iron building kits from Heathkit (a reference that will mean little to those of a younger generation). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathkit The box I found in my closet contained my first microscope--a simple little slide scope with a pair of AA batteries in the base for backlighting. It also had part of my childhood rock collection--some pyrite, a piece of green quartzite, an agate, and a heavy chunk of specular hematite (given to me my by 3rd grade teacher who knew I was a science geek). The best "discovery" was my nascent fossil collection. It had my first fossil book (copyright 1962): There were plastic bags filled with little scraps of poor quality fossils. I was living in Chicago at the time so my fossil horizon contained items mostly from the Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian. My 3rd grade teacher must have had a summer home up in the upper peninsula of Michigan (the likely source of the chunk of specularite) and she also gave me my first mystery fossil. It's a partial negative cast and I never could quite figure out what it was. I pressed clay into it as a kid to view its positive form and often suspected some form of trilobite. Could never make out any eyes on the end and looking at it now I suspect the "head end" may be some sort of pygidium. Maybe someone here may be able to hazard a guess. Several years ago Tammy and I visited the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in D.C. and of course spent an inordinate amount of time in the paleontology section. When I saw a nice example of a complete (and highly enigmatic) Recepticulites my mind went back to this piece that I found nearly 45 years ago. Most of the fossils that I collected myself were found wherever I had access to either beaches (like Lake Michigan) which had tumbled cobbles containing fossils or from a campground I remember a couple hours west of Chicago that used large rip-rap limestone boulders as erosion control where a road crossed over a large lake. So, in addition to bringing marshmallows for flambéing in the campfire in the evenings, and a fishing pole in attempt to see what types of fishes were hiding beneath the surface of the lake, I also brought a hammer and stone chisel--that's normal, right? I'd clamber around on the rocks looking for evidence of some poor quality fossil poking out here and there. I'd spend much more time than it was really worth freeing gastropod steinkerns, barnacles, crinoid stem segments, and other representative fossils of the time. I was always quite happy when I found find something that was included in my fossil guide book. Fossil books were few and far between in museum book shops and this was long before the ubiquity of the internet and longer before @Cris had the idea for TFF. I'll unpack this box again when we reach Gainesville and look back on my humble beginnings collecting fossils. I may organize some of these into a showbox display and hang it in my office in the new house. Back in the day I told (mostly adults) that I wanted to be a paleontologist when they asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. Not hearing the expected answer of teacher, fireman, or astronaut (this was the era of the space race), the questioner would stare blankly at me till my grandfather or my parents would explain that it is someone who "digs up fossils". It took me a few decades but I've finally been able to travel around and "dig up fossils" if only on a serious avocational level. You'll see some indications that I was trying to be a serious collector back then. I had numbered several of my finds when I had made a potential identification. I had a notebook (long since vanished) where I recorded the collecting information and (probably) identification for my finds. The little adhesive numbered tags were cut from strips of numbered tape used to identify both ends of cables when building racks of switches and relays (back in the day before semiconductors). I have my first specimens of a rugose horn coral, a faint brachiopod, a crinoid segment, and my first worn partial trilobite. I remember some of these fossils and some I've long since forgotten about but the one that was the most surprising to see while picking through my old collection was a reasonable example of a Mazon Creek fern frond. While this is a well known fossil locality here on the forum (and beyond), I was surprised by this as Mazon Creek and its fossil lagerstätte had escaped my awareness till about a decade ago. Tammy and I were visiting the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago with our nieces and we happened upon the great exhibit they have there on Mazon Creek. That was the first time I was conscious of the fact that there was a great place to collect fossils relatively close to where I grew up but that fate and the relative lack of information back in the day had hidden it from me. Had I known about Mazon Creek back in the day and been able to amass a more impressive fossil collection as a kid I might not have chosen computers for a career. Actually, computer programming came natural to me like walking or breathing so computers were likely baked into my fortune cookie of fate and interest in fossils would rekindle later in life as it has. I still have no recollection of how this Mazon Creek concretion came into my possession. I can only assume that I received it as a gift from some adult trying to fan the flames of a passion for fossils. With the possibility of a long-term time-delay fuse this effort seems to have worked. Think about that next time you gift some fossils to a kid who shows interest. Cheers. -Ken P.S.: Tammy thinks I should choose one of these as a last minute entry for the FOTM contest since I (re)found them this month.

Hello All, Im Cole from Woy Woy, Australia. I am a SPFX Makeup Artist (20 years) and love creatures. I have always found fossils and minerals interesting and have a bit of a little collection myself. More minerals then fossils atm. As far as fossicking goes I have only been very basic in finding fossil marine plants and shale and coprolites which were exposed on the ground from weathering. I would like to fossick more preferably around my area but would like to go up to lightning ridge to see if i can find anything. I would also like to help on a dinosaur dig one day. anyhow, thats it from me! ~Cole.