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Hey there, me again (since my first ever post had great success)! The photos I am about to show you may depict one or two different animals, found in the Neuville Formation of the Trenton Group (Middle Ordovician). The host rock would be micritic limestone and all pictures were taken in Neuville, 30 km west of Quebec City (Québec Province, Canada). Stratas had a subhorizontal dip, slowly sinking into the Saint Lawrence River. Today, I have 6 pictures showing 6 different specimens. The photos might be showing the same animal, but seen from the top AND the bottom (which are quite different). In my opinion, those are probably encrusting bryozoans. The first three pictures would be the top of the animals, with the individual zooeciums (hundreds of small zooid holes) still preserved; whereas the last three ones would show the bottom. The thing is: I'm not sure and I never asked anyone knowledgeable. My second guess would imply two different animals. The three first pictures would show the top of encrusting bryozoans (or something else?), while the last three ones would be another animal (algae? stromatoliths? sponges?). I'm open to your feelings and diagnosis. Thank you very much!

Day One; Locality Four Tizi N'Talghaumt Pass 19th February 2019 This pass runs through a slightly lower section of the eastern High Atlas along the course of the Ziz River which snakes its way right through to Algeria. These wonderful trees are common in the Sub Sahara, but I don't know what they are. We stopped by the altitude sign overlooking the Aoufous Oasis on the River Ziz. Whilst wifey and Abdulla admired the huge palmerie oasis, one of the largest in Morocco, Anouar and I nipped across the road to see what we could find :

Found this in Big Brook, NJ (Late Cretaceous Navesink Fm.). It's about 2.5 cm wide. I don't even know what phylum to put it in. My first thought was bryozoan. There is one very thorough paper on Bryozoa of the Atlantic Coastal Plain, but it has nothing to fit the bill. Looks like sponge with those big holes. Found a picture of Discopora sp. that looks very close, but that genus is not listed in PBDB anywhere in North America. Gabb thought he had something similar from NJ, but it turned out to be a sand concretion. The last picture is the underside of the specimen, which may or may not be a thin layer of shell material from a bivalve.

The fossil bryozoa colony I found on April 6th turned out to be a pocket of individual colonies. I've posted about this find in the past month. Happy Collecting. Atactotoechus fruticosus Fossil Bryozoa Colony Moscow Formation, Middle Devonian (380 million years) New York State It's very difficult to find complete/near complete colonies of Devonian bryozoans that also look great in a display case. These Atactotoechus fruticosus bryozoan colonies are from a newly (4/2022) discovered pocket of around two dozen individual colonies. This Bryozoa colony was found on April 6th. 2022 in the Devonian shales of New York. Many hours of reassembling were needed to put these colonies back together after they were excavated from the shale outcrop.

2022 Fossil Collecting Season Our season started out great with a warm 63 degree day here in New York State. We often don't dig on our first collecting trip of the season Its more of a surface collecting trip just to scout out the area and see what winter has exposed for us. I had my geology hammer of course but no mini sledge, chisels, or pry bars. One of my favorite things to find in early spring are colonies of Bryozoa (Atactotoechus frutiosus). You have to collect every little piece of the colony and reassemble them back it home. This will take anywhere from an hour to many hours over days and in this case over a week so far. You never know how they will look until you start matching up the pieces and hope that you got them all. I picked up around 255 pieces from a colony that I found on this day and thought I got most if not all of the colony. It was a slow start reassembling it then I found my rhythm. It started to become clear after a week of working on it that I was missing a bunch of pieces. Yesterday 4/24/2022 we went back to the site, dug in the shale were we found the colony, and found a bunch of the missing pieces. This time I did have the proper tools to complete the job We also found a large and well preserved Orthospirifer marcyi with attached Pleurodictyum coral and other Devonian brachs, trilobites, corals, a graptolite (modern Sea Fan for comparison in the pic), and of course Bryozoa colonies. The pics of the Bryozoa colony are - pieces from the first day, after a week of puzzling them back together, and yesterdays recovery of the rest of the colony (white tray). Happy Collecting

I found these two fossils from Mimico Creek in Toronto, Canada and they both belong to the Georgian Bay formation, late Ordovician. The first one I believe is a Pseudolingula, but I can't really nail it down to a species level. The other is a bryozoan, and I was thinking of Prasopora. What do you guys think? The brachiopod I found in shale, but the bryozoan in a limestone bed with other bryozoas. The brachiopod: The bryozoa:

Howdy folks! I haven’t posted a hunt in a long time, and I got a chance today to go to a very productive location I’ve discovered. This was the first time I’ve had any amount of time to look, so I ended up pleasantly surprised by what I found. Unfortunately, I don’t know the species of brachiopod, but I suspect they might be Pulchratia, though you’re welcome to correct me, I don’t know invertebrates very well yet. The site was created from being a man made pond, where the removed soil was then dumped a ways from the pond and after many years it has eroded down to expose some really nice stuff. While I’ve had a few occasions to look for things for only a couple minutes, this was the first time I found any complete brachiopods. I’m the first to have searched the site due to it being private land of a friends, and there’s a lovely variety of stuff on the site. It was about 35 degrees Fahrenheit with 45 mph wind gusts, so it was pretty bitterly cold, but a rewarding experience. My favorite discovery of the site was the inside of some of the brachiopods. Many of the inner section have become entirely quartz, and are quite striking. I apologize for the dimness of the specimen photos, my camera isn’t focusing so I had to resort to my phone. View of the embankment, where most of the fossils were found Edge of the man made pond Brachiopod on the ground Very old shell, still with the bullet, I left it well enough alone just in case. (While I know it would need the hammer of the gun to go off, I preferred to be safe since it had been in the elements a long time ) Though I will add, at this site, one needs to have some sort of personal protection due to the over abundance of feral hogs. There are hundreds on the property and they react aggressively to people. Complete Brachiopods Cross section of a broken Brachiopod with a quartz crystal Bryozoa Hash Crinoids and Bryozoa Loose Crinoids, Brachiopod pieces and Bryozoa Other/Unsure My favorite find of the day was this brachiopod in matrix, which had a lovely surprise when I looked at the broken end.

Beltzville State Park is one of those rare parks where collecting is allowed. The adjacent federal land, owned and operated by the Corps of Engineers to operate the dam there, is accessible ONLY WITH A PERMIT. It is a functioning spillway and there is a gun range for the local police, so you and USACE need to make sure you are safe. With that important disclaimer out of the way, here's the good stuff! Beltzville is a very productive Middle Devonian site which includes the PA State Fossil, the trilobite Eldredgeops rana. Although no one in the group found any definite complete buggies, a lot of froglike trilo faces went home in our buckets! It wasn't all trilos, though. We found bryozoa, corals, pteria oysters, gastropods, crinoids and probably a dozen kinds of brachiopods. I led this trip for the Natural History Society of Maryland. The trip director made this lovely video of our day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdB5atWQmeQ Yes, I realized about 20 minutes after she took that video of me showing off the pop-outs that I was holding the fronts of the cephalons of one species, not the eyeballs of the other. This is what I get for not looking with my reading glasses first! Most of my finds I gave to whoever was sitting closest to me, but here are a few I kept.

On July 1st, 2021, I went for the first time to a public, personal site and was very pleased with the results of my fossil excursion. The locale consists of several exposed formations, namely the Liberty formation I was hunting in. In my region of southwestern Ohio, that's known to be one of the best fossil-hunting formations due to its remarkable preservation of particularly fragile Ordovician life, even when compared to the excellent fossil preservation quality of other formations in the area. The thirty-three degrees Celsius heat was rather hot by itself, and as the sun's rays made me question my latitude, the rainwater in the ground from the rain several hours prior was evaporating and creating a blanket of humidity-saturated air which prevented my body from transpiring. That was lovely. On top of that, this was above a very tall cutaway, so there was this constant updraft of hot, humid air coming from the bottom. Needless to say, conditions were extremely hot and humid. A thermos filled to the brim with refreshing, ice-cold cranberry-grape juice was a lifesaver, as otherwise I would have certainly overheated and becoming a sizzling omelet atop a frying pan of Ordovician fossils under that laser of a sun! With that being said, this is my first post regarding a fossil hunting trip in three years! While I have not been active on this forum, my paleontological trips have been ever more numerous. I remember you all, as I have been secretly watching in the meantime. I am a fossil sniper, after all. I should mention that I am an adult now, and I would prefer to have the "Youth Member" tag removed from my name. I plan to conduct a full survey of my entire collection before attending university, so look out for that. My collection is considerably sizeable now, having nine years of fossil-hunting under my belt. Here are my finds! Best & rarest for last, though all of them are incredible in their own right. Every edge of a square on the grid is half a centimeter. Assorted rugose corals. Gastropods. Branching bryozoan. The central branching bryozoan specimen in the prior figure under 200x microscope magnification. The skeletal cavity wherein individual zooids once resided 440 million years ago are evident, each 0.2 millimeters in diameter. The sheer level of detail in the preservation is as mind-blowing as this fossil's age. This photo is the product of using a computer to compile 140 photos focused at different layers of the specimen, as microscopes have a very narrow depth of field. I'm sure you all find as this fascinating as I do, so I compiled a photo for you guys. Assorted brachiopods, with two bivalves on the top left. I collected some superb Rafinesquina alternata, which don't tend to come with both fragile and thin halves intact, together, and out of the matrix. There were also some Leptaena that I did not photograph, but were lovely and undulating. The rest are common genera here, except for the fourth one from the right in the bottom row and the partial one of the same species immediately northwest of it, which I would like help identifying. Expect to see it soon on the ID forum. Assorted associated, straight-shelled nautiloid cephalopod septa. A larger example of associated, straight-shelled nautiloid cephalopod septa and a partial living chamber. Calcified straight-shelled nautiloid cephalopod. I always love the crystals on these. Flexicalymene meeki on the left and right. The left one is perfect, and is a very large example of what I generally find--my largest self-found complete trilobite, in fact--so I'm very happy with him. The right one is heavily weathered along its left and right, but the medial length of the pygidium, thorax, and cephalon are all present in some way, and the pleurae and glabella are resonant with Flexicalymene meeki, and I'm very happy with him, too. Adorable, curled little finger hugnuzzles of the ancient sea. Drum roll please! Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 5 This is a huge living chamber of a straight-shelled nautiloid cephalopod! Unlike the septal segments, the living chamber is very fragile with its thin, unsupported walls. This means it is very rarely preserved. Hence, in my near-decade of fossil hunting, I have never found a complete living chamber with its outer shell included until now. Let alone of this size! The only reason this one survived is because of the encrusting bryozoan that grew over its walls and thus strengthened them after the animal died--Figure 5 demonstrates the layers of the bryozoan well. This is also demonstrated on the side without bryozoan strengthening it in Figure 4, and how it simply crumpled due to the weight of sediments that accumulated on top of it after the animal died. Interestingly, one side has much more encrusting bryozoan than the other--this suggests that immediately after the animal died, part of the shell was resting on the silt of the ocean floor, preventing bryozoan from growing on it. The contrast in the thickness of walls of the living chamber & encrusting bryozoan growth on opposite sides of the fossil is evident between Figures 1 and 2, where in Figure 1 the walls of the living chamber are quite thin (one can tell from the thickness of the dark cracks on the bottom left), whereas in Figure 2 the walls are visibly significantly thicker (and layered from the encrusting bryozoan, upon zooming in). Deducing all of this is so cool. Additionally, Figure 3 zooms in on the bottom left fraction of the visible living chamber in Figure 2, and it actually shows the bryozoan growing around the edge of the living chamber walls and into the living chamber. This means that's the very outer rim of the living chamber! (In Figure 3, the white line is the living chamber wall, and the layers around it are the encrusting bryozoan. The light tan stone inside is just limestone.) On top of the sheer rarity of a fossilized living chamber, especially of this enormous size, having the edge of the living chamber preserved with enough detail to show the bryozoan that that grew into it over its rim—almost half a billion years ago—fascinates me. To finish this post off, there really is a mystery in every fossil. With the encrusting bryozoan only growing one side of the living chamber in the final specimen, and the subtle, hard-to-spot detail of how it grew around the rim and into the living chamber, it's like every fossil is a murder mystery (literally) and we have to be Sherlock Holmes and figure out details about how the animal died. Considering this was 440 million years ago, we're all some pretty hardcore forensic scientists!

I wonder what we can see in this limestone with a lot of microorganisms displayed together. Some is obviously coral, but there are more things. The rock is from the Upper Ordovician in the Oslo field in Norway. The size is indicated by the distance between the two blue line being 1 cm. You can enlage the picture a little to see more clearly the smaller things.

Atactotoechus fruticosus (Bryozoa) Kashong member, Moscow formation, Middle Devonian, New York Found 4/09/2021. Size - 6"x 4.2" This turned out better than I thought it would. When I find these bryozoa colonies, I have no idea how complete they are or what they will look like until I start piecing them back together. This colony is missing some pieces but a lot of it was saved from erosion/oblivion. The base of the colony was uneven so I used some modeling clay to help display it in its upright position. The last photo was my attempt to bring the colony back to life Happy Collecting

There are fossils in the background gray sedimentary, but so much better preserved in brown! Why? Almost like this pile of creatures is on display, a 7 inch blob just laying on top of gray stone. I'm more interested in how these were preserved than what they are.

This is an odd little rock that I found at my son's land in Franklin County today, near Lost Creek (Alabama). I am seeing what I think is an area of bryozoan fossils of some sort on it, but then I saw this tiny little shape that is encased inside of something else. I thought it was a brachiopod at first until I looked up closed with my trusty macro lens and saw teensy dots along the edges. Is this another type of bryozoa? And, if so, why is it encased inside of something? Thanks!! Ramona

A few months back I won an auction from @sixgill pete and part of the lot was a bag of matrix from the Waccamaw Formation in Columbus County North Carolina. The Waccamaw Fm. is a marine sand and shell hash that has been correlated numerous different ways with a varying range of ages applied to it in the past, but as it is currently interpreted, it is Pleistocene in age (Gelasian and Calabrian Stages or Upper Blancan to Irvingtonian if you prefer the NA names) and found in South Carolina and southeastern North Carolina. The bag was chock full of molluscan goodies and I am steadily working through the identification of those. One thing that caught my eye amongst all the shells were these little saucer shaped bryozoans similar to Lunulites except that most had a little grain of sand at their center. They are small (generally 2-3 mm in diameter, largest one is 7 mm across), but there were several hundred of them. After staring at them under the microscope for long enough, I recognized that there were at least two different types in here. Here is a shot of my sorting tray with all of them in there. A quick check of the two great publications I have from the North Carolina Fossil Club gave me some excellent pictures but three different names. A check of WORMS showed me that only one of those names was currently accepted so I began my search to see what was what knowing full well that bryozoan identification can be difficult and involves a lot of terminology that I am not well versed in (I have to admit, when ID’ing my collections, I am prone to lump the Paleozoic bryozoans from a given locality in one container and just be satisfied with that). A search of threads on the Fossil Forum led me to a couple where they were mentioned, but no defining pictures or ID’s. Here are a few pictures of what we are dealing with and I will apologize right from the start for the poor quality pictures. I really have to get a better setup for taking microfossil pictures since I tend to deal with small stuff a lot. I have decent microscope where I can look at them, but it is not set up for pictures. These are the two more easily identifiable forms, the picture on the right shows two of the same species but in one you can see the sand grain that is the starting point for the bryozoan, it sometimes gets covered or lost in growth and/or fossilization. So, after gathering and reading through a bunch of references from the early 1900’s onward I think I have the correct ID and most current name, but am open to any suggestions from those familiar with these little creatures. At the very least, hopefully this can serve as a helpful guide to someone who may have come across these, but struggled to put a name to them. There is a great publication by Canu and Bassler (1923) called North American Later Tertiary and Quaternary Bryozoa which provides lots of information, plenty of descriptions and enough illustrations to find both of the forms I had recognized. Specifically, they identified a species called Cupularia denticulata from the Waccamaw Fm and its description matched the form on the right above (just to make things interesting, there was another genus of similar bryozoa called Cupuladria, yes, just one letter different – ugh!). From this publication I had a potential name for the two types, could see where the names in the NCFC publications were coming from, and just had to track down what had changed in the intervening almost 100 years.

Hello folks! In Kaliningrad dark and cold time. Even colder on beach. So this last trip report in this season. For first it's search places. This is Svetlogorsk.

I am on a mission to determine if I have different types of fossils in the bottom of our creek bed than I do in the rocks in our yard. This is the first rock I have photographed and I saw a bryozoan fossil I didn't recognize! At least I think it is bryozoan... I have learned not to make assumptions... I recognize the fossils on the right of the photo as fenestellate bryozoans. The portion on the left is what I am not sure about - the honeycomb like part. It has some of the characteristics that I am used to finding in the fenestellate bryozoan fossil rocks, but it also reminds me of the trepostome bryozoan, since it has the appearance of being encrusted. I also read about Monticulipora bryozoa and lamellar cyclostome but I don't have the depth of knowledge to know the difference. And then there is coral? Honeycomb coral? Seems like this is too small? The small rock on top was part of the rock at first but it fell off when I was cleaning it. with a toothbrush and water. Also, as a bonus question - I get those, right?!! - what might the two types of lines on the side of the rock be? There is one type that is a single dashed line but the other one is a pair of dashed gray lines that separate and then come back together. There are quite a few of each of these on the rock - I can provide better photos if needed for identification. For those who have not been bored by my bryozoan posts yet, LOL, this rock was found in Huntsville, AL. Thanks!! Ramona

I hope this is allowed in the Fossil ID portion of the forum. I have learned so much here that I just want to "give back" for a moment. I am a photographer by trade and I want to share a few photos that show the beauty of bryozoa - trepostome bryozoan fossils in this case (thanks to the help from folks on this forum!) These are not huge and monumental discoveries, but the more I study them, the more I am fascinated by them. The more I learn, the more I NEED to learn. These creatures are beautiful in form, color, and substance. I have no questions in this post - just wanted to say THANKS in the way I know best - through my photographs! These are macro photographs - up close and personal with a very large, bryozoan loaded rock from Pulaski, TN. I am not reducing the resolution as much this time, so this will take a few posts. Blessings! Ramona

For the Columbus Day weekend my girlfriend planned a three-day trip down to Southwestern Virginia as a birthday present to me. The plan was to do a little sightseeing, go on some hikes, enjoy the fall foliage, and, most importantly, collect some fossils. Unfortunately Hurricane Delta had other plans for us. As the weekend approached it looked like the entire weekend would be soaked with rain. We tried to change our reservations, but we were not allowed to postpone. Not knowing what to expect for the weekend, we made our trip. Sunday was to be my big day of fossil collecting. It was also the day that Hurricane Delta was expected to pass through Southwestern Virginia... Lucky for me, luck turned out to be on my side (at least in part). I had an all-day fossil trip planned, but due to the weather, I had to cut the trip in half. After a later start to the day than I had hoped for, we headed towards two sites that I had identified for the day. Both were exposures of the Middle Ordovician Benbolt Formation. A few showers on the drive but for the most part the rain held off while we collected. Our first stop was a large, open road cut. The limestone there is just covered with brachiopods, trilobite pieces and bryozoa I thought the number and orientation of all of the bryozoa in this hash plate were very cool There were a lot of bryozoa at this site. Some small and some large, like these pieces of Mesotrypa sp. and Batostoma sevieri My favorite bryozoan found here though was Ceramoporella sp. This piece of Corynotrypa inflata comes in a close second. This bryozoan is encrusting and was often found on the inside of loose valves of Strophomena sp. I am still trying to identify all of the brachiopods. I believe the left and bottom center ones in the second photo are Rafinesquina champlainensis while the right most one is Multicostella platys Another really interesting fossil was this undetermined sponge One of the unfortunate things about this site is that because it is so exposed, the fossils there weather very quickly. This is most apparent on all of the trilobite pieces. Here are two cephalons and a pygidium of Illaenus fieldi I think this is a right cheek and eye of Eoharpes sp. Here is an additional mystery trilobite piece

Hello, FFers: I'm wondering if anyone can tell me anything about these filamental fossils from the U. Ord of Kenton County, Kentucky. Given the structure under the mike, I'm guessing bryozoan, but I'd never seen anything quite like this before. Can anyone tell me more? Including, maybe, an ID? (Or a different direction, if I'm wrong about their being bryozoa.) The scale in the first pic is in mm. Thanks!