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I live in upstate New York in a small town called Fabius southeast of Syracuse. My son found this tooth in the woods behind our house in a seasonal stream bed. We are not sure if it is bison tooth or cow tooth or even if it is old ie....did not pass the burn test. Thankyou so much for any info.

I was thinking I could keep a running update on my bison prep, discoveries in learning, general happenings. . . Maybe a bit like Ralph’s aka Nimravis’ “Sometimes You Have to Whack It”, only my bison prep style if it isn’t too dull and boring. A recap. I found an almost complete, articulated bison with the skull in January 2019. I have collected the majority of it. I’m working on processing stuff still and prepping it. I’m totally new to vertebrate paleontology type stuff. So there is a big learning curve. I still have bits sitting in bags or small plastic boxes that I haven’t processed and removed the dirt from. That stuff is still moist for the most part. This post will be embarrassingly honest at times about how I messed up something out of sheer ignorance or how something didn’t work as planned. I’m not beating myself up over anything. Lesson learned and I move on all the wiser. I’ll be sharing my trials and errors for 2 or 3 reasons. 1. So someone else will know what worked or didn’t. 2. Hopefully give others the courage or motivation to just try and not be afraid to make mistakes. 3. Show how blond I really am. Noooo! Not really. 4. So others with more experience can chip in and give me guidance and insight. One thing I found out the wrong way is when you rinse the bones off with water and then let them dry, you’re not supposed to get them wet with water again. Never ever. I had no clue, but it makes sense. These specific type of bones are still like very old bone with little to no mineralization. So they’re fragile. When I rinsed the dirt and mud off I did a general, not a thorough cleaning where I got all the dirt out of the nooks and crannies. So I took one of the femurs that had thoroughly dried and went to rinse it again and clean the nitty gritty parts. After I was done I had it sitting next to me on the couch when I heard a very loud crack noise come from the bone! That was not good! I couldn’t find a crack, but clearly somewhere inside a crack had occurred. It was because the bone was dry. When wet it adsorbed the water, swelled and cracked. So no water. If I had known that I would have been more thorough on the initial cleaning.

I have spent more dollars on my pet bison than I have ever spent on fossil related tools. I’ve purchased: - A poster on bovine skull anatomy. I couldn’t find a decent free one online. - Butvar 76 - Paraloid B72 (auto correct kept wanting to “paranoid” LOL) - Cyanoacrylate (More of it. Ran out during extraction) - A couple books. One is on “consolidants, adhesives and coatings” in conservation. It is somewhat more technical than what I was expecting. Not beyond my comprehension, but definitely a more in-depth study kind of read. Its detailed chemistry of all the materials we hear about and use. Including those listed above. The Cow and Bison book by Finsley And now what every gal with a pet bison needs is: I’m definitely going to need this when I go trying to prep the skull.

Last June 2018 I stumbled upon the skeleton of a bovid in a creek that was quite old considering it was down 5 feet or so in a bank. I thought it was a cow. I collected the bones that had fallen and a couple that easily came out without any real digging. I brought them home and washed them up and most have been sitting out on my patio under a bit of cover. Last Wednesday night I went to the monthly Dallas Paleontological Society meeting. While there I bought a book on cow and bison fossils. This past Saturday I had a busy morning and afternoon and got home a little after 3:00. I sat down to read the book. It named 3 notable differences between cow and bison bones. I was reading in suspense. I wanted to know if it was cow or bison. Of course I wanted it to be bison, but assumed it was cow. I got to page 10 and the one distinguishing bone I had was a metatarsal. I went and got it and I suddenly realized it was a bison bone!!! ! I had a sudden rush of excitement. My adrenaline was flowing as I flew around the house to change clothes and gather stuff I may need. I did not know what I’d find. For all I knew everything had washed away already. It had been over 7 months. We’ve had lots and lots of rain and numerous flooding events since last June. So I was skeptical. The place is about 40 min from my house. By the time I got everything ready and got there it was almost 4:30. It is about a 10 min walk from where I park my car. I’d never been to the creek in wet season so for all I knew it would be under water. I put on my hip wanders just in case. I got my pack and my garden hoe/claw digging tool. I headed out to the spot. The area above the creek is a flood plane. There was lots of standing water everywhere. When I got into the woods there were 2 nice 8-10 person tents there which appeared to have been vacated rapidly. They were in the flood plane and looked liked they had actually been flooded. No one had returned to take them down. There were hog tracks all over the place and the odor of hog excrement in the air. The forest floor was very mucky. I meandered through the trees and fallen limbs. The forest was fairly wide open with very little underbrush. I came to a point where I had to turn right to be able to find a point of access to the creek. The banks are 10 to 20 feet or more high depending upon where you’re at in the creek. The bank edge is a straight drop down into the creek so you can’t enter just anywhere. I came to a spot where there was a 3 foot drop with a tangle of roots where I could get down to a lower level and then into the creek. Then there was a hill so I sat down to scoot over the edge and then walked carefully down the hill. From there it was a short distance to the creek. Then I turned to walk down steam. I came around the bend in the creek and saw this. If you look closely you can see a large whitish object. That is the bison skull. To the left were thoracic vertebra and to the right were cervical vertebrae. Go figure that one out. Then there were some ribs and the edge of other bones and then another 5 feet down on the right was a femur. It was pretty chilly. In the low 40s with a stiff wind. Although down in the creek I was protected from the wind. I put down my pack and took out my gloves and a chisel to probe the dirt with and pull some of it away. The base of both horns were present, but no sign of the whole horns. A tip of a horn was broken off and sitting in the cavity of the other horn on the right. Otherwise both horns were gone. I carefully lifted the horn tip out and set it aside. Here is the skull with the horn tip on the right. These are thoracic vertebra. There are 6 visible behind the roots. These are cervical vertebra. I think 5 or 6 of them exposed. I uncovered part of the skull to its condition. There were a couple tree roots growing through it and the skull was split in two front to back about where the upper sinus cavities were. There were cracks all over the back and side of the skull. The atlas vertebra was in place with a bone that looked a bit like a broken rib sticking out of it. I didn’t know what was going on there. It seemed fixed in place as if it belonged there. After seeing all the cracks I decided to go back to my car and get the bottle of cyanoacrylate, my head lamp and something to drink. I grabbed a couple plastic bags and a small plastic box. I hurried back to begin the task of excavating the vertebrae and begin pedestaling the skull. I was in for a lot of work and sunset was only 30 minutes away. But I was really hyped about the whole thing. It was more fun and play than work in my eyes. I’ll post more of the story and pics tomorrow.

A few years ago I was prospecting the lands to the south of the Blood Indian Creek Reservoir (not a reservation) and found this weathered piece of ammonite. My jeweller friend said it was a buffalo stone and I thought little of it until I started to clean it up a bit today. I checked the legend of the Buffalo Calling Stone and found it to be an interesting topic and thought I'd share it here with a photo of the piece. The shell (ammolite) remaining will be quite nice once finished. You can clearly see the buffalo shape and the broken outline along the back of the large sutures as well as the smaller connecting suture lines on the side. Here's the story... Iniskim (Buffalo Calling Stones) – Pieces of the Bearpaw Ammonite Although our people began to live as makoyi (wolves) had shown them, life was still very hard and the people were often hungry. One day iinii (buffalo) took pity on our people. A lady named Weasel Woman was collecting water from a river near her camp when she heard something calling to her from the bushes. When she looked closer, she found a stone that spoke to her. The stone explained how it could be used in a ceremony that would call the buffalo towards a pisskan (buffalo jump). Weasel Woman took the iniskim, the buffalo calling stone, back to camp. She told the spiritual leaders about the ceremony to call the buffalo. The people followed her instructions and soon they had plenty of meat and many hides for new lodge covers. There are numerous iniskim on the prairies. Many people still keep them as sacred bundles. We call on iniskim to help us have successful lives.

I got a tooth that I found in a river or creek in central Iowa. I'm not sure exactly where I found it, just that I found it in the water. I was wondering if it is a bison tooth, but I can't tell the difference between bison and cow teeth. I found a partial bison skull with the horns in a creek I go to, so it wouldn't surprise me if it is a bison. I included a picture of the front, back, and grinding surface. Thanks for any help.

Hello....I'm an excited newbie!! Can anyone please help us identify this petrified bone and tooth? We found it in a lake in West central Minnesota. Buffalo perhaps?

I'm not sure, but I found what I think is the top of a bison skull with the horns. I found it in central Iowa, sitting on a sand bank in the middle of a river/creek. Could someone tell me if it is? The horns are kind of straighter like an ancient bison, could someone estimate the age and tell me if they think it is? The horn spread is just over 21 inches. It seems pretty old and almost fossilized. Thanks for any help in figuring it out. I'm really interested in what you have to say.

Wow. I recently got back from a trip to visit some family in Buffalo, New York and Canada, Eh?. In Buffalo my Aunt and Uncle have a house on Lake Erie. It never occurred to me to look for fossils on the beach (mostly rocks down there), until this trip. So I went down for about an hour or so and broke a few rocks but mostly just found the fossils lying around. I can tell you, this was the most productive hour of fossil hunting in my life. I could barely go a minute without stumbling on one! I don’t even know what to do with all these. A great expirece overall and my Uncle especially enjoyed seeing all the treasures. So without further a due here we go... (sorry if the pics are a bit blurry my camera is trash) Enjoy! Brachiopods and such

Hello all, I am a newer fossil hunter in the Buffalo, New York area. I am doing some personal research of the eurypterid in New York. Obviously with the eurypterid being the fossil of New York it does have high density in New York, more so upstate, but I am looking for some in the direct Buffalo area. I've read a few studies done by local paleontologists and geologists of it being found in the Lang's fossil quarry, Pittsford, as close as Holland, and just over the border in Fort Erie. With that said I think it's easy to then assume it's here in Buffalo, but don't know where to search. Has anyone had any luck in Buffalo? Or heard of places within the surrouding areas to have them?

Fossil ID help. Daughter found near a beach in Buffalo, NY on Lake Erie. Thank you.

Since you all had such interesting and useful information on my non-shark tooth (darn it!) from yesterday, I thought I would throw this out to you to learn about it. My kids and I found this partial buffalo skull in the mud along a river bank here in Iowa. I love it SO much - such a great conversation piece! I would like to do a write up with some facts on it to place by the skull, but my expertise stops at anything past being one who gets excited about rocks and fossils! I was told that one way to determine age is to place a string between the tips of the horns, and to see how far off of the skull bump the string lies. When I do this, the string is on the skull bump. I do not know if there is any truth to this, or what it even means, but thought I would provide you with that visual if you need it. Please let me know if I can give you any further information or photos to help you in your assessment. Thank you everyone!

Found these in Sherman Texas in the lowest part of a formation at the bottom of a creek. In this same formation, we were pulling out small goblin shark teeth and ptychodus teeth. Trying to ID what exactly these are? Everything is preserved well, but the bone portion is super brittle. My first instinct was cow, but where we pulled it out of the formation gave me pause (and I looked up pictures of buffalo/bison, and it looks similar). Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Photo of the Mountain Buffalo (Bison bison montanae) skull from Ottowa Gulch Montana -- may help clarify if there is a remnant population still roaming the back country of Yellowstone Park. Living fossils would be a great find for our new mammal.

Found this little brachiopod on the shore of Lake Erie, near Buffalo. Measures 21mm long. Is this a Mucrospirifer species? Photo was created by focus-stacking 4 images for each side. Thanks! Zach

Hello, when I was very young I was out on a hike on some our land in alberta. On the hike we descovered a skull which had been washed down a hill by the recent rain falls. The skull was of interest so we decided to take it home. After some reasherch we descovered that it was in fact the skull of a bison antiquus. The skull is complete with only a few missing peices. After reviewing some information on the web it appeared that the largest one found to date had a horn tip to horn tip span of 31 inches , the skull I found has a span of 38 inches. If it is a record size who should I contact? Thanks

Does anyone have a step by step photo or diagram of how the astragalus, calcaneus and tarsals fit together in the Buffalo hind leg? I have found so many leg and vertebrae - but the the 2nd phalanx and "Hoof Bone" or third phalanx - these seem almost impossible to find in Texas and Oklahoma. I finally found enough (almost), to put a rear leg together.

Well I went on an adventure on Saturday with an avid collector from the forum ..... Quarryman Dave. And although it will be hard to believe; we did not go out to hunt eurypterids. (even though Dave has yet to find one). I had prepped some trilos for Dave earlier in the year and in exchange for the labour of love he had promised me a trip to Penn Dixie in return. Truth be known I somewhat hate driving. Dave had arranged to meet me at my house which is 2 hours from where he lives between 6:30 and 7:00 AM, well he was so excited about the prospects of the hunt that he was there at 5:55 AM. Well after scrambling around to make coffee and pack a quick lunch for us both we hit the road by 6:55. Prospects for the day were for perfect weather with a high of 70. However Dave wanted to make a stop on the way to the US Border to quickly explore a road cut. Well it had rained heavily the day before and the road cut was pretty much a muddy mess. We could see bryozoans, corals, and brachs but no sign of a trilobite which was the target of the day. Well the adventure begins, I am walking through some tall grass and I think I bump into something soft. Well I look down and see the grass start to move and two eyes and a head pop out, needless to say I jump back a little startled. Well Looking up at me is a racoon that was sound asleep when I bumped into it. I called Dave over and he did not believe that I had found a racoon when I was looking for trilos. Well after a little coaxing the racoon waddled off minding its own business without a care in the world that we were in its space. If I had thought a bit straighter I should have taken a picture At that point Dave reluctantly agreed that it was too wet to stay at the road cut and we moved on to cross the Border. After a brief interogation from a guard that was not really to sure why two grown men were going looking for rocks we entered the United States. Since we were running early and Penn Dixie does not officially open till 9:30 we did what any good Canadians always do. We looked for a Tim Horton's. After being sucessful with our hunt for a Canadian coffee we arrived at Penn Dixie about 9:15. Well I was disappointed. My favorite area to hunt there was currently under about 3 feet of water. They had nicknamed the area "The Lake". We seriously thought about heading out and going to 18 Mile creek where Carmine (Xonenine) from the forum was hunting with his girl friend. But being my meticulous self I pretty much insisted that we give Penn a try and if we hadn't found anything by noon that we would move on to 18 mile creek. At Penn Dixie the good trilobite layer is about 3 feet below the quarry floor. If you surface collect pretty much all you are going to find is horn coral, brachs and pygidiums and cephalons. Well as some of you know I am a digger and a rock splitter by nature. As Dave commented yesterday I am like the energizer bunny I just keep going and going. If I am honest with you all I woke up this morning very sore and stiff. Making a long story short I trenched and split rock for 9 hours non stop. Yes Dave helped out but if I am being truly honest even though he is a big guy his batteries and persistence run out long before mine. Well by noon we had only found 3 complete trilobies but we had the beginnings of a massive pit that was getting to as I kept promising Dave "the godd stuff". Fortunately for me (and my credibility) when we got about 3 feet down we started to find a lot of partials. I was giving partials away like no tomorrow to all the kids and parents that were there for the day. Penn gets a lot of tourist type visitors that have never hunted fossils before. At points in the day we had a fair crowd watching Dave and I digging the pit. Dr. Gordon Baird had a 300 level class of students for a paleontology course on the site and so pretty much my only break of the day was a great conversation or two with him on the fossils here, Ridgemount and up in the Lake Simcoe Brechin area. In retrospect I do not think anyone there on Saturday other than Dave and I found a complete trilobite. I was giving a lot of good partials 2/3 3/4 specimens to the paleontology students, most of whom did not hae the right equipment for this site. As I always tell people go to a site the first time with someone that knows the site and knows what they are doing. Dave had been to Penn once before and last time I believe he found 2 partials and an almost complete (but it was a real beauty when prepped). I generally find 10 to 20 completes when I spend a full day at Penn Dixie. Although Penn produces some good prone specimens the majority I have found have been enrolled. Here is the pit we excavated at the end of the day. I did not take pictures throughout the day as I was too busy splitting rock . We were down below the water table so there was mud and seepage at the bottom that I had to keep scooping out. Well we toiled away till we started to lose light at about 6:30. So how did we do well you be the judge We did not keep anything that does not have the potential to be complete (we gave tons off stuff way to the "tourists") Total tally 47 trilobites that we know about before prepping. I believe about 6 of them have the potential to be real beauties, when prepped. Suspect I have about a week of prepping ahead of me. The only negative to report is that 100% are phacops rana (I know I used the old name). As much as we tried we did not find that greenops we both desparately wanted. Just some partials of greenops. Then the real battle begins when we have to divide the spoils. (Actually I promised Dave first choice). We have decided to equally split the days findings since it was a communal effort. Stay tuned for the next post to see the before pictures. (this 2 meg limit on uploads is a pain!!!!!!!!!) I suspect Dave is glad that he bought a 2 year membership. He thinks he needs to go 6 times to get his monies worth. Personally I believe he has done alright already. Dave is a great guy to go hunting with (as is everyone I have had the good fortune to meet from the forum so far). My opinion.... not bad for a day with nary a eurypterid in sight!!!!!!

Hello all! July 3rd dawned (literally) early,... at 5:00 am for me. I had been up the previous morning at 3:00 am, to travel the 6+ hours from Connecticut to the annual 4th of July Jones/Browning family reunion, at my aunt's lake cottage in Rushford, NY. I was excited this morning, though, with the prospect of some good fossiling in good company. After the usual morning ablutions, I packed the Pilot, with snacks and fossiling gear, and shoved off at 6:00am. I was headed out on the 56 minute drive from Rushford to the super secret location in the Buffalo area. I had been to this area twice before, and had come away with some of my best trilobites to date,( A few Eldregeops rollers, and one prone, but messed up Greenops possibly?) so I was hoping for a repeat performance, at least. Was I wrong,... but, ... I digress. Muttering under my breath to the Fossil Gods, while "GPS Lady" guided me in her heavy handed way, to my destination. Doh! Need gas!! Found a station on the route there, and after a quick fill-up, disregarding even coffee in my excitement, I was off again to the refrain of "Recalculating!" ... yeah... yeah,... I'm goin, I'm goin! Jeeze! The sunny summer sky was turning threatening, to the north,( the directon I was headed!) and I drove with trepidation to the locality. Darker skies seemed to want to confirm the weather guy's baleful forecast of "Pop up T-storms". Great! Well, rain or no rain... Onward and upwards. Arriving at my destination, I pulled into the lot, and found Xonenine (Carmine) waiting for me. We got out of our cars, shook our hello's, ... and started almost immediately to converse about fossils as we made an exchange of fossils. I liked Carmine right away, and we seemed to hit it off. The rain started up while we stood talking over the fossils, and let up again, just as suddenly. The weather guy was wrong again. What else is new? After a short time discussing our trades, we decided to get moving. I had to leave by 12 - noon, or would have to face the wrath of She Who Must be Obeyed. (Don't want that!) So after moving to the lower lot with our vehicles, we geared up, and set out into the creek. Entrance to the creek on the left. We headed left under the small bridge, and I mentioned to Carmine ( Who, by the way, is a great guy. Modest and down to earth, and generous to a fault!) that sometimes trilos could be found in the concretions that can be found weathering out of the shale cliffs. Carmine using his xray eagle vision to find fossils. View looking back under bridge. He immediately grabbed a large one out of the base of the cliff, roughly a 2ft x 1ft round honker of a concretion, and proceded to smack it with a sledge. This stuff is HARD! Well, Carmine is no slouch with a sledge, and boom, the concretion splits. There is a roller Eldredgeops, right in the center of this huge thing. I took some time to break out the chunk with the roller in it, as Carmine had deffered to me, as his guest, ( Did I mention he is a gracious host?) and I finally got it out, in the midst of which I found another, smaller roller, which broke out fairly easily ... I insisted he take it, and he reluctantly agreed. We worked our way down stream, splitting shales, ...(the Mucrospirifers were plentiful)... and finding wildlife... Carmine finding more cool stuff... We moved along, and started to search near the second bridge, finding the much harder limestones that produce giant favosites, brachiopods, trilo-bits and pieces, and horn corals. ... ... TO BE CONTINUED>>> Tomorrow...