Search the Community

I’ve recently bought these trilobites from the Chisholm shale in Nevada, and I was looking for an ID on the two of them. They are Cambrian in age, and more specifically from Lincoln County.

Six years ago I got the chance to visit the Walcott Quarry (see my longer post on this adventure in fossil trips) and while there I found this specimen of Vauxia gracilenta. Ever since I've wanted to make it part of my collection somehow, so this year for my birthday I decided to have a life reconstruction commissioned. Having seen the other fantastically detailed Cambrian models produced by @thorst, I asked him if he would be willing to reconstruct and 3D print the sponge. I drew an interpretation of the fossil and in no time he had it completed. A huge thank you for helping me make this possible. The level of detail in the model is incredible and you can clearly tell side by side that It's the same Vauxia that I found back in 2015. As soon a I have a proper fossil shelf it will have pride of place. Benton

Bizarre sea beast with a circular mouth full of serrated teeth sparked a 'prehistoric arms race' 500 million years ago Michael Havis and ShivaliBest, MailOnline, Dec. 13, 2020 The paper is: Paterson, J.R., Edgecombe, G.D. and García-Bellido, D.C., 2020. Disparate compound eyes of Cambrian radiodonts reveal their developmental growth mode and diverse visual ecology. Science advances, 6(49), p.eabc6721. Abstract of open access paper PDF version of paper Yours, Paul H.

Hi All, It's been awhile since I've posted here, but I've kept up my interest in fossils! I'm currently working on finishing my Ph.D. up here in Ohio (wildlife conservation) but am shifting my focus to outreach and education endeavors mostly. I currently host a wildlife-oriented YouTube channel but am interested in doing a series on fossils and paleontology in the future (either on our current channel or on a different one). My idea is to do a six-part series on the Paleozoic that starts with the Cambrian and works through the Permian. In each episode, I would visit a well-known (ideally) public fossil site with good representation of fossils from that period and show some fossil collecting with reflections on what life was like during that time period and ending with a showcase of the fossils we found that are then animated to life as the backdrop fades into a depiction of that time period. That last part will be a tall order, but I've got a a graphics/animation guy on board to (hopefully) figure it out. While I have ready access to good Ordovician (planning on mostly filming at Trammel Park, Cincinnati), Silurian (Oakes Quarry near Dayton), Devonian (Penn Dixie), and Carboniferous (Mazon Creek) sites; Cambrian and Permian are a bit tougher. I know the Burgess Shale in Canada would be the premier locale to film Cambrian (though not collect), but I think that long trip is not practical for me for the foreseeable future. Permian sites seem to be more cryptic and also mostly out west/southwest. However, I know PA/WV have some Permian/Cambrian exposures. Can anyone direct me to sites or resources that might help me find a good location to film (i.e. public, legal collecting, and preferably okay with publicizing the site)? If those three criteria cannot easily be met for Permian/Cambrian in this region, maybe at least somewhere I could film fossils but not collect? I apologize if this request/post is inappropriate here and appreciate any help you can offer! I won't provide a direct link to my YouTube channel directly (in case that is frowned on), but our channel name is Life Underfoot if you want to see the kind of content we produce (as stated earlier, all currently living wildlife stuff at the moment). I'd also be interested in featuring experts/researchers in some episodes so links to any prominent folks studying particular time periods would be appreciated as well! I hope to start doing some local filming this winter/spring (Ordovician/Silurian) then make the bigger trips out to Penn Dixie/Mazon this summer once vaccinated and travel is simpler/safer. Hopefully, we can film this series during 2021 and release it during 2022. Thanks again, -Andrew

finally got to work on an extinct animal from the Cambrian like it was resurrected from its grave is nectocaris made a 3D Print for it Nectocaris Model on thingiverse

This trilobite was found in Lincoln county, Nevada and I am having trouble identifying the species, any ideas? Its about an inch wide at the cephalon

Hi, here is probably my last (physical) model of this year: A small vignette in life scale depicting two Pikaia gracilens swimming along three small Hazelia delicatula sponges. This scene could have happened about 520 million years ago in the Cambrian. The parts are again printed from clear resin on an Anycubic Photon Mono X at 50µm resolution. Each Pikaia consists of two parts, which allows to print the inner organs and the segmented (muscular?) structure on the inside while keeping the outside smooth. If you want to print your own, I have uploaded the .stl-files at thingiverse Cheers, Thorsten

Hi, it's time for the next 3d-printed animal from the Cambrian: Kylinxia zhangi. It was described only about a month ago (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2883-7) and features Anomalocaris-like frontal appendages and Opabinia-like eyes on an early arthropod body. The model in 1:1 scale is only about 6cm long. The legs, while considerable thickened to allow printing, are still only about 1/3rd of a millimetre in diameter. It was printed on an Anycubic Photon Mono X at a resolution of 50µm from transparent resin and painted using an airbrush with highly thinned paint, such that the result is still translucent. The files for printing can be downloaded here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4679914 Hope you like it! Cheers, Thorsten

Hi all, here is another of my recent models. It is a full-scale Olenoides serratus trilobite I did this summer. Like my Archaeopteryx skeleton, it was modelled in Blender and printed using an Anycubic Photon printer. I used clear resin and painted it with very thin layers, such that the model retains a realistic level of translucency, especially on the legs, gills and antennae. Attached are some photographs and a render of the parts. You can download the model files at thingiverse to print your own one. The length without antennae is about 7cm. Cheers, Thorsten

Does anyone know anything about the possible hyolithid fossils found in Newport RI? Is it legal to collect over there?

Hey everyone, I’ve been meaning to get this post up for a few days but I’ve been dealing with my poor cat inky (Sweetheart of a cat) who is on her final day of life today. I will have to put her down November 1st. Very sad time as she’s been my companion the last 13 years. I’m sure many can relate. I’ll try to keep the chatter short and just get up as many photos I can for you kind people on the forum to enjoy. I just got back recently from an amazing trip to Utah and Nevada (Oct/11/2020-Oct/18/2020) Where I was camping in the field and trilobite collecting for 6 days straight. It was a very rewarding trip but it also required some serious gusto and hard work in the field. This type of collecting I did isn’t for the faint of heart with many days stacked on top of each other. With that I’ll try to get to the photos cause we all know that’s what we wanna see. These will consist of mostly field shots of finds during the first moments after discovery. My prep lab is under construction and it’ll be a couple months before I can start prepping these amazing bugs. First time to Utah requires pictures upon arrival. This was home....the nights got very cold and the days were comfortable but dry and sometimes kinda hot. Avoided some serious heat so I was lucky. This time of year is a little more forgiving in the desert. field shots incoming! It may take a hour or 2 to get them up.

Micro-CT lets scientists see telling 3D details in arthropod evolution Juan Siliezar, Harvard University The open access paper is: Liu, Y., Ortega-Hernández, J., Chen, H. et al. Computed tomography sheds new light on the affinities of the enigmatic euarthropod Jianshania furcatus from the early Cambrian Chengjiang biota. BMC Evol Biol 20, 62 (2020). Yours, Paul H.

I had attempted to ID similar fossils awhile ago but feel they were lost in the trilobite photos. So today, I will only present these new unknown "blobs" from the Cambrian , Eau Claire Formation of western Wisconsin in hopes to definitively ID these. Maybe they are even geologic. Good Luck!!!!! Mike

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hunting with @GeschWhat and her daughter. We examined the Eau Claire Formation of the Cambrian in western Wisconsin. Lori had little interest in the trilobites that frequent this formation. She kept busy examining the matrix for trace fossils and other goodies it may reveal. She left the trilobites for her daughter. A large slab had broken free from the cliff during the winter and Lori discovered an interesting pattern on the surface. We worked on extracting a substantial chunk for her and in the process found a deeper layer of trilo-bits. I am a hash plate fanatic. So after she was done with the slab, I extracted a large sample containing the trilobites. Here is a corner of the hash plate: So the contest is a mindless one!!!!!! My kind of event. The person that guesses the number of trilobite cephalons and pygidiums on the hash plate is the winner!! The count was made using identifiable bits. Three counts were made and then averaged. One guess a day until a winner is found. At that point, I will share the hash plate with you and mail a smaller version to the winner. (Unfortunately postage out of the US can be spendy, so I will pay $20.00 if those overseas would like to participate). Good Luck! Mike

Good Day, I currently reside in Houston but have roots in West Texas and the Hill Country. Having been away in the intermountain west for the last 23 years, getting back to limestone is a joy! I've been a fossil collector most of my walking life and enjoy thinking about what must have been here and Wow, it is just mind boggling to consider! Rocks and minerals, geology and the world we live in is fascinating from so many perspectives. I'm an environmental scientist by trade and currently work in the transportation sector.

Last year, to celebrate finishing my undergraduate degree, my girlfriend and I went on a long (9,000+ mile) road trip around the western US and at long last (a little over a year since their discovery) the last of the fossils we found are out of the refrigerator and I’ve finally gotten all of them photographed. Here are some of the highlights and best fossils we found. A rough map of the route of the trip While the trip wasn’t entirely fossil centric we wanted to hunt at a few cool spots along the way. We chose to visit 5 fossil locations, the first of which was Clarkia Fossil Bowl in Idaho, a fantastic location for Miocene age leaves (Langhian Stage, ~15Mya) tucked behind a motocross track. These poor fossils have been through it all in the year between when they were found and when I finally got them dry. They’ve been soaked several times, gone mouldy twice, frozen at least once and flown across the Atlantic Ocean, all before spending the last 8 months in the refrigerator. Amazingly all but two of them survived perfectly including one of my favourite finds, a tiny flower. A maple leaf (genus Acer) still partly covered in matrix but with the stem intact. At some point I hope to get this one prepared. The best leaf find of the trip, with beautiful red coloration and mottling from fungus. A partial leaf, with beautiful vein preservation. The next spot was the American Fossil quarry in Kemmerer Wyoming to look for Eocene fish (Green River Formation, Ypresian Stage, ~53-48Mya). Splitting though the material left out by the quarry we found a few fish, primarily Knightia and Diplomystus. The best Knightia, including the best fish of the day with its head still partly covered. Some of the Diplomystus. The first needs some repair as it broke through the tail. The second has a counterpart as well and I’m hoping to frame it soon. And a mystery fish, I don’t know what species this is, it could just be Knightia or Diplomystus but it doesn’t look like the others we found. The star find came close to the end of the time at the quarry, a section of a puddle layer packed full of Knightia, at least a dozen fish piled on top of each other. The quarry manager was kind enough to let me take the blocks without splitting them thinner since the material is full of fractures and likely would not have survived. The layer as it split in the quarry (US size 13 hiking boot acting as a rough scale). The three pieces I managed to recover. The blocks are currently in a storage unit in Washington until I can figure out how to get them prepared. I am hoping the first two pieces can be reunited and the part and counterpart can be mounted side by side but I’m unsure about how to accomplish this. If anyone who prepares Green River fish has any ideas please let me know. The third locality we visited was Westgard pass in Inyo California, hunting for Cambrian archaeocyathids (Poleta Formation, Cambrian Stage 3, ~ 520Mya). We were only there a short time as there was a lot of driving to do that day, but I still managed to find one example in cross section. My girlfriend was more lucky, finding four examples. These are our favourites, particularly the third, which exhibits some dimensionality in addition to the cross-section. I’m absolutely thrilled to find anything Cambrian, and to make things even better the fossil locality is just down the road from the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, home to living trees more than 4,000 years old and one of my favourite spots on the whole trip. We also visited Capitola Beach to search for rolled cetacean bone. I found two examples with one clearly showing the cancellous internal bone texture. To cap off the trip I wanted to do a fossil hunt in my home state of Washington. Since I still don’t know where to go to look for the elusive Pulalius crab, we decided to search the West Twin River site for shrimp concretions (Pysht Fomration, Oligocene, ~22-33Mya). We found over a dozen of these containing partial shrimp. I think they are all Callianopsis clallamensis since this is a common species at this locality. The first concretion that I found after identifying the right material. Another shrimp nodule containing a large section of claw. The head of a shrimp. Two non-crustaceans, a gastropod internal mould and a beautiful white bivalve in a small concretion. A mystery concretion with something eroding out from both ends. And last, one of the strangest concretions I have ever seen. The outside is hardened but the inside is a soft clay consistency with several bits of shrimp shell, completely the opposite of the hard in the middle concretions I’m used to. In all, it was a fantastic trip. I would love to go back to all the sites we visited, and there is so much more to explore next time I’m stateside. I’m looking forward to getting out hunting again. Stay tuned for the next big trip to celebrate finishing our masters. Benton

Hello again Fossil Forum, Last week I posted a few pictures of what I thought might be fossil wood that I found on my property in Southeastern PA (Montgomery County, just over the Philadelphia County line). It seemed that it was possible that my rocks were fossils, but also maybe not... One helpful user suggested that I might polish some of the ends (hopefully crossections) of a few pieces. So below and in the next few replies I will post some pictures of a few pieces, for the polished parts I used a cabbing machine. I live at the bottom of a relatively steep hill and these pieces were all found within about 50ft of each other. If there seems to be some variety, that is in keeping with what I found after consulting several geological maps of my area: my property appears to lie at the precise intersection of precambrian, lower paleozoic, and cambrian regions and includes both sedimentary and metamorphic rocks. If not fossil wood, possibly stromatolites? ...or just more interesting rocks?? For discussion purposes I'll number the pieces and put them in separate replies. Thank you again for any thoughts, information, and opinions!

Hi All, Recently I purchased some Shale from U-Dig, UT. The trilobites inside were super swell, but one of the more interesting finds was this...thing... It appears to be a circular mass, with some veins or something radiating from the center. My hopeful brain began to think it could be a jellyfish, though realistically it is highly unlikely, and I've never heard of anything like that being preserved in the shale from U-dig. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated, as I am at an ABSOLUTE loss. Thanks, -Snag

Meet Cambroraster falcatus, the sediment-sifting ‘Roomba’ of the Cambrian This crustacean-like critter stalked the seas half a billion years ago. Katherine Wu, NOVA,, July 30, 2019 Moysiuk, J. and Caron, J.B., 2019. A new hurdiid from the Burgess Shale evinces the exploitation of Cambrian infaunal food sources. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 286 (1908), p.20191079. Open access Proceedings of the Royal Society B PDF Brantford Lapidary and Mineral Society PDF Sun, Z., Zeng, H. and Zhao, F., Occurrence of the hurdiid radiodont Cambroraster in the middle Cambrian (Wuliuan) Mantou Formation of North China. Journal of Paleontology, 1(6), p.2. More research by Fangchen Zhao Liu, Y., Lerosey-Aubril, R., Audo, D., Zhai, D., Mai, H. and Ortega-Hernández, J., 2020. Occurrence of the eudemersal radiodont Cambroraster in the early Cambrian Chengjiang Lagerstätte and the diversity of hurdiid ecomorphotypes. Geological Magazine, pp.1-7. Open access Pates, S., Botting, J.P., McCobb, L.M. and Muir, L.A., 2020. A miniature Ordovician hurdiid from Wales demonstrates the adaptability of Radiodonta. Royal Society Open Science, 7(6), p.200459. Open access Yours, Paul H.

Found this guy while cleaning out a drawer today. From the Wulongqing Formation (Lower Cambrian, Series 2 Stage 4) in China. I would have guessed Eoredlichia but the long spines (on the third thorax segment I think) are throwing me off. The specimen is quite small, barely 1cm at the longest dimension, so maybe an early developmental stage? It was a bit hard to photograph, let me know if more pictures are needed. Thanks.

I just received this "phyllocarid" valve from the Marjum Formation (Middle Cambrian) of Utah. It was sold as Canadaspis perfecta. It measures about 1" long and 3/4" tall. Although I don't have a compass, the angles between the hinge line and both the anterior and posterior margins of the valve look to be less than 100 degrees. Several papers I've read state that these angles are usually closer 120 in Canadaspis. Any thoughts on what this might be?