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On Nov 2nd, I posted this fish tooth for identification ( Onychodus sigmoides). Since then a few other "fishy" pieces have been uncovered. Does anything ring a bell with you concerning these two unknowns. 1. This broken specimen is 2.2 cm in length. 2. This is 3.9cm long

This tooth was a pleasant surprise on a day of few fossils. It's ID remains a mystery to me.

Last weekend our club got together in a quarry. The leader said it was primarily for mineral collection and explained few if any fossils are found in this Devonian material. He was absolutely correct and I was equally disappointed! Our club hunts typically produce both minerals and fossils. But not this quarry. Here is what I scraped up: Not too impressive for 8 hours of exploration. I did manage to also find a trilobite cephalon that I donated to a member that found a pygidium. Anyways, the minerals, unlike the fossils were plentiful, varied , and beautiful. I stumbled upon one vug that measured close to 24 inches across and was on the lower corner of a 2 ton boulder, covered with 1-2 inch crystals!!. The belt of my rock saw gave out after about 30 minutes of rock removal forcing me to leave it behind. Our leader is going to see if the quarry can pull this beast to the side and he will try to extract this wonderful specimen. When I returned home and began chipping matrix away from some of the vugs, a special treat was in store for me. A black spot showed up on the exposed layer of a specimen as I worked on it. After I exposed more of the dark area, it turns out, this quarry did indeed have an exceptional Devonian fossil. I am not sure of the identity of this tooth. So these images will also show up in "Fossil ID"

Our mineral and fossil club gained access to a new quarry. I stumbled onto this coral and am perplexed in trying to ID it. There were the typical hexagonaria and rugosa corals. But this one stood apart. Thanks for thoughts!! The quarry contains all levels of the Cedar Valley Formation. Mike

On Sunday, the Blackhawk Gem and Mineral Society was finally able to shake off Covid and get together. Please forgive me for joining a "non fossil club", but I do enjoy minerals. Not as much as fossils. But close!!!! Even with the excursion being primarily a mineral hunt, I did sneak a few fossils into my bucket. The quality leaves little to be desired, but since you all want to see fossils, here are some representative samples from the Solon Member (or maybe just above it) of the Devonian of Central Iowa. Poorly preserved cephalopods: Colonial corals: Gastropods (hard to see): The ever so common Atrypa independensis: Some fish remains, likely placoderm: With it being a Mineral Club trip, I must show some NON fossils. Actually, many of the calcite vugs began as fossils. So it must be ok to show my finds!!! For example, here is a calcite lined hollow that still shows the classic outline of Atrypa. Pyrite is relatively common: Calcite crystals come in many forms and color. From clear, to tan, to bluish, to root beer. But the dogtooth crystals are what most people are searching for: Hopefully all of you fossil hunters can put your prejudices away long enough to enjoy these crystals! Mike 2021-05-028.cxf 2021-05-029.cxf

I have had this brachiopod for 2 years and would like to prep it out. It would be nice to know what it is first so I can envision how it sits in the matrix. Cedar Valley Formation??

I was on a quarry hunt with our fossil club yesterday and noticed this 1 cm. specimen in a sandy/ shaley rock that had scattered cinoidal fragments in it. No one could ID it, so I am offering it up to the experts here on the forum to tell me what it is before I attempt prepping it. The quarry is Devonian, but I can not tell you more than that since this was found in a heap of stones, not from the wall itself. thanks, Mike

A few weeks ago, I visited a quarry in central Iowa more for the purpose of its well known and beautiful crystals, not it's fossils: I was told that most of the "vugs" were a result of fossil reabsorbtion and calcite deposition in the void. It was hard for me to comprehend until I started splitting open the few brachiopods that I found. They indeed were crystalized in the middle!! Here is one I split open: Here is the purpose of my post. The dark item is not anything I recognize. Most of the time "black" turns up in this area, I am told it is fish pieces. Does anyone have a suggestion of what part of a fish this would be, IF it is fish at all??

As you can see, Minnesota is locked into winter: Fossil hunting is obviously out of the question. But other activities can be just as enjoyable such as bird watching: Or fishing: Or working on cleaning up one's finds from last summer. Such has been the case this February. I had collected a colonial coral completely embedded in matrix last summer. Only the circular tips of the coral showed themselves. I have looked at that ball of rock many times wondering if I could expose its deeper treasures. So early this month, I began to remove the matrix around the coral. It became VERY frustrating because any exposed coral was EXTREMELY brittle. In fact at one point, I tossed it into my pitch pile out of frustration. But being a stubborn person, I looked at it in the trash can and said, one more time. This go around, I slowed down. How many times have I heard this when it comes to fossil prep! I got out my paraloid or b- something and smeared it on the exposed pieces to stabilize them. I super glued all of the broken bits back on. Then on a daily basis, I would expose a little more then stabilize it. Then after a few weeks, I could not reach any deeper and quit. Here is the specimen that I would like a conformation ID on: My guess is: Syringoporids are tabulate corals, a group that is always colonial. The corallites (tubes that contained the individual polyps) are vertical and were connected by small horizontal tubes, through which they shared common tissue. Some colonies had hundreds of corallites and built mounds up to a meter in diameter. Syringopora is the longest-ranging genus in the family, having started in the Ordovician Period and going extinct in the Permian.

Here are some Devonian finds from Iowa that are likely Nothing but geologic. Before they go on my junk pile, I want to see if I possibly could be wrong: 1: I have hunted in this quarry many times and have never seen these little "lines". They were frequently present in a certain pile of broken rock. First and third picture shows rocks about 6 " in diameter. Any ideas? 2: These circular specimens have a distant appearance of a crinoid stem cross section. Again, having been to this quarry many times, this structure is new to me. Usually crinoids are well preserved. The face of the rock had 20? of these imbedded in it. As you can see, it goes through the sample and is visible on the back side.