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Hello friends. It's been a while since my last post and I wanted to share with you my new acquisitions and, better yet, help me confirm the identification of these specimens. 1: The place of origin is Liaoning, China. 2: The place of origin is Yunnan, China. naraoia? 3: The place of origin is Yunnan, China. Isopyx minor?. 4: The last and my favorite (although a bit fragmented). The place of origin is Harbin, China. I appreciate the ID. They are not the best specimens, but I love these pieces.

Found this one as a replica , looks ok?

Hello all, as some of us may have noticed while skulking Ebay, there has been a trend with many "specimens" of certain Chinese vertebrates being listed and sold: Turtles(Manchurochelys), Birds(Confuciusornis) and even Reptiles(Monjorosuchus). Firstly, most of us here will agree that all of these specimens are faked! Since there was a recent thread asking about the authenticity about the turtles, it is clear that many amateur collectors(myself included) are considering buying or have bought some of these "fossils" and I hope my observations in this post can help prevent you from being scammed. Last year, before Ebay was flooded, I acquired two specimens(a turtle and reptile) against my better judgement from a different Japanese auction site. One of the pieces arrived broken cleanly in two, and I was able to tell that the reptile and the turtle(by association with the same dealer) are faked. To the untrained/unfamiliar eye however, it becomes hard to distinguish as these fakes are crafted with a level of detail rarely seen before. These are not churned out from an assembly-line, but rather painstakingly hand-crafted so that every piece is more or less unique. They are usually painted grey or in some cases a shade of brown like mine. Some of these specimens are even fabricated on the same Jurassic/Cretaceous matrix with remains of real Lycoptera fish. Also, as you can see from the following photos of the broken areas, the reptile in question is sculpted from some kind of epoxy material. One of the limb bones even fell off cleanly! The details of this specimen has some resemblance to real examples of Monjorosuchus(Manchurosuchus). Not everyone will be able to tell the difference! Thanks to the advice of Scott(Piranha) on TFF, I stopped myself from acquiring a "Confuciusornis" as well and was able to claim back my money from postal insurance. I will say with 100% certainty that all these vertebrate fossils are crafted by the same process as the "Monjorosuchus" above. Edit: Here are a couple more pictures of the faked Confuciusornis, the skull looks completely iffy but everything else is very intricately crafted! More pictures of the bird here. A few last observations, I noticed that these listings on Ebay started popping up last year. At first, it was just a few turtles, but have now expanded to this so-called "Trinity" of vertebrates. It is clear that there is big money being made from this and amateur collectors need to know what is going on. There are multiple sellers taking advantage of this new cash cow(or belonging to the same syndicate) who build up their Ebay rating by selling small cheap electronics/hardware before listing these fakes in an attempt to fool you. Also bear in mind these are all private listings and it is not possible to tell if they are shill bidding on each other's items to drive prices up. Ebay used to have people moderating their fossils section for fakes, but this is not the case anymore and I doubt reporting these listings will have much impact. I urge you all to consult TFF members for advice before making any purchase if you are uncertain! I have included more photos at higher resolution at the following imgur album(warning:large size): http://imgur.com/a/076uT. I hope that any prospective buyers out there will learn from my experience. Also, if there is anyone here with more experience with these kinds of vertebrates, please share your thoughts!

Hi all, On one of our regular outings we stumbled upon an old shop in Chinatown with the following egg fossils on display. The owner supposedly brought many of such fossils out of China many decades ago and they are now part of his prized collection. The first two photos are of a nest of small oval-shaped eggs around 3 inches in length. The third photo is of a single egg similar to that in the nest, also measuring 3 inches length. Lastly is a different kind of spherical egg about 4 inches in diameter. All eggs are on the typical red-mudstone that most Chinese dinosaur eggs are found on, leading to our suspicions that the oval-shaped ones may be of Protoceratops and the spherical one could be from Therizinosaurus. I am not entirely sure however as they also do bear some resemblance to Crocodile and Turtle eggs. Can anyone shed some insight on what type of egg fossils these are? I would love to find out more on their oology, thanks!