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Prepping some White River Fossils - Guidance and advice needed!
Opabinia Blues posted a topic in Fossil Preparation
I have a few really nice fossils from the White River Formation of northeastern Colorado that I need to prep, and given I am a beginner at fossil prep I would really like to gain some advice and guidance from people with experience do I don’t accidentally damage the fossils. The first fossil is an Oreodont skull. The skull is mostly intact, and I was able to extract it from the field without using any glue or stabilizer or consolidant or anything like that, so this fossil is in its “natural state.” The zygomatic arch and upper tooth row are crumbling, but otherwise everything else that I can see is there appears to be stable. The other side of the skull appears to be still mostly encased in matrix, and is likely to be better preserved. What’s everyone’s opinion on whether or not I should apply penetrant stabilizer directly to the bone before prepping to help keep it intact? The second fossil is a jaw bone, tentatively identified by me as Subhyracodon but I will need to reveal the teeth to know for sure. There are several large cracks throughout the bone (as can be seen) but the entire bone is still in one piece due to application of PaleoBond penetrant stabilizer in the field. There is matrix in between the larger cracks, I imagine I will have to pull it apart one piece at a time, clean the pieces, and then glue them back together. I don’t have any specific questions at this point other than about the overall process. It would be great if those with experience could briefly go over how they would go about prepping these fossils would be great. Is there anything I should avoid, be careful of, or watch out for? Equipment I have includes an air scribe with compressor, dental picks/tools, and the full suite of PaleoBond glues and stabilizers, including the debonding solvent. Thanks in advance! *These fossils were collected legally on privately held land in Weld County, Colorado, with full landowner knowledge and permission.
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Hello! I found this in Fruita, Colorado while doing some remote field work. I have no idea if it’s a rock, bone, or fossil. Was wondering if anyone could help! Thanks!
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Hello everybody! I have another U.F.O here (Unidentified Florissant Object) and to be honest, this one has really stumped me! It isn't a carbon stain, it isn't one of those pumice chunks 'fireballs' that are common at Florissant, and it has a strange texture and shape. Weirdly preserved petrified wood? That is my best guess as of now... @piranha @Top Trilo @Tetradium The fossil is 1/2 an inch long. The first 2 pictures are the fossil by itself and the third I circled it. The rest are microscope pics of the texture. Pics 5,6, and 9 show the edges. 7 shows the top.
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Hello, I'm from Evergreen Colorado. I found my first triceratops bones when I was 8 years old near Boulder and i've been looking ever since. Now that I have a young son, i'm getting back into the hunt. I'm having harder time finding fossil sites now days compared to when I was younger, seems like everything is private property these days. I'm looking for new places to check out and exciting journeys to take my son on and ways to educate him on our ancient world. I look forward to getting to know everyone here. Thank you!
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Hello! I'm Dani.. just moved to CO and am looking to explore the area, find some fossils, and meet some cool like-minded people! I am also looking to travel/move in the next few years (I've been an expat in New Zealand, and have lived in Alaska, Arizona and Connecticut.) So I'm always looking to hear about the fossils/nature/adventures you've experienced elsewhere!
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Sorry, I hope this isn't making multiple posts. I'm having trouble submitting (I was previously pasting images inline instead of using the "choose files" function). We were exploring a creek outside of Denver, Colorado USA. There was a newly exposed bank about 2.5 meters (8 ft) high. At the bottom was about 1/2 meter (2 ft) of grey clay. We pulled a large clump of clay out and dissolved it in the water. Inside were two possible fossils. We have no idea what we're looking at and have zero experience identifying fossils. Any help is appreciated. Item #1: This looks like a bone, we're not even sure if it is fossilized. It is light, not heavy like a rock; I don't know how significant this is. The shape is odd; it's not like a long bone. There is a flat part on one side and a smooth groove on the other side. The "marrow" is exposed which makes me think it is worn/broken. Is it even possible to preserve the trabeculae like this as a fossil? Its dimensions are about 7 x 6 x 5 cm. Item #2: This feels heavy like a rock but it has a shape and texture that seemed like fossilized wood. Again, we have no experience identifying these things. Photos: These photos were taken over a 1 cm x 1 cm grid. Item #1: The flat part is on the right, groove is on the left. Photo 1: Photo 2: rotated 90 degrees away from the viewer (compared with the first) Photo 3: rotated 180 degrees away from the viewer (compared with the first) Photo 4: rotated 270 degrees away from the viewer (compared with the first) Photo 5: Groove on left Photo 6: Close up of the trabeculae on the back side of the flat part on the right Item #2: Photo 1: Photo 2: close up, right side Photo 3: close up left side Photo 4: rotated 180 degrees away from the viewer Thank you for your help.
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Hi there, We recently moved to the Colorado Front Range from Michigan. We’re used to hunting for petoskey stones on the Great Lakes. Here are some of our new CO finds and we’d really appreciate any information! thank you so much! We are so excited for this new land to experience.
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- ancient seashore
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Hi Everyone! My family and I are going on a trip to North Colorado this August and I really want to collect and keep some dinosaur fossils while I'm there. Does anyone know of a program, charter, or guide who can help me? It doesn't have to be in Colorado, I'm close enough to Wyoming that that is also an option. I tried looking for something on my own and all I can find is either parks where collecting is forbidden or what is basically "pay us two grand to be our field slave for a week".
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I found an interesting fossil in my Mesaverde formation matrix yesterday. It has me scratching my head a bit. At first I thought it was a Sawfish rostral but after a bit of research I am not sure. I think it looks like Cretamanta possibly. It is the right size at 1mm. I had had some difficulties with the equipment at work today so I only got one decent picture.
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Out walking near Denver CO today and stumbled across what looks to be a large tooth. Can anyone help me understand what it might have come from?
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This apparently came from dinosaur monument in Colorado. Are the dark areas bone fragments?
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These will all be from the Mesaverde Formation, Colorado. First up is a 1mm tooth that sure looks like an anterior Heterodontus tooth to me. I am open to any ID suggestions but I see a lot of similarities with the Atco tooth I recently found.
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I have here a theropod tooth tip from the Morrison Formation of Moffat County, Colorado. It's 1/2". The claim is that it's Torvosaurus based on the serrations. Is that a definitive way to identify this as Torvosaurus as opposed to another theropod? @Troodon Thank you, Bellamy
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I found this on my place which makes no sense. I'm on a whitewater mountain river with gravel, rocks, boulders (granite). Most non-granite rock comes down from above and it's worn. This doesn't appear to be river-tumbled. The thing in it caught my eye and reminds me of wood but I'm not sure. Any ideas?
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I'm thinking on a trip to a spot where I saw a bunch of sea shells south west of La Junta, Colorado. I'll be prying rock layers apart looking for stuff that strikes my eye. However, is there anything in particular I should be looking for that would be a real score? I think the picture is the stuff if I have my dates right. Thanks.
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Hi everyone, I wanted to confirm the identity of one of the leaves I found in Florissant, CO back in 2017. At one point or another I saw the genus Cedrelospermum pop up on here or instagram associated with a leaf which caught my eye in its similarity to my own. I would be interested in seeing your opinions. compared to images I found elsewhere online
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I know there is not enough to ID but thought I'd share. I used to hike the oil shale cliffs behind the Job Corps Center out of Colbran, Colorado, back in the 70s. The size of the scales on this fish were such that I knew it would be a keeper if I caught it. The oil shale there is such that you can actually light it and it burns. (The little one on the right I found out of Eden, Wyoming, sometime in the 80s).
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This is a rock shop purchase. The owner is an expert in dinosaur gembone from the Morrison. He also deals in Hermanophyton ferns, etc so he also knows a bit about paleobotany. But this piece was a mystery to him. Its very well agatized and the fine details are preserved. At first it looks like a limb cast. The exterior is coarsely wrinkled, like bark. The cross-section does not preserve a convincing ring of a bark layer, but there is some kind of concentric character. It has some characteristics of a limb bone. The geometry and size fit that thought. But the rough exterior is a contradiction. The interior has some well developed cell structure, but its patchy. As I write this I am thinking maybe its a petrified root. Or maybe not. The first 2 photos are the same (could not delete) and are a cut and polished face. Last photo is an unpolished cut end. Its a fun one. Enjoy and I look forward to your comments.
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I found this in my backyard. Is it fossilized coral? western Colorado
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Stabilized with Butvar B-76. Found in a basal channel facies associated with an incised valley-fill sequence of fluvial sediments; found in situ from a channel-sand-bed-load layer near the base of the valley-fill sequence. Edit: So, I copy pasted that from my power point I use to catalogue my fossils. Not sure how to remove the boxes.
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Hi guys, I found this dinosaur(?) vertebrae in a Phoenix, Arizona antique shop all by itself in a dusty, dark corner. I wanted to give it life back and purchased it for a bargain price. It was only labelled "Colorado dinosaur bone". To me, it looks like Morrison Formation material based on its surprising, beautiful color. Maybe sauropod or stegosaurus??? I know it's really worn, but it has a great shape in person and very heavy for its size. Talk about size, it's 7 inches long and 4.5 inches tall even worn down this much! Any help identifying it would be awesome! Thank you!
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I inherited an interesting rock/fossil from my father and wondered if it was an authentic petrified snake segment. He was a physician, and received it from one of his patients back in the 1970's. The patient was a fossil/rock hunter in the Colorado region and said it was from the area. Those are all the details I have. Are there really fossilized snake segments like this around? It appears to have a segmented outer casing of 2-3mm around the whole piece. A circular (spine?) runs through the length of the piece on one side. The interior is fully crystalized.
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Dear Fossil forum members, I have recently acquired this bone. It is said to have been found at Mack, Colorado. I suppose it is from the Morrison Formation. The previous owner thought it might be a Stegosaurus neural arch, but now I have it in my hands I see more similarities with a supraoccipital. Especially these: (Eolambia, A and C) https://peerj.com/articles/1872/ (Fig. 12, A. Eotrachodon) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-41325-8 (Fig. 2, Q, R, S, T and their other sides, unknown hadosaurs) seem similar to me. That would indicate that my bone is probably Camptosaurus dispar, which is the closest animal to hadrosaurs to live in the Morrison Formation. However, I have not found a good comparison with Camptosaurus, nor any other Morrison Formation dinosaur. In comparison with the supraoccipitals shown above, mine is more than twice the size. Mine is about 12cm, while the other ones I found are 4 to 6 cm according to their scale bars. Is this bone a bit similar in every dinosaur or do I have a really large specimen of Camptosaurus in front of me? I hope someone can help me with this, Thank you very much in advance for your answer, Kind regards, Sander
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Hello, I have a large canine tooth (~14 cm with the root, ~6.5 cm with just the tooth) from the White River Formation that I collected this summer on privately held land in northeastern Colorado, and though the fossil in its natural state is fantastic as-is I’m thinking about doing a little bit of restoration on the fossil and am looking for some insights. The tooth itself is from either an entelodont or the rhino Metamynodon, with the shape of the tooth and root strongly suggesting the latter to me (feel free to speak out if you have an opinion one way or the other, though I’m not specifically asking for an ID in this thread). I found the tooth in several pieces and glued everything that I could find back together. I have most of the tooth, but only a small piece of the tip remains. Also, I have not glued the tooth back to its root, and instead simply display them together as if they were connected. I am thinking about restoring the rest of the tip by sculpting it in using paleosculp from Paleobond, using what piece of the tip there is as a guide. I am looking for any information anyone can give me on paleosculp and the process of restoring a fossil using this material. Would this be the correct product for the job? Is there anything I should know when working with the material? Is restoring the tip of this tooth even a good idea at all, or in the name of science should I leave it as I found it? I intend to leave the paleosculp unpainted for the purposes of not risking damage to the fossil and also making it obvious which pieces of the fossil are original (most of it) and which pieces are restoration (just a little section of the tip). I understand that dinosaur teeth are frequently restored in this way, but I want to make sure that I’m not committing blasphemy by doing such a restoration. Also, paleosculp is advertised as being sand-able and drill-able after it dries, and so I figure if the restoration ever needs to be removed for whatever reason it could be sanded away in a labor-intensive process, but do let me know if this is not the case. I also intend to clean the fossil up a bit more (ie get rid of some of the residual dirt still on it) and potentially glue the tooth onto the root. Thank you for any insights and information you may have! Picture of the fossil and of the tooth tip provided for context.
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