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Hi, This is an historic specimen collected in the 1870s or 1880s. Unfortunately, it has no provenance. I suspect it might be from northern Illinois or Southern Indiana. Any help on ID would be much appreciated. I was thinking along the lines of Lobatopteris or Pecopteris strongii?

Howdy all, Any Houston area members interested in trying your prep skills on Mississippian black shale concretions from Fayetteville, AR? I collected too many last year and I’d like to give them away rather than see them collect dust in my garage, or worse, rot outdoors. These concretions are mostly made up of siderite and contain pyritized marine fossils. I dug these out of the lower unit shale and they’ve had limited exposure to moisture and have been stored indoors for months. If interested I’ll mark the exact spot I collected them. This specific unit and location is known for its goniatites, actinoceroid, and pseudorthocerid Nautaloids. Unfortunately this matrix is beyond my equipment and skill level. I honestly have no clue what else could be in these and I lack the experience and equipment to properly prep and ID what’s there. I mainly focus on ammonoids and nautaloids. Here’s an example: While trimming that half, I found another pyritized ammonoid under it. If interested, shoot me a PM . I live in NW Houston.

In November 2018 I found a site in the Middle Cenomanian Tarrant Formation. Parts of the site were in the Lewisville member of the Woodbine. In the Lewisville I only found a few common bivalves, but the Tarrant produced multiple large concretions packed with ammonites, plant material, fish bones, and some unknowns. Some of the largest concretions were about 2 meters by 2 meters by 2/3 meter thick. But of course sizes and shapes varied. The concretions were a bit crunchy on their weathered exteriors, but in their blue interior they were harder than concrete. Lots of weathered ammonites covering the concretions, but when broken open the concretions' blue showed how well the ammonites inside were preserved. Their shells had been replaced with (I think?) calcite, so they were nicely shiny. Most of the ammonites seemed to be Acanthoceras amphibolum and Tarrantoceras sp. On March 1, 2020 I got a trailer and bobcat to, with the landowner's permission, haul a few giant concretions home. I did, and they are sitting in my barn. It would take years of preparation for one person, but there are probably some cool things in them. I hauled off around 2 tonnes of concretions, at least. Here are some pictures, spanning November 2018 to March 1, 2020. November 2018. FIG. 1-2: Concretion size. FIG. 3: Fossil wood. FIG. 4-7: Fossil hash. FIG. 8: Dog for scale. May 2019. FIG. 9: More hash. FIG. 10: Too much to carry... May/June 2019: Close-ups at home. FIG. 11-13: Same rock with close-up on wood with boreholes. FIG. 14: Ammonites and fish-bits hash. FIG. 15-16: Two different rocks. FIG. 17: Plant material. March 1, 2020. FIG. 18: The haul home.

I didn't get out hunting much last year, still working on figuring out how to research and find spots, but a friend of mine invited me out to do some collecting at one of his spots up in Washington State. I took some family with me and we went out over the Winter break in mid December. Pretty cold but beautiful! We're mainly looking for concretions weathered out of the formation, but occasionally you find Callianopsis claws loose in the formation, usually very brittle and in poor condition. Lots of mollusks to be found as well as crustacean material Our most common find were these Macoma We also found some Turritella and Acila The find of the day came pretty early on, Robert found this nice leaf, apparently pretty uncommon at the site Our spoils after the first hour of hunting A giant Callianopsis claw I found, sadly the rest of the concretion has weathered away leaving only an imprint with some shell And on the other end of the spectrum a tiny one found eroded out We didnt find any Pulalius, Aturia, or vertebrate material but we had a blast and found some pretty nice crustacean pieces Here's what's almost certainly a crab carapace, have to prep it to ID And a piece that looks to have both claws from Callianopsis and maybe some other pieces from it Both of these will have to wait until my micro scribe arrives for further prep, they're both very fragile with poor separation. While we were up there we stopped at Olympic National Park

Great open access paper about the Devonian Gogo Formation Lagerstätte, Canning Basin, West Australia. Trinajstic, K., Briggs, D.E. and Long, J.A., 2021. The Gogo Formation Lagerstätte: a view of Australia's first great barrier reef. Journal of the Geological Society. Yours, Paul H.

I found about thirty of these specimens partially eroded out and partially buried approximately 100-200 ft above the Owyhee River in the Upper Great Basin Desert of Eastern Oregon. I would appreciate any identification suggestions. Thank you

Hi everybody. I remember seeing a thread about fossils coming from New Zealand and in it was a paper about legality and such. Does anyone know how I can find that? I tried the internet but all I got was confusion. any help would be much appreciated. Thank you RB

I was eager to get out before the heatwave coming up so I made the visit to a couple new Cannonball sites the other day as well as property adjacent to where I collected the crabs this spring. I was expecting more good bivalve material from the first sites but I'm pretty happy with the results regardless. Sort of a continuation of this topic. I tried a few cuts before working my way down to the area I found the concretions in before. The material in all was extremely fragmented. I still need to bust that concretion. One of the inconspicuous cuts. More fragments. A worn Ophiomorpha? I did find a worn Carcharias taurus tooth at this site which made it worth the stop. Down in the familiar area I had immediate luck as the first concretion I busted had a shark tooth. It broke the tooth but the break is clean and should made for an easy repair. Here's a crab (Camarocarcinus arnesoni) that was already split. This is the only split concretion I saw that contained a fossil. The white material obscures it a bit but the last one I prepped like this had the normal black color and carapace texture once I abraded away the white. This should clean up pretty nicely. An example of a concretion. Prickly pears, purple prairie coneflower, and prairie roses were all in bloom as well. Concretions show variety in color, texture, and shape but there doesn't appear to be a correlation with any of these characteristics and which ones contain fossils. The ratio of fossils to blanks was higher than last time but still not enough to warrant preparing the concretions directly. Got to split them all first and glue them back together as necessary. These two were blanks. This pretty one was not. Tiny (5 mm) fish vert. Hard to see but the faint outline is probably a crab. Otodus obliquus, a new species for me. A gnarly piece of petrified wood, probably float material from somewhere. Common Nighthawk eggs I believe.

Hi guys, Brand new to the forum, but excited to be here. I found this in an area where water used to be very high all around me. In fact in a great deal of Thornton Co. In this case I am around the Niver trail. I am not so much the expert in geological terms so I will forego the effort in outlining this, but I will say the rocks around are very interesting. A lot of petrified wood, some form of molten rocks and evidence of extreme heat, has made for some interesting mineralization many of my finds. I look forward to your advice and have much more to show and hopefully learn from your feedback. Thanks for looking

This came from Eagle Ford Kef creek, I have collected odd burrows but this one appears to have things in it. Anyone recognize anything? Can there be concretions inside a burrow? Pictures show wet and dry.

Today I had the pleasure of attending I & M Canal Corridor Trip to collect on the "actual" Mazon Creek (River) in Morris, Illinois. I believe that this is the 11th year for this trip, which is held on Saturday and Sunday on a 400 acre farm that has access to the river. This is the first time that I have participated in this trip and thanks must go out to Rich @stats for letting me know about this trip last year. In January of this year Rich contacted me again to let me know that the sign-up for the trip was on line, so on 1-6-20 I sent my payment of $150.00 in and reserved my space. Some of you may question the $150.00 payment for this trip when you can collect out at the pits. First off, the money goes to support the I & M Canal and at the end of the day there are drinks, hors d'oeuvres and then dinner, which includes steak, chicken or pork chops, plus vegetables, corn on the cob and dessert. (Social Distancing was in place). We all met around 12:30 pm and the lecture started around 1:15 pm. The collecting started around 2:20 pm and we collected until 5 pm, which was plenty of time. When we arrived back we had dinner and sat around to talk until about 8 pm and then I headed out for the 1 hour drive home. Prior to the collecting portion, there is a nice informative talk given on the history of Mazon Creek fossils, what to look for and also some displays so the participants can visualize what they are looking for and what they might find. There were also a number of Fossil Forum members present and I will let Rich tag those members since I forgot their Forum names. I will start off with a few pictures of the pre-collecting time of trip. There were 3 dogs that were running around the property and I could not stop petting them. Some pics of us driving to the collecting site- The walkway to the river. Here are some pictures of the creek area. Continued on next post.

Just saying hello and letting folks know I am new to the forum.

Hello again! Hope everyone is having a fossiliferous holiday. I found this split concretion yesterday with some organic looking form peeking out from inside. Take a look: No idea. Nothing recognizable except that hole. Found this at the same site, those long and narrow shells might have been what was stuck in there? What do you think? Nothing and it's just gobs of clay?? Let me know if you have any thoughts and as usual, thank you so much for your time and consideration.

Good afternoon folks. I am wondering if anyone in our group has a "collection" of mislabeled concretions. If so, post them here it may help others identify some of their unknowns.

I've always been really into fossils and prehistoric stuff but I only recently starting going out and fossil hunting. On a recent trip I found 5 concretions from the lincoln creek formation in washington state. I'm pretty sure only the middle one has something in it but I'm at a complete loss at how to go about cleaning these. I dont have a air scribe and I'm completely content with just seeing some of the crab, if there is one inside any of the concretions, and would love some pointers to go about this. Also how to preserve them once they are exposed. I've seen people using some chemicals but would love a specific brand to use!

Tiny items, 1/2 - 1/4 inches, picked up in Big Brook that caught my attention and warranted being brought home. Teeth? Bivalves? Concretions? As always thank you for sharing your expertise

Bowling Ball Beach, Schooner Gulch State Beach Sea Ranch, Rocks of the Gualala Basin Sea Ranch, Regional Geology Guidebook to Bowling Ball Beach Region, PDF file Guide to Concretions and Bowling Ball Beach, PDF file Guide to Bowling Ball Beach, Archive PDF file Schooner Gulch State Beach, Mendocino Coast, California Atlas Obscura, Concretions and Bowling Ball Beach Duraj, M., Niemiec, D., Marschalko, M. and Yilmaz, I., 2016, October. Listing a geological rarity of 'Stone Balls' in Kysuce among world geotourism destinations. IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science (Vol. 44, No. 3, p. 032013). Yours, Paul H.

From my previous trip to Ellsworth County, Kansas and it's located in Dakota formation, Cenomanian. It appeared as almost like vertebrae but I'm sure it's not verts. Is it by chance some form of ichnofossil? @jpc thinks it's concretionary. No disrespect to him, he's the only one who offered his opinion and I would like to know if anyone else have a different opinion.

Yoshida, H., Ujihara, A., Minami, M., Asahara, Y., Katsuta, N., Yamamoto, K., Sirono, S.I., Maruyama, I., Nishimoto, S. and Metcalfe, R., 2015. Early post- mortem formation of carbonate concretions around tusk-shells over week-month timescales. Scientific reports, 5, no. 14123. Open access Nagoya University PDF link Researchgate PDF link More papers by Ippei Maruyama More papers by Hidekazu Yoshida Related papers are: Yoshida, H., Yamamoto, K., Minami, M., Katsuta, N., Sin-ichi, S. and Metcalfe, R., 2018. Generalized conditions of spherical carbonate concretion formation around decaying organic matter in early diagenesis. Scientific reports, 8(1), pp.1-10. Open access Another PDF link for paper Researchgate PDF link More papers by Hidekazu Yoshida Yoshida, H., Asahara, Y., Yamamoto, K., Katsuta, N., Minami, M. and Metcalfe, R., 2019. 87 Sr/86 Sr age determination by rapidly formed spherical carbonate concretions. Scientific reports, 9(1), pp.1-7. Open access Researchgate PDF link Publisher Correction More papers by Hidekazu Yoshida Yours, Paul H.

The Basic Dinosaur Egg Guide Many people often mistake a concretion for an egg, to help clarify what is a concretion, and what is a real egg, here is a guide. A quick overview with examples: How to spot a concretion: How are they different from eggs? A concretion is a rather common rock made of tightly compressed minerals. Typically, concretions are a smooth sphere or oval with little to no surface texture or just a few bumps. Often nearly a perfect sphere, sometimes more of an oval. In a concretion, there is no eggshell. If you cannot see eggshell then you do not have an egg. If it looks the same shape as modern egg, such as from chicken then you do not have an egg. Concretions may have fragments breaking off and these will tend to be smooth on both sides. They tend to be dull earthy colors with a different composition in the center, as seen by a change in color. A different color in the center normally means you do not have an egg. Often circular bandings can be seen around exterior of concretions. Sizes of concretions range from just an inch, or a few millimeters, up to more than 10 ft (3 m). Egg sizes, along one side, range from just an inch or a few millimeters and top out at around 8 in (20 cm). If you find an oval or round shape, which is larger than 8 in (20 cm) along a side then it is probably not an egg. For more information on concretions: https://www.priweb.org/index.php/education/education-projects-programs/earth-101/concretions http://tumblehomelearning.com/geologists-find-largest-dinosaur-eggs-in-the-world-another-fraudulent-fossil/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concretion In video form: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5IoyLEwkMY Example of concretions, these three were incorrectly given an ID as “dinosaur eggs” however they are clearly not: From Tumblehome Learning, link above Pseudofossils: There are some pseudofossils, which can have a similar appearance to an actual egg, right down to seeming like there are bits of eggshell. This pseudofossil does look similar to an egg and even seems to have eggshell, however it is not an egg and is actually geologic. The surface ranges too much in texture and composition. Pic from Montana State University, taken by P. Germano Trace fossils: Many times, an actual trace fossil can be mistaken for an egg, common examples of this are pupa cases and cocoons. As one can see below, they do tend to have an egg-like shape and are yet another perfect example of why shape alone should not be used when trying to identify eggs. The three below are important trace fossils, just not eggs. Pic by Tony Martin, Ph.D. How to spot a real egg: The best and only true sign you have an actual egg is eggshell actually being present. Eggs come in many shapes from a semi-rounded, elongated oval to a perfect sphere and many others. Shape is not a good indicator of an egg. It is useful but only when combined with other details. Eggshell often has surface ornamentation that gives it a unique texture which can be seen by the naked eye or with a hand lens. There are many such ornamentations and they are used to help distinguish one egg type from another. On the surface look for little bumps, ridges with valleys, river channels, and similar textures. Individual fragments of eggshell are rather common in some geologic formations so be on the lookout for a larger grouping of eggshell. From University of California Museum of Paleontology Also read: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/59654-dinosaur-eggs-lowell-carhart-guide/ Examples of real eggshell: Example of eggshell fragments: An eggshell fragment from Maiasaura, which is the oogenus Spheroolithus oosp. Pic by W. Freimuth. Examples of real eggs: A clutch of Troodon formosus eggs, which are the oospecies Prismatoolithus levis. Pic from Museum of the Rockies Do I have embryos inside this egg? Most likely no. Embryonic remains are extremely rare within eggs, and you add that with the rarity of eggs to start and it is a remote possibility. No fossilized yolks have been found and since they are soft tissue, it is near impossible for any to fossilize. I still think this is an egg! If you still think you have an actual egg, then please start a thread. Take close detailed pictures with something for scale such as a ruler and provide all the information you can about it--like where it was found. Good pictures will help greatly with a proper and correct ID. Below is an example of how to best photograph an egg or eggshell. There is clear lighting, a background which is clearly different than the eggshell in question and a scale bar. Lights can be as simple as a desk lamp; a scale bar can just be a ruler and the background can be very simple, in the example just a paper towel. Megaloolithus egg. Pic from Montana State University, taken by P. Germano If you would like to learn much more on eggs, here is the advanced egg guide which goes in depth. Also, see the advanced guide for sources. Eric P.

Hello. I was just curious about what some good techniques for artificially weathering a concretion to get them open are? I've read that the best way to go is to soak, freeze, thaw, and repeat. But none of the sources I've read describes how long that takes. I'm sure it varies from specimen to specimen but is this process weeks, months or years? Does anyone have any other methods or resources about the process? I was thinking of giving it a try and could use some more information on the process. It seems kind of like the old geode gamble in a way. There's no way of knowing what's inside unless it's partially exposed already. I don't have a geologist's hammer and I think I'd feel bad if I cracked one by hitting it too hard or at the wrong angle. Are there any other tools that are recommended?

Hi All, I'm new to the forum and I have no paleontology experience other than a class from undergrad 20 something years ago. My background is structural geology, hence my post here in hopes that I may confirm my suspicion as to the genesis of the specimens in the attached pictures. First a little background: I was in the field yesterday doing some reconnaissance work in east-central Wyoming. The land owners whose property I was on are multi-generational ranchers and they were extremely welcoming and enthusiastic about the geology of the area, despite having limited knowledge. At the end of the day, standing in their yard saying thank you's and goodbye's one of the college-age sons came running up with 2 specimens of what I presume to be concretions. However, the texture was smoother than other concretions I have seen and there was a dimpled character to the extremity of both which I found odd. The kicker is that the southern end of their property has a full section of Jurassic Morrison Fm exposed. When I asked what the rock looked like in the area that he found them, his description matched what could be interpreted as the variegated sands and shales of the Morrison Fm. Of course, it could also describer some of the Miocene sediments unconformably overlying the Cloverly Fm in the area as well. Regarding the photographs attached: I did not take the specimens with me, only the photos attached with my phone in the land owner's front yard. Therefore I do not have scale other than to say the index finger of my left hand is 9.5 cm and my left thumb is 7 cm from tip to base knuckle. Any help would be greatly appreciated as I told the landowner's son I'd be happy to do a little research on his behalf. Much thanks in advance! -WyoOtto

Anyone out there have any Tully Monsters they would be willing to trade. Partials ok. PM if you want.

I found these concretions a couple of days ago. I'm not sure if the small hollow concretions were formed in the same way as the larger ones but they were within about 50 feet of each other. The small hollow concretions shown were up to ping-pong ball in size. The larger ones are shown with a scale. Found in northwestern New Mexico, San Juan Basin, Upper Cretaceous, Kirtland Formation.

Hey guys, I braved the creek yesterday on the first day of hunting season at Mazon. It was a thrilling first time getting to hunt there. These of the surface finds were pretty interesting looking and were among many duds, so I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas as to their classifications. The rest of the lot is in the freezer so look for my thread on that in a bit More concretions in the following posts: Thanks for looking!