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Brought back a stone with a fault line on it from the shore of southern Lake Huron. Broke it open with a chisel and hammer to reveal an ultra thin shell like fossil. I wonder if someone can help me identify it.

Drotops Megalomanicus found it mislabeled and under priced at the mall today at a random booth, was a very unexpected pleasure measures somewhere around 5.3-5.4 inches, the condition is not to bad.

Anyone intimately familiar with Phyllocarid morphology? This slab is from a lower Devonian formation in the northern Yukon Territory. These things were giants ... The well preserved Telson (tail-spike) piece is 10" long, the feeler/antennae assembly alone is 18" long ... In life the critter was likely a good meter in length. What I'm not certain about is the 8" long arm-like appendage at top, as well as a small armor like plate nearby. Over the years have found many complete trident shaped telsons and antennae but not much in the way of other body parts.

Hi folks. Still searching for a complete trilobite. The "Bit" count is over 80 now .... still hopeful though. Anyway, I cracked open this densely populated plate of bryozoans. Several species were throughout this chunk. I saved this split as it is probably the best (size) example of this particular species that I have found here so far. Kind regards,

Good afternoon. This fish and mold with neither head or tail comes from the same group of concretions that yielded the Devonian trilobite Eldredgeia. The specimen is a body of 29 mm in length and 15 mm at its widest part. The lack of head complicates the ID. I believe it is a small type of cephalaspis such as Pattenaspis, Mimetaspis o Diademaspis, but I am looking for help to ID it. I would appreciate any help I can get Thank you,

Hello, this trilobite was found in rock from somewhere upstate new york. It was an interesting shape different from what I have found before but it is very worn to tell exactly what it is to my knowledge, is it to broken up to id? If not I'll let the new york trilobite experts here take this one. The trilo measures a little over an inch.

I found this fossil imprint (that's probably not the right terminology) on a rock last month in northern Michigan. It measures 2" x 2", and in places there seems to be a honeycomb pattern. What's with the tubular piece?

Deb and me spent about 7 hours in Arkona at the Hungry Holllow site where we had an opportunity to dig with @Northern Sharks and @middevonian - both great guys to crack rocks with - and two fossil club guests who were being shown around for the first time. My day started off in the south pit where I fussed about in the coral biostrome of the HH member. There are some interspersed shale-y layers that can produce marine fossils other than coral. The high energy environment of its deposition means finding more or less fragments of trilos, a few brachs, pelecypods, bryozoan colonies, and crinoid stems/ossicles. Eldredgeops is by far one of the most common to find in these layers, but not so common to find full. That being said, they can come out fairly robust. We were finding some big fragments. In one (not pictured) that was half a cephalon, the eye alone was probably the size of a Tic-Tac. Pictured here is the biggest cephalon I pulled from the biostrome - a fairly plump glabella on this one: . E. rana are nice, but my real goal was to bag a full Pseudodechenella. No dice on that one today, but at least some Crassiproetus pygidium fragments:

Currently slimming down the collection and offloading some excess trilobites to make room for others. Looking for Ordovician or Devonian trilobites I don't yet have. Pictured here are three Devonian bugs, of which I have numerous examples. These are not rare specimens, but ideal for those who want a specimen example from areas that they cannot collect from, and who cannot necessarily afford museum quality examples. Left: A mostly complete Greenops widderensis from the Widder Formation, Middle Devonian. Ideal for prep practice. Right: Pygidium of the dalmanatid Anchiopsis anchiops. Thorax is rarely found, and complete ones are as scarce as hen's teeth. Bois Blanc Fm, Lower Devonian. Bottom: Prep practice delight. Complete semi-prone Eldredgeops rana with pygidium tucked underneath. Windom shale of PD, Middle Devonian. I can entertain more than one trade offer as I do have other examples of these I can part with. * Shipping within North America preferred. * I reserve the "right" to pad the trade package you'll receive with other assorted Devonian items. I like to add bonus stuff.

I have a number of mortality plates that I collected from the middle/upper Devonian Hamilton formation near Ithaca New York. In case the photos aren't clear, it's mostly brachiopod and crinoid hash. Would be interested in trading for any vertebrate material. Or invertebrate that lies outside the Devonian (maybe a similar mortality plate from the Ordovician or Silurian, so I could compare). Anyone interested? Make me an offer. Matt

Here is some of the more interesting miscellaneous material from the little Devonian spot in my area I thought I'd share, I'm not sure of any of the specific IDs of any of these specimens I can only guess brachiopods, a possible crinoid stem, and horn corals?

Hello, Found these interesting "fronds" in the Silica Shale on Sunday. My best guess at the moment is the bryozoan Reptaria stolonifera. Looking for confirmation or other suggestions. Hope these photos are sufficient. It was a tough one to photograph.

My 6 year old son and I found lots of fossils just looking through the rubble on the surface yesterday during our first ever trip to the site yesterday. We've identified many of the bivalves we found, and found both crinoid stem cross sections and profiles. We're stumped by a few, however, and would like some help.

I was around six years old, I suppose, when the rest of my life began - I can recall very few details about myself, but the sequence of events that unfolded remain as clear as day. My godparents had arrived at our old family home for a visit and brought me a present. Since they knew that every kid, myself included, went through a dinosaur phase, they handed me something a little different than I was expecting: a little fossil fish. Many years later, that fish is still sitting beside me on my desk at university. Most of you will recognize this immediately as a very standard, very respectable Knightia eocaena from the Green River Fm - I would not be surprised if many of you have gone collecting out there and chiseled away hundreds over the years. But to me, this was brand new, and I spent hours poring over a fossil guide to identify my new fish. That was the point of no return, and I have never left the long and winding road that is paleontology. Looking back, this turning point was a bit unusual. Before and after that day, I had next to no interest in fossil fish. Reptiles and birds were more my style, and indeed they remain my topics of interest. But my journey towards paleontology began with a fish - and in a delightfully ironic twist of fate, I find myself entering the professional and academic realm of paleo with a fish. Admittedly, it's been a while, hasn't it? Forum stats tell me I was last active sometime in 2016, and my last substantial posts of any kind were even earlier in 2014. It's been more than six years since I first joined TFF, which is incredibly scary, but even then I have relatively little to show for it. To be fair, I've been busy. I've completed my first year of a five-year university program in Philadelphia, working towards an undergraduate degree in geoscience with concentrations in paleontology - and I work at the Academy of Natural Sciences in numerous capacities, both publically, and behind the scenes. It's been a wonderful experience. After my first year, I decided to forgo my one potential summer break in favor of a ten-week, full-time research project in the vertebrate paleontology collections and the Daeschler lab at the Academy. You may have heard of this not-so-little fish called Tiktaalik roseae...apparently it's a pretty big deal when it comes to evolutionary biology...in any case, the Academy played a large part in its discovery and description, and the fossils were held there until about two years ago, when they went back to Canada. Thankfully, a number of casts remain in the collection, along with detailed CT scans of the specimens to be used in future research. Well, apparently we live in the future, because this is where I come in. Since June, I have been poring over the CT data from a large lower jaw of Tiktaalik - all 4000+ slices - and flung myself headfirst into the digital realm to explore details unseen to the naked eye. We have a pretty good handle on the lower jaw morphology of tristichopterid fish such as Eusthenopteron - the case is the same for more derived tetrapods such as Acanthostega. Not so much for the intermediate forms, Tiktaalik and co, these transitional forms. We still haven't properly identified where the bones ARE in the lower jaw (or even how many there are - a newly uncertain statistic in recent years). What can we tell by peering through the bone, identifying dimensions and suture points within the mandible? In context with more primitive and more derived organisms, the results could be insightful. So that's what I set out to do. Last week I presented the preliminary results at our annual on-site undergraduate research conference to the world at large - a wonderful and cathartic conclusion to the summer. (That's me in front of the poster, undoubtedly talking about infradentaries or somesuch...the required poster dimensions weren't nearly large enough for my images at any decent resolution, so I had to get innovative and throw in some pullout tabs for the Eusthenopteron and Acanthostega comparisons. If this arrangement becomes a trend...well, you saw it here first! photo: Vincent O'Leary) (And if you all want, I'll see what I can do about attaching a copy of the poster - it's made up of multiple files due to my somewhat necessary feat of engineering.) And at the same time, it was only the beginning of things to come. There's a grad student at the University of Chicago looking at sutures in the Tiktaalik cranium: since I'm working on the lower jaw, I'll be contacting him soon about the possibility of comparing notes and possibly even getting a model of the whole skull. Starting in the fall I'll be splitting my time between the Daeschler lab and the big prep lab downstairs, working on Jurassic and Cretaceous material recovered from Montana and Wyoming by the Bighorn Basin Paleontological Institute. In all likelihood, I'll be making the journey out west myself next year, and reaching even more exotic locales over the coming years. On a final note, I was also able to attend my first two academic conferences over the summer: the 2017 International Symposium on Paleohistology (in Trenton, NJ) and the 2017 Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting (in Calgary, AB). No presentations from me during either of them - these were just to attend, get to know people, and soak up the atmosphere. They were well worth the time. I have a brand new crop of lifelong friends that I look forward to meeting again many times down the road. It's been a tremendous experience so far, and only in the space of a year...we'll see what the future holds!

Devonian, Mahantango fm., Eastern WV. (average size thumb) Not much here to go on. I barely saw the edge of it so I dug it out ... just to see that it went nowhere. By comparing photos, it looks like a single pleura from an eldredgeops trilobite. Am I close ? If it is, its the first one I've seen here among quite a number of cephalons and pygidia. Been very busy with work, hope to get a chance to look around a bit toward the weekend. Cheers.

Hello. I found this amongst a bunch of Devonian/Mississippian age limestone. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the rock is fossiliferous limestone. These two very odd shapes, one black, one white, I thought could perhaps be the gill structures of something like a Placoderm, Acanthodian, or Ostracoderm. I know it's kind of a tough ID. Any input is appreciated. Thanks.

So I had a chore this evening. Check the wooded area behind the house for downed or dead trees to work up for the woodstove this coming winter. Well, there was this oak that had blown over in the spring. The uprooted root ball was full of shale chunks. There I was .... nothing to dig or split with so I just pulled a few chunks out of the upended roots and broke the open by hand as they were quite fragile being exposed all summer. SUPER rich in fossils throughout, especially the bryozoans ! The first pic looks almost like an enrolled specimen. I just happened to notice the other guy peeking out, like he was hiding. I'll dig him out soon as the glue dries holding him to the board. Should be a fine cephalon, species to be determined. (bet eldredgeops). The firewood will have to wait a day ...... or more

Found this large Bryozoan Seabed plate north of Milwaukee, WI a while back. I noticed an imprint that almost looks like a footprint of some sort. Curious to hear from group on potential dinosaur footprint. Probably unlikely given size 2-3/4 long but thought I would ask

N.E. Pike Co has a few lovely waterfalls as the streams cut through the Mahantango Formation en route to the Delaware River: : Dingmans Falls, Pinchot Falls, Raymondskill Falls. This looks like a nautiloid portion, the other has a small spiriferid and a crinoid bit. Specimens from that neck of the woods. Gordon