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I thought you would be interested in this story I found on MSN: Chainsaw artist turns downed tree into dinosaur bench in Drumheller - https://www.msn.com/en-ca/video/news/chainsaw-artist-turns-downed-tree-into-dinosaur-bench-in-drumheller/vi-AA12cLeL?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=6dd1a134b523451a96ba4ac2210c3309 I am amazed at the talent of some people

So this trip report is a little late in coming, but it's because the week before last was a lot to process! Just saying it was amazing would be an understatement. The Sunday before last I found the Xiphactinus with @Jared C that I've already posted about (and plan to provide an update on as soon as I'm done writing this). On Tuesday I had a job interview at the Waco Mammoth Site, and on Wednesday I got the job! Then I spent the weekend in Glen Rose, joining other volunteers from the Dallas Paleontological Society in helping Glen Kuban clean and map the dinosaur trackways recently uncovered by the horrible drought Texas has been experiencing this summer. Each of these three by themselves would be a huge highlight on my path to (hopefully) becoming a professional paleontologist, but to have all three happen in the same week? The stars must have aligned! I got more experience doing real paleo work in one week than I've had at any other point in my life, and with the new job and the fish excavation seeming like it'll be soon it looks like there's a lot more to come and I couldn't be happier about it. On to the trip report! As I said, last weekend I made the trip up to Dinosaur Valley State Park to help with the dinosaur footprints before the rain finally decided to make its way back to Texas and covered them up again. I left before sunrise on Saturday morning so I could arrive before noon while also leaving some extra time to make some stops along the way. I was hoping that I'd have some luck in the Glen Rose formation as my only experience with it before was in exposures of the lower half of the formation in Austin. Unfortunately, I didn't quite do enough research beforehand and ended up skunked - apparently the Upper Glen Rose is notoriously lacking in fossils aside from the famous dinosaur footprints. For once I was glad that I couldn't help myself when it came to making stops at every good-looking roadcut I saw. The slightly older and much more fossiliferous Comanche Peak formation is exposed almost everywhere you look closer to Waco and I had much better luck there. Here's a decent-sized Oxytropodiceras I found at one spot but ended up leaving behind since none of the fragments were very large on their own. I still want to find a complete one! By the time I got to Glen Rose I had a nice assortment of irregular echinoids (all Heteraster texanus I believe), gastropods (Tylostoma tumidum and Turritella seriatim-granulata, the latter represented by both external and internal casts), and one bivalve that could be Protocardia that I decided to keep because one side preserved both upper and lower valves and retained the original shell material which isn't very common. Of course, even though I told myself I wouldn't be tempted I did wind up taking home a different Oxytropidoceras fragment. What can I say? I'm a sucker for ammonites! I was hit with a flood of memories when I arrived in Glen Rose. I used to spend a week with my grandparents every summer at their house near Tyler when I was growing up, and they knew how much I liked all things dinosaur-related. When I was seven they took me to Glen Rose for the first time and it completely blew my mind. I liked it so much, in fact, that we went back every summer for the next five years. I hadn't been back to Dinosaur Valley State Park or the town it calls home in a while before last weekend. A lot was just as I remembered it: the Dairy Queen with its dinosaur mural, the Stone Hut Fossil Shop, and Dinosaur World with its array of concrete (and charmingly inaccurate) dinosaur statues. Even the woefully fossil-barren roadcut that I had begged my grandparents to let me explore once upon a time was right where I had last seen it. What I definitely didn't remember was the over half a mile long line of cars bumper-to-bumper trying to get into the park! It seemed like the national news coverage of the newly-exposed dinosaur tracks had been bringing people from all over - I saw more than a few license plates that were from out-of-state. As soon as I realized just how long of a wait I was in for I understood why the DPS had asked for people to begin arriving at 9 - both to beat the heat and the lines to get into the park. One fifty minute wait later and I was finally rolling up to the visitor's center. A sign out front that looked like it had just been set there said that the park was at capacity for the day, and unless visitors had prior reservations they would have to be turned away. I'm sure there were more than a few exhausted parents that were not at all looking forward to the difficult explanation they were going to have to give their dinosaur-obsessed children. After explaining to a ranger that I was there to help Glen Kuban and the DPS with the track clean-up a very friendly park ranger directed me where to go. On the way to the track site I passed the famous T. rex and Brontosaurus statues that the park was given after their debut at the 1964 New York World's Fair as part of an exhibition put on by the Sinclair Oil Corporation (their logo has been a sauropod for over 100 years!). While many of the tracks at the park are from theropods and sauropods, the park staff are keen to remind visitors that T. rex and Brontosaurus were not the trackmakers. Since their discovery the long-running theory has been that the theropod tracks were made by Acrocanthosaurus and the sauropod tracks by Sauroposeidon. The most famous tracksite is that first studied by American Museum of Natural History paleontologist R. T. Bird, showing a lone Acrocanthosaurus pursuing a herd of Sauroposeidon across the Early Cretaceous coastline. There are also other tracks made by an ornithopod similar to Iguanodon. Following the ranger's direction took me through a bumpy stretch of dirt road winding through a pasture on the western side of the park. The track site where I was headed, the Taylor Site, is easily accessible by hiking along the riverbed from the center of the park, but driving there was a lot more difficult. When I finally arrived I could already see crowds of people down in the river. I had never visited this spot before in my previous trips to the park since there were so many other track sites that were more well-advertised, but it seemed like the news coverage was drawing people out to the less-visited areas. As soon as I made my way down to the riverbed I was blown away. The DPS volunteers had clearly been busy the previous weekend. A huge pile of mud and sediment was stacked to one side, revealing a neat line of giant theropod tracks so pristine it looked like it could have been made only hours before. Thankfully there wasn't an Acrocanthosaurus lurking nearby! Ripple marks were also preserved alongside many of the tracks. I made my way over to the EZ-Up tent some DPS members had set up and introduced myself. It was surreal to meet Glen Kuban, as I remembered reading an article of his when I was only 12 and curious about the "human footprint" controversy. The Taylor Site is actually the exact spot where the misidentifed human trackway is located and so Mr. Kuban generously offered to give me a short guided tour. He was quite the character, full of obvious passion for the tracks he's spent over four decades studying and willing to answer any question asked of him by interested passerby. I asked him to set me to work and he directed me to the spot where you can see a bunch of people standing in the picture above. It turns out that there is a separate set of tracks preserved very differently from the rest at this location. The tracks were also made by a theropod, but instead of appearing as indentations in the limestone they are instead raised "casts" - the result of infilling with a sturdier sediment than the other tracks close by. When the river eroded away the layers of rock covering up the tracks it also eroded out the weak sediment that had filled many of them; however, the opposite happened to this particular set. The sediment that filled them in after they were first made over 113 million years ago is actually stronger than the limestone that makes up the river bed and is thus much more resistant to the Paluxy River's currents. As Mr. Kuban explained to me, the orange-ish coloring you can just barely see in the picture below is the result of iron present in the sediment that's slowly been oxidizing as it's exposed to the air. I joined several other DPS members who were diligently scrubbing the tracks so that Mr. Kuban could get better photos of them for the grid map he was planning on making of the site. I was told that that was the real reason the effect of the drought had been so significant: all of these footprints had been visible at some point or another, but it had been many decades since they had all been visible at the same time. No "new" tracks were discovered recently despite what the news had been saying. After several cycles of dumping buckets of river water on the tracks, then sponging them, then scrubbing them, the tracks were finally ready for their headshots, which was then followed by an hour's worth of measurement-taking and documentation. Below is a picture of the dream team at work! From left to right: Joe (a graduate student from Columbus who knew Mr. Kuban and who flew down just to work on the tracks), me, Murray (a DPS member and volunteer fossil preparer at the Perot Museum in Dallas), and Mr. Kuban, with grid paper and trusty clipboard in hand. I felt guilty not doing much more than scrubbing limestone and holding a tape measure for the rest of the day (not that I wasn't having the time of my life doing it!), as I could imagine just how much work had gone into shoveling and sweeping away all the mud that had been covering the main trackways. Major props to the hard-working members of the DPS that spent the weekend prior doing all that labor in the Texas heat! The tracksite looked amazing, and many of the visitors to the park passing through where we were working agreed. I had to deflect more than a couple of thank yous - what I was doing didn't hold a candle to the mini-excavation that had been done before I ever showed up. I ended up spending the night in town at the Comfort Inn (behind which forum member @LanceH actually did discover new dinosaur tracks). Although I tried to see them the next morning before I drove back to the park, it seems like the elements haven't been kind to Lance's discovery. The footprints are in a drainage ditch and were preserved in marl that is far weaker than the limestone in the river and so were probably only visible for a couple of years at most. Sunday was spent sweeping away some of the sediment that had already been moved just in case one of the dinosaur trackways extended to the area underneath it. As it turned out, it did! After that was done I went to another spot in the park with some other volunteers to see if the tracks there needed cleaning as well. This was the tracksite I remembered visiting with my grandparents. It's called the Ballroom because unlike the Taylor Site the tracks here are a mix of overlapping trails that don't form clear pathways. Maybe the Early Cretaceous was characterized by frequent dinosaur dance-offs. The scientific community may never know. Here's one of the largest Acrocanthosaurus tracks with my size 12 shoe for comparison. The clawmarks at the end of each toe where the theropod dug into the silty earth to keep its balance are still visible after all this time. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the sauropod tracks, but there were several nice ones at the Ballroom made by a juvenile that showed each of the strange curved toes very clearly. Speaking of sauropods, the last thing I did in town before I headed back to Waco was try some of the best good old Texas barbecue Glen Rose had to offer at a local joint named Hammond's (not a Jurassic Park reference, but I like to think it was ). Out front was a statue of a sauropod complete with horns, cowprint, and a brandmark that made me ask myself what they would have tasted like if they were still around. And that was it for my weekend! It was incredibly fun to visit one of my favorite places in the world again after so long away, and even more rewarding of an experience to get to do some real paleontology work with people that I was able to learn a lot from. Hopefully it won't be the last time- I think I'd like to make a habit of this sort of thing. Now to get to work on that fish update! - Graham

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220812-dinosaur-extinction-why-did-mammals-survive

A diner discovered 100 million-year-old dinosaur footprints in a restaurant Erika Ryan and Christopher Intagliata, NPR, July 23, 2022 Yours, Paul H.

Hello! I saw this tooth listed online as a Suchomimus tooth from the Elrhaz formation in niger I wanted to know if it was a crocodile or a Suchomimus.

I've been playing with a cave art style, it's been a lot of fun to approach paleoart in such a different manner.

Hurum, J.H., Bergan, M., Muller, R., Nystuen, J.P. and Kleina, N., 2006. A Late Triassic dinosaur bone, offshore Norway. Norsk Geologisk Tidsskrift, 86(2), p.117. The above paper is cited by: Marzola, M., Mateus, O., Milan, J. and Clemmensen, L.B., 2018. A review of Palaeozoic and Mesozoic tetrapods from Greenland. Bulletin of the Geological Society of Denmark, 66, pp.21-46. and Kear, B.P., Lindgren, J., Hurum, J.H., Milàn, J. and Vajda, V., 2016. An introduction to the Mesozoic biotas of Scandinavia and its Arctic territories. Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 434(1), pp.1-14. Yours, Paul H.

The silent dinosaur hypothesis. Mark P. Witten's Blog Yours, Paul H.

Hi everyone. I'm doing a project on earthworms, and I was hoping you might be able to provide the names of some dinosaurs that existed in at the same time and in the same geographical locations as early earthworms, in periods of both extreme cold, and extreme heat. So for example: X Dinos existed along side worms during the extreme cold of period (or dates) X X Dinos existed along side worms during the extreme heat of period (or dates) X I've been cobbling together bits and pieces from Google and thought it couldn't hurt to seek the advice of experts. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. Best regards Mike.

Hi all, Looking for tooth ID. This little guy was sold as an abelisaur but something looks off. Looks almost like a carch. Either way, at the price I'm more than happy with it just looking to confirm the ID. Quite a nice little thing. Kem Kem find in the Taouz area per the seller. Measurement for ID below in mm CH - 9.83 AL - 12.12 CBL - 7.41 CBW 3.27 Denticle on both sides are 13 (over 3mm since tooth is tiny). Thanks for any help!

Hi all I really think the Hadrosaurs were very cool dinosaurs and not just as a food source for the T.rex. So in celebration of the great beasts please show us your Hadrosaurs material . Hadrosaurs are dinosaurs that are members of the family Hadrosauridae, and include ornithopods such as Edmontosaurus and Parasaurolophus. They were common herbivores in the Upper Cretaceous Period of what are now Asia, Europe and North America. Edmontosaurus annectens Metacarpal V found at the famous Hell Creek Formation... Late Cretaceous Period Montana. The missing one in photo that Frank @Troodon sent me when he kindly identified it for me before I purchased for a real steal. As our village has started to put up their Christmas decorations early to offer some much needed joy , so I made a Santa to Edmontosaurus scale drawing I think it will make a great greetings card and adds a little whimsy. Stay safe and sound Bobby

The Mesozoic is an area that is sorely lacking in my collection. I don't know why, but I just never got around to collecting in it. I never fell in love with dinosaurs or mososaurs like a lot of other people. That was until fairly recently, when I finally took it upon myself to diversify my collection and get to know better my area's (and in some ways own backyard!) geology and paleontology. I set out to discover more about Maryland's Mesozoic Park. I guess it would be best to start off from the beginning. I started the journey not knowing what I'd find, but knowing what it was I hoped to find. I wanted a piece of the hallmark of the Mesozoic, the age of reptiles - my very own Old Line State dinosaur! There was only one problem - I didn't know where to find one. I knew generally what formations to look in, but not where, nor even what to look for. So I took up the ole' Google machine and my own literature at home and started uncovering more about where to start looking. That's what lead me to the first site. A TREK INTO THE TRIASSIC It would be disingenuous to say that I did this all by myself, and I would like to thank @WhodamanHD for helping me out tremendously. Without him I likely never would have gotten this together. For those who don't know, I'll take the liberty to describe the geology of the Free State. In Maryland, the only Triassic aged rocks exposed are those of the Newark Group, here divided by the Maryland Geological Survey into two formations - the New Oxford and the Gettysburg Shale. Both units are exposed in the Culpeper Basin (centered around the town of Poolesville, Montgomery County, Maryland) and the Gettysburg Basin (centered around, in Maryland, the town of Emmitsburg, Frederick County, Maryland). After several months of searching I was never able to find a good exposure near the famous former quarries around the Seneca region in Montgomery County, which is what lead me to the area near Frederick. Here the Triassic rocks are more readily exposed, with reports of numerous fossil discoveries of dinosaur footprints, plants, fish, and others in the area near Mt. St. Mary's University and Rocky Ridge. The Gettysburg Shale in this region is the most fossiliferous, and that is the one I ended up collecting in. Thanks again to @WhodamanHD for giving me info about the site! I spent a good hour or so at the Gettysburg Shale site, my mind full of images of that amazing Grallator sp. print I'd know I'd find. Unfortunately, as the shadows started growing and the day grew colder, I was forced to give up my quest without any dinosaur specimens from this unit. Still, it was nice to finally be able to collect in it and get to experience these amazing rocks up close and personal. The vast majority of the finds from this site were simple trace fossils of I assume to be annelid worms, these being most common in the glossy looking shale.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/mar/04/early-stegosaur-fossils-may-shed-light-on-stegosaurus-evolution Scientific paper here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02724634.2021.1995737

I got this fossil from a Wyoming in Tucson, Arizona. I was thinking it's a jugual bone from a Ceratopsian or a Hadrosaur.

Is it a mammal? Or dinosaurs? How do you tell a dinosaur from a mammal? Is it a leg bone? From Zigong, China Uncertain time Thanks for your answer!

Years ago I purchased a Triceratops brow horn that I was told collapsed when the jacket was flipped. There is some material that didn't look the same and I was wondering if it was material from another part of the animal.

From the BBC https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220113-why-indias-fossil-wealth-has-remained-hidden

While my prime focus is essentially learning how to accurately describe Nature in the precise language of mathematics, I've always been intrigued by natural history - it's actually what started me on the path to physics. The sort of interrogation that paleontology practices provoked me to think and question even further, down to the fundamental science which makes it all work. Collecting fossils has brought a large amount of enjoyment to my life, and is often a welcome distraction from what can sometimes be straining work. The knowledge that I accumulate along the way is also part of the fun. Here is my collection, which will always be a work-in-progress. There's still many things I haven't photographed yet, but I feel comfortable saying this is the majority. I don't have many big things, but I'm certainly pleased with the many small things I have so far. Links to albums: Dinosaurs Sharks North Sulphur River Post Oak Creek Permian Aguja Formation Harding Sandstone Devonian Galveston Fossils Miscellaneous Highlights / Personal Favorites: The ones underlined are linked to their respective fossil page in the Fossil Forum Collections, which has more information and photos. Infant Tyrannosaurus rex posterior tooth If I could keep only one fossil, it would be this one. It's from my favorite animal that has ever lived, and being from a young'un is just so darn cool. A true crowning jewel in my eyes. Juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex maxillary tooth Again, you can't go wrong with T. rex. It doesn't have the best preservation but regardless, there's a lot more to love. Tylosaurus proriger tooth (self-found) Undoubtedly my favorite find to-date. Finding fossils yourself adds that extra value to its place in your collection. I'll remember the moment I first saw it for a long time. Triceratops prorsus tooth Triceratops is another one of my favorite dinosaurs, I think we all grew up playing with toys of T. rex and Triceratops. Unique circumstances also allow for me to say it's Triceratops and not Torosaurus with some confidence. It's not perfect, but still a significant part of the collection. Avisaurus archibaldi tooth A bird tooth? Doesn't get much cooler or more uncommon. Dimetrodon cf. limbatus tooth I've always been drawn to "icons of life," since those are the ones we remember from childhood. Dimetrodon is definitely an icon, and I'm glad to have found one of these uncommon treasures (in micromatrix - it was a very nice surprise). Cretoxyrhina mantelli tooth One of my favorite shark species, the "ginsu" had sleek-looking teeth, ate mosasaurs and dinosaurs, and was overall a formidable animal worthy of admiration. Cretodus crassidens tooth (self-found) Another one of my favorite sharks. It's not big or complete, but the preservation is so rare for the locality (POC) - the gloss on the enamel is as if it fell out of the shark's mouth yesterday. Saurornitholestes langstoni tooth I'm currently working on growing the dinosaur component of my collection, and this is my first Dromaeosaurid. Dromaeosaur tooth (Hell Creek Fm.) My most recent addition (as of Sept. 4, 2021), and it's my best dinosaur tooth for sure. Unfortunately it will be labeled as only a Dromaeosaurid tooth for now, but it still is just a great tooth from a cool family of dinosaurs. Shark Tooth Riker Display I've got one riker that I've tried to squeeze as many teeth into as possible. I need to get a couple more, probably; there's a lot of teeth that deserve a riker, but are just lying around. I'll try to update this thread semi-regularly as I make acquisitions in the future.

For Christmas, I'd gotten a box of matrix from the Lance formation. I have some fossils that I am not sure what they are and would like to get your opinions. All of these fossils are from the Lance formation of Weston Co. WY. The first one is I think a theropod ungual, missing both the distal and proximal ends. Here are the pictures. The second one I'm pretty sure is a partial Edmontosaurus metacarpal. The The third one might be a ornithischian ungual. And here is the final one, I think that it might be a jaw section.

http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/dinosaur-carotenoid-coloration-10354.html Non-avian dinosaurs may have had bright color on their skin, scales and beaks in a manner similar to modern birds, according to a paper published in the journal Evolution. http://cdn.sci-news.com/images/2021/12/image_10354-Orange-Dinosaurs.jpg Link to article: Estimating the distribution of carotenoid coloration in skin and integumentary structures of birds and extinct dinosaurs [paywalled, sadly] My Uni does not have access- I'd love to read this one if someone has a copy-

Has anyone else here seen The Jurassic Games? I’m not saying it’s scientifically accurate or any of the sorts, but for a “B-rate” movie, it’s actually really good! I was really impressed with the graphics. I tend to really like “B-Rate” movies though.

A nodosaur/Ankylosaur ? Ungual from my collection . A dis-articulated Surface find from central USA in “Appalachia”

Hello, I recently acquired a small box of fossils from someone who had passed away recently. Inside were many fossils including those pictured. The only indicator of where they are from is that the box says "MONTANA". I can tell there are dromeosaur teeth, hadrosaur teeth, ankylosaur teeth and such. I know the man I got them from would routinely dig in the hell creek formation but I just wanted to make sure there wasn't anything obvious that I'm missing that would indicate that these fossils were collected elsewhere. My guess is that they are from the hell creek formation however. Any feedback is appreciated!!