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Ok..so far I’ve posted my turrilites and my woodbine ammonites, next will be these eopachydiscus ammonites and my oxytropidoceras, with echinoids and most (some are at the beauty shop) of my mortoniceras ammonites. these eopachydiscus ammonites represent at least a couple of different species from the looks of it, though I am not knowledgeable regarding scientific names, I just know they look different! LOL..no preparation has been applied other than soap/water and a little careful chiseling of matrix that I thought I could tackle. One of the big ones cracked in half due to it being my first big one to remove. I used Elmer’s glue and crushed limestone to fill the crack but I’ll likely soak it to get it out and replace it with an epoxy. Another one is cracked but never broke, I put super glue in the cracks just in case. Nice sutures on a few! 2 of the smaller eopachydiscus are 11-12 inches across, the biggest is around 17 inches, most are 14-15 inches.

I strolled around Lake Texoma today. I mainly was looking for a chunky ammonite to take home, and I knew I was in for some serious work if I wanted to find a nice one. While walking to the ammonite beach, I picked through some marl banks and found a couple cool keepers. The pyritized small ammonites were plentiful, so I picked a few, while the shark teeth were not. Only found one. Looks like Cretalamna sp? I did manage to find a pretty nice echinoid that the water had cleaned perfectly. Hemiaster sp? Unfortunately the ammonite beach wasn't what I had hoped for. I'm not sure if I picked a bad time to go, or if it's just too popular but all the rock I could find was pretty much smashed to pieces along with many big ammonites. It took a long time to find a potential keeper. I did manage to find one, and man it was a lot of work to pry this out. This ammonite is over a foot long and was very heavy to haul back to my car. Needless to say, I took frequent breaks on my way back! On the journey back to my car, I did find a nicer complete ammonite exposed. It was the only one that day I found that was nice that didn't require extensive excavation, so I decided to take it home too. All in all, I had a pretty nice time at the lake. It was a lot more work and walking than I expected.

Hello all, I’m hoping the braintrust here can help me identify the species of two Mortoniceras Ammonite cast fragments I found this past Spring. They were located in an alluvial river deposit that runs through the Duck Creek and Weno Limestone/Pawpaw formations of Northern Tarrant County in north Texas. If my reading is correct, they should be mid-Cretaceous period and approx. 100 to 95 mya, but I would love someone to check me on that as well. The cast in the first three pics is fairly well defined with a prominent siphuncle ridge. The second cast (last four pics) actually has a small geode I discovered while cutting these down to display. I appreciate any help the group may be able to lend and I hope you all have a great weekend!

Had a couple hours to hunt one of my local spots this evening… I didn’t find much, but I did manage to pull a nice little bivalve shell embedded over an ammonite imprint. cheers!

I’m still very new to fossils, but I’ve been hunting in and around North Texas the last 6 weekends… This is the best 25% of what I’ve found so far.

I’m having some trouble identifying this one… I presume it’s some sort of bivalve and it came off a gravel bar in Denton Creek (north of Fort Worth in the Duck Creek Formation) but I can’t seem to find any photo matches on the inter-webs to identify it. Any thoughts on species? Thanks Paul L.

Hello all Still a bit of a newbie here but I stumbled across a couple things I haven’t seen before… The first find looks a bit like a vertebrae (pics 1 and 2)… Pics 3 and 4 are what looks like a segmented crab leg, but I’m just not sure what to make of it. It may just be my mind playing tricks (in both cases), but I was hoping to get the consensus of the experts here. Any help is much appreciated! Thanks, Paul L.

Belton. Texas is the southern most boundary of Duck Formation in Texas. This is far as you can go and still find decent size Eopachydiscus ammonites (unless somebody can challenge that). I pulled over the service road and started looking. Few weeks ago I also found some nautiolids on this stretch of road, so I knew there were fossils here. I immediately saw the ammonites sticking out of rock pile. It was totally unexpected. They measure around 8 to 12 inches. Area has lots of road construction so rocks get dug out and coverd almost immediately. Just matter of luck.

This week's adventure for Rockwood and I was to the Duck Creek formation in Tarrant county, we found gobs of gastropods, echinoids, bi valves and peices of ammonite along with unknowns. Being unfamiliar with this formation I'm having trouble with some ID's, starting with these 2. I cannot find match for the oyster, maybe the ones I was looking at were worn down so I didn't recognize it I'm not sure. The impression really has me thrown off, the piece of shell looks like it might be what made it but I don't know what it is either. Appreciate any help

I know this photo isn't much to go by but I didn't have a better camera and no tools to extract it from the large rock so I could bring it home. I just hope I can still find it. This is about 10 cm long, found in Spring Creek, Cooke County, Texas. These are marine, limestone deposits with abundant ammonites. It may not be bone but I can't think what else it might be. That could be a scaphopod below it but I haven't seen them here before.

So I picked this guy up on Labor Day weekend. Didn't think I would be able to prep much, as the matrix appeared to be very hard. However, last weekend I noticed a hairline fracture...so I pulled out my hammer and cold chisel and gave it a little whack...

I am going to give this N Texas ammonite away to a kid this weekend on a fossil trip that I am leading in the mountains of central Arizona. This lower Cretaceous ammonite was probably collected from the Fort Worth or Duck Creek Formations. Could it be a Mortoniceras? Thanks, John

My girlfriend recently found this vertebra at the Duck Creek Formation in North Texas. Was a bit of a surprise, didn't expect to find a vert at this locality, which is known more for ammonites, echinoids, and bivalves. One side of the vert has been prepped. Any help with an ID would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! And for those that have kindly enhanced the brightness on my previous pics, no worries! I did it myself this time.

I found these fossil in Texas and not sure what they are or which species they belong too. Please help me identify them. Thanks. 1. I found this in Kiamichi formation in Fort Worth, Texas. I think it is fragment of turtle shells but I am not sure. 2. also on Kiamichi formation, Fort Worth, Texas, I found this ammonite, please let me know which species it belong too. Thanks. 3. and the echinoid is also at the same place. Which species is it? 4. I also found this at Duck Creek Formation in Fort Worth Texas which I don't know what it is Thank you.

Over winter break, I decided to head north for some fossil hunting. In particular, I wanted to find a complete ammonite for my collection. In the past I have only found pieces. So I went to Lake Texoma and was happy to see that recent rains didn't make the excursion pointless. It was a little brisk at 40 degrees and a 10 mph wind from the north. The first ammonite I found was complete, easy to excavate, and entirely too large to make the hike back to the car enjoyable. So I left it behind for the next person willing to haul 30-40 lbs. back to the parking lot. The next ammonite fell within my weight specifications, and appeared to be encased in relatively soft situ. I excavated it within a few minutes. Here are a few more that I found on the same trip.

I had the day off of work on Memorial Day and I didn’t have my kids, but I was on call. So once again I couldn’t go too far. I decided to head back over to the Benbrook site. It was going to be another scorcher. So I brought along about 40 ounces of fluids. I drove the hour over to west of Benbrook Lake to the new subdivision going in, turned into the development and parked near where I had found the 2 smaller ammonites the previous Tuesday. Before getting out of my car I covered my exposed areas with sunscreen. Sun damage will age you quicker than almost anything and also increase the likelihood of getting skin cancer. Now that I had my sunscreen on I got out and started hunting. I walked around a few undeveloped lots for a bit and was only finding partial ammonites. I found one small echinoid urchin and nothing else of note. I walked back to my car to get a drink and my bag. Then I searched on the opposite side of the street. I didn’t find anything there either. I guess the first trip I was just lucky to find 2 decent ammonites within 5-7 minutes. Since I wasn’t finding much in that particular area I walked down the street a bit and then crossed it heading towards a rock pile. The lots in this area had not been smoothed over yet. The back side of the lots sloped downward. More rocks had been pushed over the edge of the slope. I had stepped up on the curb and walked maybe 15 feet when I found what looked to be a small Mortoniceras about 5 inches across imbedded in a larger chunk of rock. You can just see the edge of it poking out of the rock below my hand. I didn’t have my hammer with me. I put my bag down by the rock and I walked back to my car to get my hammer. I couldn’t find it. It dawned on me that I had taken it into my house, shoot. I keep most of my hunting tools in my trunk with my rubber boots and a pack at all times. You never known when you might see some spot that needs investigating. So, no worries I had my little sledge hammer and some chisels along with a number of other tools. I was dripping wet from the heat and losing a lot of fluids. The humidity was at 70% and it was 94 degrees. I can take the heat, but I don't do well with high heat and high humidity. The humidity is what does me in. I got the tools and walked back to where the ammonite was. The limestone there was kind of chalky and reasonably soft. Within 2-3 minutes I had it popped out of the rock. One side free of matrix, but the other still had a little on it, but at least I wouldn’t have to carry the whole 40+ pound rock back to my car. The side that was free of matrix looked like it had a touch of pyrite disease. You can see how it is kind of flat on the bottom edge and reddish from oxidation. This is just another chunk of rock with 2 Morts in it. They look like fragments so I didn't bother with trying to get them out. It looks like there is a third fossil between them and possibly another small one below them that is hardly noticeable. I am not sure what this is. It looks a bit like some burrows, but the other burrows I was seeing were 3 to 5 inches in diameter. It may be a little burrow of some other creature, but there is something else going on there too, but not sure what. it almost looks like large leaves fanning out to the top and bottom. the burrow overlays whatever is fanning out. The burrow to the bottom left looks kind of like it is a corkscrew patterns. Then there is a burrow looking thing above those that has a ribbed pattern on it. Hum, now that I think about it, this did not look like the other rocks. There were building a stone wall nearby with sandstone blocks. This may not even be from the formation. This is just another fragment with the septa showing. It is about 8 inches across. This is one of the little Morts that was just laying around. I thought the thing below it was an urchin. Turned out to be a pebble with concrete on it. I just gave the ammonite away to the guy who came and fixed my AC unit today. He is the grandfather of a couple kids my kids were friends with. We actually kind of hunted a little together back in March when I took a group of scout kids, my daughter and his granddaughter out on a little hunt. He had never found fossils before or been hunting for them. He walked over as I was finding echinoids, gastropods and ammonite fragments. He was immediately sucked into the hunt and fascinated with them. This ammonite was kind of cool, because the matrix on the edge had the impression of another little ammonite. It is about 6 inches across. I'll be back in a few with more of the story.

I went hunting Tuesday before last to a new place over in Benbrook, TX about an hour away. A newer TFF member, Cory had blind messaged me telling me about a place over near Ft. Worth. He thought I might be interested in seeing them. He invited me to come check it out. I get messaged a lot on social medial by complete strangers. So that part was nothing new. I don’t respond to the majority of the messages. With all of the messages I have gotten I have never had a stranger invite me to meet him somewhere, but that was basically the scenario. Sounds like the perfect scenario for something bad to happen though. So I was a bit leery. I didn’t intend to go, but I checked out his post to see what he was finding at the site. It was a lot of the typical Duck Creek ammonites and echinoids. The echinoids intrigued me. I had quite a few of that kind, but the quality was better than what I had. Also, the Mortoniceras ammonites were of good size and quality. The ones I have are fairly small. I have more Eopachydiscus than any other ammonite. So those did not hold much appeal. In his post he had invited other people to come check the place out so that made me feel a bit better. I'm still not sure how he found me or why he messaged me. Maybe it was one of my posts from a fossil hunt over in Ft. Worth he had seen. I had requested the day off work for that Tuesday weeks before to run some errands and go to an event, but the event got canceled so I had some extra time I didn’t expect to have. I was bummed that the event got canceled. Nature and the outdoors are my happy places. Fossil hunting cheers me even more. So I thought of places I could go. I had to be back by 5:00 though to pick up my daughter. So I couldn’t heard out to NSR. I decided to take a chance and head over to the place in Benbrook. I PM'd Cory on TFF and he sent me the address and his telephone number. I messaged someone to let them know where I was going and what time I planned to leave. It was in an open construction area and other people would be around so that helped put my mind at ease. I don’t tend to be paranoid about harm from strangers, but I like to be safe. I am a person of faith and I tend to hold the philosophy that if it isn’t your time to go nothing will happen to you. If it is your time to go, there is nothing you can do to stop it. I know a lot of women who limit themselves in where they can go and what they can do out of fear of what may happen to them if they go somewhere alone. I don’t fit in that category of not going out of fear. It may put me at greater risk, but so far I haven't come to harm only by the grace of God I am sure. Since the place was a new development it didn’t come up on my map apps. I had to wing it and used the satellite view to find the general area under development. I pulled into the development. It was quite large. Between the 2 sections it looked like it could easily be 150 acres if not more. Maybe only about 20% of the lots had homes on them. I had no idea where Cory was or how to find him. I was ok hunting without bothering him at work. I was still uneasy about it, but I thought I should meet him to thank him for letting me know about the site and inviting me. I am a pretty shy person. Breaking the ice is the hardest thing for me. I feel awkward and am afraid I won't know what to say, I'll say something stupid or I'll say something and there will be one of those awkward silences. But I let the rules of proper social decorum motivate me to break the ice and go meet him. He had also said he had a lot of questions about the fossils. I told him I wasn’t sure I could answers his questions, but I’d try to answer what I could. I wanted to keep my word. I parked my car on a corner surrounded by vacant lots. I messaged him to let him know I was there providing him with the street names on the signs on the corner. I got out and walked around. Within the first 5-7 minutes of walking around I found 2 decent little ammonites, which I believe are both Mortoniceras. One has more prominent tubercles than the other. Here’s the first I little ammonite I found on top of a fragment from a large Eopachydiscus. I am holding them my hand, but the fragment is so big you can barley see my hand is there. The little ammonite is 9 cm across. About that time he messaged me back and then tried to describe how to get to him. I told him I’d hunt where I was a bit longer and then come over to where he was. While I hunted around I snapped pics of the flowers and plants. Here are a few. This looks a little like phlox, but I’m not sure if it is since phlox was out in early April. Also, these are on a single stalk densely covered with small leaves. The phlox I know don’t look like that Not sure what this, but it looks cool. The leaves are fuzzy. The shoots are 12-15 inches tall. This is a Texas thistle. Believe it or not this is my favorite wildflower. The blooms can be up to 2 inches across and occasionally 2.5. They look a bit like pompoms, but aren’t quite so round. The color is just a bit off in the pic though. They are slightly more of a fuchsia color. They’re pretty cool looking. The plant is very prickly as you can see in the pic. They are difficult to pick. I usually have to take thick rubber gloves and use garden clippers. The look is not what made them my favorite flower though. It is their behavior and movement that I find so intriguing and mysterious. The first time I picked a bouquet of these I arranged them in a vase and made a nice rounded bouquet. When I got up in the morning they were completely rearranged. I asked my kids if they had played with them. They had not. I rearranged them into a nice rounded bouquet and went about my day. A couple hours later I noticed it was rearranged again. I don’t know what makes them move. It is not phototropism or the typical type of chemotaxis. They will move themselves at night and may move as much as 2 inches in 8 hours. It is astonishing and quite remarkable to me. I love it! They have an independent spirit, kind of like me. I remember we had a form of these growing on the edge of the forest in the clearing where our house was when I was a girl living in the Boston Mountains of Arkansas. The bears use to come into the clearing to eat these. They look like they would be very painful to eat, but the bears seemed to love them for their sweetness. I’ve never eaten one, but they smell delightfully sweet almost like honey.

I went hunting today. I hit 2 places. Found lots of ammonites. I lost count after a while. Anyway, my last stop was Denton Creek North of Ft.Worth. The formation is Duck Creek. Found a number of ammonites, 1 nautilus and a couple echinoids. There were also a lot of the typical burrows, oysters and Neithia. I say all that so you get the environment and other fossils present. I also found this (see pics below), I’ve never found anything remotely like it so I have no clue what it is. It was in a layer of what I believe to be limestone in an exposure along the bank. I had to hammer it out to bring home. At first I thought it could be something in the echinoderm family with all the small bumps along the side, but so far I’m not seeing any ambulacra. Also it seems to be cylendrical in shape, but I don’t have it exposed from the matrix yet so I could be wrong about it being cylendrical. I’d kind of like a clue as to what it is before proceeding with extraction so that I don’t botch the extraction and mess up the fossil, because I didn’t know the shape. It appears to be generally the length and size of my index finger about 3 inches long maybe 1/2 inch in diameter. here is a pic from the side. There are little rows or columns of bumps. The rows seem to be every few mm apart. You can only see 1 row here. The ones on the exposed surface are worn down and barely noticeable, but they’re there. This is from the other side. You can see the end is broken off. I’m calling this end the top end. Heres a slightly different angle of the top end. Notice the 3 pointy protrusions on the broken end. I’m not sure if that is an artifact of the break or anatomy relative to the specimen. This is a shot of the exposed broken end. I have been trying to remove the matrix. It’s fairly soft so it’s easy to scratch so extraction is going slowly. Under what matrix I have removed are more rows of bumps. Any help with ID even as to the type of organism it is, would be very much appreciated. I kind of wonder if when I’ll see it exposed I’ll have one of those “D’oh!” moments and it will be so obvious. Right now nothing rings a bell. I have no clue whatsoever what it may be. Thanks Kim

I was on call at work all week which meant I had to be within an hour of my work and have cell phone access. I wanted to go fossil hunting so I google mapped an area in Tarrant County, Texas. I found a few potential spots with some exposure and I headed that way. It was an hour drive from home. I’ve been seeing lots of echinoids come out of the area. I had made 3 separate trips to the area not knowing exactly where the echinoids could be found. Two previous trips resulted in abundant ammonite finds. Ammonite hunting often requires a lot of gear and tools. Ammonites are generally big and heavy. I wanted a break from the heavy duty hauling and labor intensive retrieval, but I had no clue what I might find at this new location so I came equipped. On the way to the first stop I passed a large area of exposed rock and soil. I had passed it at least 3 times before, but yesterday I decided to take the detour and stop at this site. It was right off the freeway, but yo access it I looked around to what I thought would be the back side. It was a couple mile loop to get there. I ended up in a daycare parking lot across from the area. I had looked at the weather in the morning and it said the high would be 74. I came hydrated for 74. I got my little bag with a single gardening tool and crossed the road to the site. Initially I thought the place was a construction site dump for dirt and rocks that had been flattened out, but I eventually realized that wasn’t the case. I think it was initially a housing development that fell through and the land was still sitting there after being somewhat grated and leveled. Here is a view of the terrain. Lots of exposure. I walked around for about 2 minutes before I saw the first fossil. I was dubious this place had any potential, but that one little fossil gave me the motivation to continue investigating. I walked on for another 15 min without spotting anything. The side had two sections. I had explored maybe 20 acres of the first many 40 acres. I decided to mosey over to the back 40. While in this area I realized it wasn’t a construction site dumb. I saw layering in the soil. I found a couple of ammonite fragments and while bending down to pick one up I found a shark tooth. Then a little while later I found another. They’re pretty small. About 1 cm I’d say. No idea what genus though. While in the back 40 I saw my first hint of echinoids. I found a fragment that was about 2.5 inches across. Bingo! This is what I have been looking for and what I had made 3 other unsuccessful trips to Tarrant County for. I knew I was in the right spot. I walked about 10 feet and saw my first large echinoid. When I look at these pics some of them have this optical illusion quality. It looks like there are a bunch of holes in the ground. If that is what you see go to the pic above, focus on the small rocks and come back to this one and refocus. There aren’t any holes in the ground. They’re all rocks sitting on top of the ground. It’s the weirdest thing. They’re my own pics, but I keep seeing the inverse picture so they look like depressions in the ground rather than stones on top of the ground. Anyway, there’s my first large echinoid in situ, upside down. Here is that sweet not so little find in my hand. It was the biggest I had ever found up to that point, but I found bigger than this yesterday. A couple more with top side view. Bottom side view. One in situ sitting on its side, just begging to be picked up and loved on. It’s like he’s saying “come scratch my tummy.” About this point I started not feeling that great. I was feeling a little over heated, but since the high was only supposed to be 74 that didn’t make sense to me. I drank some Gatorade I’d brought with me and went on. I kept walking around hunting for another 20 min or so, but the feeling got worse. I hadn’t found any echinoids for a few min so I decided to head back to my car. It would take me a while to get back. But then I stumbled across another patch of echinoids. Another one with an ammonite fragment. There were a lot of ammonite fragments everywhere. Here is a decent little ammonite I found. A couple more. I had just picked up the ammonite and another echi. I think I found 3 or 4 paired echies sitting right next to another. The feeling of being over heated and dehydrated got worse. I can take the heat reasonably well. So I wasn’t sure what was going on. Maybe my age was beginning to show (I’ll be 50 this week). I’d had oral surgery a couple weeks before and thought maybe I wasn’t back up to par yet, despite feeling fine even a day after the surgery. I had to sit down once, but didn’t really improve with sitting. I had wondered if I was going to make it back before fainting. I had stated to have a few short blackouts when I stood up after bending over, but I finally made it back to my car. To my surprise the temperature was a whopping 93. If I had known it was going to be 93 I would have hydrated completely differently than I did for 74 degrees. I can handle 93 if I hydrate for it. I went hiking last Summer in Grand Staircase Escalante in Utah when it was 115 degrees and did fine. Anyway, I went to get gas and a drink and something salty. I found my favorite chips, Funyuns. I only eat them when traveling though. They’re too dangerous to keep around the house. I’d eat the whole bag. I’m a bit of a health nut, but not a fanatic. So I try to not keep junk food around the house that I’m tempted by. With temperatures like that it is clear that Spring is here and summer is on its way. Driving back home, blue skyes and yes, even a little smog in Dallas. The Bradford pears and red bud trees are in bloom here in Texas and things are turning green. I found 23 echinoids in all. 2 shark teeth and a few ammonites. It was a pretty productive day fossil hunting. That might have quenched my appetite for echinoids for a short while. I’ll post a pic of them all tomorrow.

I have no idea what species this is, but I’d like to know if the outer portion is part of the ammonite or just matrix. Debating whether to haul it out of here or not.