Search the Community

Hello! I found these fossils(?) at Estabrook park which is part of the Devonian Milwaukee formation. They appear to be external moulds. These were found near the Lindwurm and Berthelet Members. Are these jawless fish? Big brachiopods? Non-fossils? I’m stumped on these. The formation is known for its plants, giant fungi, jawed and jawless fish, Cephalopods, and Conulariids. So sorry for the lack of scale! I need to start carrying a tape measure with my fossil hunting backpack.

I was wondering if I found an external mould of the Devonian gastropod Platyceras. The fossil curves in the rock which was hard to capture with the lighting. The rock was too big to carry back and I didn’t have a ruler with me so I apologize for lack of scale. Thanks!

Paleozoic rock. I found this looking back through some scrap rocks. I think this is a stone I found some crinoids, brachiopods, horn corals, and a trilobite in before. .75 inches long (sorry for not including a scale in the picture) thanks!

Found in some landscaping gravel I’ve found boatloads of crinoid stems at. Brachiopods and gastropods are not too uncommon in those rocks. Paleozoic, likely Ordovician-Silurian.

Hi, I found this external mold shell on Honeymoon beach, Florida USA. It's about 2" long and 3/4" on the widest end. Unfortunately it is broken and worn on the right edge, but I still thought it was a cool find. It's limestone and has about 3 more shell imprints on the flip side (not shown). This was an unusual shape so I made a clay mold to better see the shape (3rd photo)I looked through many seashell books and narrowed it down to Eastern Turritella or Florida Cerith. What do you think?

Could these be oyster or crinoid cast / molds? The rock is around 15" in length. The two large impressions looked around 5" in diamaeter. Sorry no size indicator in photo. I decided to leave this big boy in the creek..long haul back to car Any help is appreciated! Chris Scientific Name: UNKNOWN Found: North Central Texas Creek Date Found: OCT 2015 Formation: Ozan / Kau Size: Various

I have never really done any real fossil hunting, but both my husband and I are always interested in the geology and landforms we encounter wherever we go. My husband and I were visiting my parent's home in Grove, Oklahoma, which is about an hour SW of Joplin, MO. They've been working on moving out all the large rocks that naturally litter the lawn and pastureland since they've moved there, so there are multiple random piles of rocks all over the property. I happened to notice some "sparkly" rocks sitting in a wheelbarrow that I thought were pretty, so my husband came over to take a look. Looking at the rocks a little closer we started to notice that they were littered with little inclusions and geometric impressions. My husband emailed some pictures of our initial find to the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History. Here is the reply we received: "What you have is a piece of cherty limestone that contains individual crinoids stem fragments (the round objects that look like compressed coral), bryozoans (the small fans are fronds of a fenestrate bryozoans and some of the branch-like objects are also bryozoans), and it looks like the mold of small clams (bivalves). Based on the rock type and preservation, I would guess these originally came from NE Oklahoma in the Ozark Mountain region and are probably Mississippian (Early Carboniferous) in age (~330 to 345 million years old). Some of the things you describe as worms may indeed be worm tubes or traces where small invertebrates burrowed though the soft mud feeding on even smaller invertebrates, the mud was then buried and lithified into a limestone, then later events introduced silica into the rock turning it into a chert or cherty limestone. The orange-red color is from iron oxide (literally rust) that is common in these rocks." We found these rocks everywhere, and we brought a number of them home to inspect and maybe try to extract. So I have an idea of what they are, but my question is, what do I do now? It looks like there might be a few actual intact fossils but for the most part it looks like they are just external mold fossils (been trying to do as much reading as I can..). So I have a few specific questions. 1) Is it worthwhile to try and extract any whole fossils? If we extract the fossils, I can assume the mold fossils will be lost/ruined.. 2) Is it possible that there are only mold fossils present? 3) What about the presence of microfossils? 4) If extraction is a possibility, what would be the process for this kind of stone/mineral? 5) Are there any other techniques that are a good presentation of this type of fossil (cross-sections, slices, polishing...)? I am pretty excited, so I have been trying to look up as much as I can about our find. I know no one likes a newbie that doesn't do their research, but there is a lot of information out there! Hopefully someone out there will be able to give me some tips on what we can do with our new "rocks". I am attaching some pics of what we have. I forgot to add a coin in for reference until I was almost done taking pictures, so sorry about that. With the exception of some of the bivalve molds/shells, most everything you see in the limestone is only a few mm to about a cm big. Thanks in advance!