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Pooch sniffs out prehistoric prize: Canine discovers 250,000-year-old woolly rhino bone By Today, Today news, April 5, 2019 https://www.todaychan.com/2019/04/05/pooch-sniffs-out-prehistoric-prize-dog-discovers-250000-year-old-woolly-rhino-bone-2/ Yours, Paul H.

I've been on the Facebook page of the fossil forum for a little while, but I decided to start using the forum proper. I'm pretty new to serious fossil hunting, I mean I've always found fragile ferns. But lately I've been making road trips to find better fossils. So far I've been to Maysville, Kentucky a couple times and ive found some nice plant fossils along Rt 52 in WV. I'm really interested in cephalopod fossils in particular, but I just love fossil hunting.

Greetings folks! Please excuse the late intro, but just learning how to use this site, then once I learned how to post under Fossil ID, I was off and running. Anyhow, I just love your site. Hopefully in the future I will be able to make some ID contributions, instead of hounding people with questions. I know very little about Geology or Fossils, but have always found them fascinating. Already made my first road trip to the Appalachian mountains and as per of my trip did some fossil hunting. Found some Crinoids, and learned a bit about them, so for me that was a great start. Otherwise, nice meeting you guys/gals and look forward to getting to know yawl and increasing my knowledge a bit more. Joe

How Fossils Were Incorporated Into The Cultural Life Of Ancient Africa David Bressan, Forbes, February 22, 2019 https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidbressan/2019/02/22/black-and-toxic-snow-is-falling-from-the-skies-in-siberia/ According to the below paper, people were collecting trilobites even prehistoric times. The paper is: Helm, C.W., Benoit, J., Mayor, A., Cawthra, H.C., Penn-Clarke, C.R. and Rust, R., 2019. Interest in geological and palaeontological curiosities by southern African non-western societies: A review and perspectives for future study. Proceedings of the Geologists' Association. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330367438_Interest_in_geological_and_palaeontological_curiosities_by_southern_African_non-western_societies_A_review_and_perspectives_for_future_study https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Julien_Benoit Yours, Paul H.

I'm interested in collecting in the Peace River and my kids are finally old enough. I've been lurking around the forums for a little bit and I've seen a few do's and don'ts, are there rules somewhere? For instance I have read you can't use a 2 handed shovel but seen numerous pictures with normal spade shovels in them. Digging/ looking for fossils in the bank? Collecting on state land(I thought the river bed up to the high water was OK) I'm looking for a little guidance, I don't want to run into any trouble or afoul of any laws. Any tips for a newbie are also appreciated.

I have been asked by a couple of TFF members if we have personal collecting interests in addition to what we collect for educational purposes. We keep most of our posts about the education side of what we do because 95% of what we collect is for education. We also have legal bits that guide how our own fossils are used in the education program which I covered in a previous piece. To summarize that post, there is a distinct line drawn between fossil that belong to Fossils and Wheels and how they are used. My son and I loan our personal collection for education programs plus we have donated a good portion of our fossils to be given away to students. My son and I do have own collecting interests though but we have not really picked up anything for ourselves lately. Carter loves Trilobites and he does have a couple of inexpensive fossils. Part of his high school graduation present is going to be a couple of nice Trilobites and I am starting to learn more about collecting Trilobites. I do collect whale fossils from STH and all of them are part of the education program. The first fossils I ever found were STH cetacean fossils. I still have the two teeth and the vertebra that I found. I do plan on acquiring more whale material and donating it for scientific research. I want to contribute to the scientific knowledge of whale evolution. I do also collect Carboniferous era shark teeth. These also get used in the education programs but I will occasionally pick up items that are not for the education program. We posted a number of our teeth from this era but there a few we have not posted because they are not for the ed program. This includes a Glikmanius tooth that I am quite fond of. I do also have a cladodont tooth that is likely from an undescribed species and that too will eventually be donated. We are very new to collecting dinosaurs but there are some dinosaurs that I plan on adding to my personal collection. I am totally fascinated by the Dromaeosaurid dinos. I studied birds of prey in the wild and worked with injured birds of prey for a decade so it is not a real surprise to me that raptors are my favorite dinosaur. They may not be related but they fill similar ecological niches and I have seen hawks hunt on the ground numerous times. A hawk running after a rabbit on the ground certainly looks exactly like I picture the "raptor" dinosaurs hunting. The biology and related ecology of the Dromaeosaurids is just something I really love the learning about too as it was with birds of prey. Our collection, as of right now, it is not super impressive. We have a Judith River Saurornitholestes tooth and a Hell Creek Acheroraptor tooth. They are two of my favorite fossils though. We will talk a lot about raptors in our presentations and that is a reflection of my interest. All of my purchases right now are for the benefit of our education program but I would like to make a personal purchase in the near future. I want to add another species of Dromaeousaurid to my collection and not because it benefits our education stuff. It would be just for me really. It can wait as we have our collecting priorities but eventually I will get just a tad selfish and find a nice piece to add I am leaning toward to probably putting a post on the member to member sales forum here regarding this interest before I go to a dealer. I have really enjoyed my transactions here so far. Anyway, that is the story of our personal collecting interests and hopefully it is helpful and/or slightly interesting lol Here is the Acheroraptor tooth.

Fossils you’ve collected compared with museum fossils is a fun way to research what you have found. I'm almost certain I have a classic Raphidonema contortum sponge I collected from Farringdon gravel beds in Berkshire UK. My sponge has the rule for scale, the other two are one of many Farringdon sponges on display at the wonderful Oxford University Museum of Natural History https://oumnh.ox.ac.uk Age: Aptian, Cretaceous.

Fossil collector rescued after becoming trapped by landslide Fishermen dig injured man out of mud before he is airlifted to safety The Independent, November 2018 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/fossil-collector-trapped-mud-landslide-cliffs-port-mulgrave-yorkshire-a8605461.html Yours, Paul H.

Dear fellow forum goers, I am on fall break from college in Ohio and I decided that I needed to do some fossil hunting. In about a week's time I managed to get out four times. The first trip was to a KT Boundary site. For those who do not know what that is, it is a transitional period between the Cretaceous and Paleogene. There were very few fossils at the site and the collecting conditions were less than optimal but it was nonetheless fun exploring. Next I went to an Eocene/Miocene site and struggled to get any real traction with the finds. I came out okay considering that I didn't stay too long. The last two hunts were both at Cretaceous sites and this is where I found most of my finds. Of the two, the latter was on Friday October 26th and was with Frank (frankh8147) and Jeff (Jeffery P). Frank found a cool mosasaur vertebrae and Jeff found some rare species of ammonite whose name evades my mind. I thought the day was pretty nice and overall optimal for fossil collecting. Thank you for reading this and I hope you have a nice day wherever you are & have a productive next hunt. Kind regards, Trevor

Starting my Eurypterid collecting in 1994, work was done with a hammer and rock chisel. In the early 2000's I was sawing to improve my chances of finding Eurypterids. (yes, I wear a particle mask if the dust is in my face.) My next plan is to jackhammer the tough Bertie Dolostone. Plan to try the new toys this next Friday, hoping the investment was worth it. Ultimately the specimens still have to be sawed and chiseled out. The real trick is finding them first.

Hello, I am new here. I have a question regarding fossil laws of Slovenia if anybody would be willing to help, although I'm not sure if this is the correct place to post this. I was reading what I believe to be the majority of the laws regarding fossils on this link here, but I am not sure I understand it correctly. From what I read fossils are the property of the state but later on it seems to mention individuals being allowed to take minerals and fossils from nature for personal collections. It also mentions something about protected areas/notifying the ministry and the exportation of fossils that I didn't fully understand. I am assuming that the laws are leaning more towards fossil collecting not being legal, but I would appreciate if somebody who understands laws better than me could read through it, using ctrl F "fossils" or something like that and give me a second opinion by telling me what their understanding of these laws is.

I hope this does not open a can of worms? But I think an open discussion regarding legal vs. illegal collecting practices is worth the time. I have observed, via a number of threads in posts, some collectors DO NOT appear respectful of current collecting rules and regulations (i.e. collecting vertebrate fossils on public land or unauthorized collecting on private land). I can already guess, many members are going to ask for specific examples. I really don't want to point fingers. I'm sure, members who have participated in this forum for a long time, recognize this is a on-going issue. People who post may NOT overtly say they are collecting illegally, but the content within the post depicts a picture of illegal collecting (i.e. found whale bones in a drainage ditch with map coordinates that indicate it is a public road easement). I think what typically gets lost in discussion like this are 2 main points: (1) illegal collecting fuels the drive to change BLM collecting rules and regs (which we have seen), and (2) illegal collecting can "cheat" the legitimate scientific community from extracting valuable data (i.e. geologic in-situ information, micro fossils, specific coordinates, etc.). I recently had a in-depth discussion with the head of a paleontology department who said, "most of the surface material (fossils) are of little interest to the museum (unless rare)" as the "scientific data" has been lost. I know what most of us are thinking, which is then why not let us collect surface vertebrate material that is exposed or removed from it's matrix? Well there are some legitimate reason why the current laws are restrictive: (1) some collectors have NO formal training and don't know how to properly identify, classify fossils (don't know the difference between a femur or tibia) (2) some collectors have NO training on how to property excavate fossils (pot hole diggers). I think, in fairness to the online community, it would be beneficial to discuss the "challenges" to legal collecting and the importance of "legitimate" "legal" collecting to protect future collecting opportunities. I personally, would like to see more posted comments instructing members to abide by current laws when it appears members "may be" violating them.

In two months I will be going back to Ukraine from United States. I have already found and purchased a lot of fossils here and I would like to take them back to Ukraine. Therefore, I have several questions: 1) What should I do to export purchased fossils from US? As far as I know, Ukraine does not have any limitations on fossil import. 2) Do I need any specific documents for exporting self-found fossils, for example, found in Green Mill Run? 3) What do I need to do in order to mail fossils in the same direction? Thank you in advance.

Halloween is coming up soon so lets share our fossil related horror stories! They can range from Preparation accidents, missed opportunities, breaking specimens, close encounters with a dangerous animal hunting, near death experiences, or even receiving a fossil from an old haunted collection, pretty much anything a hunter and collector would find horrifying. One of my personal fossil horror stories involves a a terrifying bump in the night! I had recent found and started a to use a new plastic shelf I found to store my finds from a recent new spot. I started to notice a few days in the shelf was already nearly filled to capacity, so I decided I would add no more after today's load. Sometime after mid-night I heard a sudden loud bang and woke up to the plastic shelf tipping over forward, one of the support wheels had poped out! Luckily the shock awakened my superhuman reflexes of seeing my fossils in danger so I leapt up and was able to save the shelf from crashing down. I was shaken but since then stabilized the shelf, it was truly horrifying to see that moment when my fossils could've been severely damaged or destroyed

Contested National Monuments in Utah House Treasure Troves of Fossils, Inside Science News Service-Jun 13, 2017 https://www.insidescience.org/news/contested-national-monuments-utah-house-treasure-troves-fossils Yours, Paul H.

Hey All, I'm a Coloradan who recently moved to Houston for the summer. I've been eager to go out and hunt down some fossils. I've been to some places int eh immediate vicinity like Denton, TX; Crockett, TX, and Mineral Wells, TX. So far I've been blessed to find great marine fossils like crinoids, bracs, ..etc. I was wondering if anyone can guide me to better locations around Texas, preferably around the Houston area, or even Austin or Dallas. I'm willing to dive for a great day of hunting ! I'm also open to any kind of fossils, I have a big interest in Shark Teeth, but would also like to find other stuff. Thanks !

I stumbled on this web site and it looks like a great place - to both learn and participate. I am the founder and chief scientist of a software company specializing in cognitive computing and human-centered computing (http://www.scianta.com). I have been studying and collecting dinosaur fossils for over fifty years. One of my books include Beyond Humanity - Cyberevolution and Future Minds which I co-authored with Greg Paul, one of the palentologist advisors on the orginal Jurassic Park movie, a dino artist, and, in his Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, was one on the first paleontologist to depict feathered theropod dinosaurs. Because of Greg, I spend a lot of time watching and studying and photographing swarms of modern dinosaurs around me, the wonderful clad of avian theropods (opposed to the long gone late Cretaceous nonavian-theropods). I am a photographer with my work on display in galleries in Santa Monica, Baltimore, and New York (see http://www.theperiodicityoflight.squarespace.com). I also collect, culture, study, and photograph protozoa and myoxmycetes (slime molds), and small carnivorous plants called sundews. I collect tenth and eleventh century medieval manuscripts, late Roman republic coins, and nineteenth century brass microscopes. So that's mostly me in a nutshell.