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Hello all, Can anyone recommend a paper, book, or website that can help me learn how to identify the formations in Texas (especially central Texas [i.e., San Antonio northeastward to Georgetown])? I am realizing more and more the utility of formation info for fossil identification as well as the scientific value such information adds to an individual's personal collection. Thank you kindly in advance for your help

I purchased these in person. The tooth was represented as being a Bison Tooth, found in the Kansas River. The vertebra was represented as being a Whale Vertebra, and i forgot to ask for the location? I thought that at the very least, it was some type of Cetacean Vertebra?

I am going to Scotsdale in a couple weeks any suggestions where to hunt?

Anyone willing to give any general locations to find agatized coral on the Withlacooche River? Not asking for exact locations just more so how to approach the river in general. I'm in Tampa FL I know about Honeymoon Island and Ballast Point. Also willing to learn about how to approach Ballast Point. I went out a few days ago at low tide and had no luck on the shore. Do people kayak it and get in the water to find coral mostly?

Just wanted to share some small pieces I found. Nothing amazing but being I'm so green to finding agatized coral i think its neat...

Just wanted to share my fossil collection with you guys. Nothing to crazy mostly common stuff, but it's all from a years worth of digging. Everything you see here taught me a lot about identifying fossils. After that year I kinda stopped digging due to personal life reasons and I started new hobbies. That was 10 years and unfortunately I never got back into it till a few weeks ago I started hunting agatized coral and caught the bug again to want to hunt. I'll be posting as I find new stuff. Thanks you!

I took another first time fossil hunter out to look for shark teeth, today. It was quite hot. There were 3 of us looking today, and we had a good time. We made sure the new fossil hunter, left with shark teeth. My haul for the outing: The new fossil hunter's haul for the outing:

Holidays in Charente Maritime France 2023.The Pointe du Chay with my friend Alexandre, (a real local expert!) to guide me first hunt in the pointe du Chay.

Location: Southern Nevada, USA ■weight is noticeably heavy for its size ■Very porus; sticks to tongue.

Hey TFF Members! Last Tuesday after work I was experiencing fossil withdrawals and needed to get my fossil fix! I didn't have a ton of time, but I took my camera to the creek and set out to find some fossils! I ended up finding some pretty incredible stuff. I documented some of what happens before getting to the creek as well. Hope you all enjoy it!

Just Curious what powder everyone uses for air abrasive work on fossil ammonites, I heard aluminium oxide is pretty bad for your health and is highly flammable and can explode or some thing, just curious if there's a safer powder to use than that.

I have been getting increasingly less active here and with fossils in general. A year ago I left the Gateway Science Museum to return to the Chico Creek Nature Center. I worked there as a naturalist and science educator a decade ago. I loved that job and it was a huge part of my life. It was so cool that I can say I trained an owl. Literally speaking lol I worked with very closely with a Western Screech Owl. It was awesome. I heard the CCNC was looking for a Director of Animal Care. I jumped at the opportunity to return. Working with wildlife is my true life passion along with my kiddos. I’ve spent the last year helping bring native species back to the center. We currently house more than 30 different species of critters and I’m insanely busy but so happy. Meanwhile, my kids are rocking life in the adult world. My daughter, who is only 20, is graduating from CSUC with two BA’s in the spring. Political Science and Criminology. She’ll be deciding between law school or grad school. Carter, who is 21, is steadily progressing toward his degree. He is going to be an evolutionary biologist and will study reptiles most likely. Both kids are volunteering at the center too. So basically we are all super busy, super happy and doing well. The super busy part is where the fossils come in. We simply don’t have time for fossil education work. It’s just not happening anytime soon and it’s not happening in the future. Knowing that we just can’t do the education work any longer, my kids had the talk with me. They do not see the fossils as any sort of heirloom or inheritance. If something unexpected happens to me, it’d be something unpleasant for them to deal with. We have an extremely open and honest relationship so I respect what they are saying. I get it. My dad left us various messes to clean up when he died and I don’t want to do that to my kids. It’s not an easy decision to me because I’ve enjoyed this immensely. I love sharks and I’ve really liked collecting fossils but it’s time to let it go. We educated a lot of people and oh boy did we give away a bunch of fossils. Close to 3,000 bags of shark teeth !! In the coming months, there will be some posts on TFF and some will be fossils being auctioned to support TFF and get some fossils to people who’ve supported us. There will also most definitely be some giveaways !! Im likely to hang on to Cow Shark, Squaliformes and some micro stuff for awhile but everything else is going to go. I am eternally grateful to all the folks here who’ve helped us over the years and been so supportive. It’s because of you that we were able to spread some fossil love and it’s because of you that we’ll be ending our fossil collecting days by giving back to say thank you !!!!!

If you are planning to go to Summerville, SC for your first time, and have been hoping to find Shark Teeth, please read this. My Advice: · I advise only going if you know someone with known locations, or otherwise plan to hire a company or a guide (I do not have someone to recommend). Finding teeth on your own is quite difficult. My hunt: I got lucky this time on a 3-day trip. After having visited Summerville years before with my son to great success, we went through over 25 spots (August 2023) with only two teeth found. We were discouraged. Luckily, we found one location that netted us the teeth shown as a last-minute discovery at the end of day 2. We returned on day 3 after morning rain. Our goal was to find a Megalodon tooth (even broken) of 3" or more, which we were successful!! If it wasn’t for that one spot, the trip would have been disastrous. Unfortunately, the spot that we found will soon have a structure over it so I cannot say this opportunity exists for the future. What didn’t work on my trip? · My known, secret spots didn’t have shark teeth this time. · I had researched fossil formation areas, inland tides, and elevation maps; yet the locations we visited didn’t have shark teeth. We found the right layers, but not teeth (even with low creek flows). What has changed in Summerville? I believe: · Inability to use tools is impactful (there is a law against it). · I believe the hurricane years ago exposed quite a bit of fossils, but since then the volume of fossils are not being exposed quickly. I should have realized there have been a lack of YouTube postings over the past few years. If you go to the Beach without a guide/company: · Going during the day, even at low tide, has too many tourists looking for fossils. We made this mistake. · Go first thing in the morning for better odds. · Go after a storm. · Find a location away from tourists. We are pleased with the results in the images below. I hope this information is useful. Thank you

I found a few different rocks and I'm curious what I have here.. one is a cluster of shell and even has like whole ones inside the rock.. and the other I believe is a ammolite.. I was in southeastern saskatchewan at a rock Pitt where I dig into the ground with a loader and I found these rocks!

Hi, my family stumbled across these (and hundreds of others like them) along a creek bank. Would love and appreciate some help identifying them.

It's been a couple of weeks but it's taken me this long to take all the photos of my fossil finds from my trip to Oklahoma with the Paleontological Society of Austin! Our yearly trek to find Silurian, Devonian and Ordovician finds (not much of that in Texas!) was a great success again, thanks to our OK friends! Since it's just over a 6 hour drive for me, I went up early on Friday to hit a couple of "non field trip" spots before our "real" field trip on Saturday and Sunday. I had heard about a Permian site that I was excited to check out. It's a weird barren moonscape in the middle of a field. It was a bit warm.....and the sun radiating up from the baked clay was....intense. Fortunately a cold front was on the way so I kept reminding myself that the 90's of this Friday would recede into memory. But yeah...it was hot. There were bone bits everywhere....everywhere! But they were pretty crunched up. I didn't find much more than a few not-well preserved vertebrae, some okay bone bits, a few nice little amphib teeth and a couple of quite nice unbroken orthocanthus teeth. Tiny tiny ones, because all the big ones break easily. While I didn't find a lot of quality stuff initially, I did haul out about 60lbs of matrix so I can look through at my leisure at home! I learned a valuable lesson though...take two smaller buckets rather than one large bucket. It's a LOT easier to haul out two 30 lbs instead of one big haul a quarter mile over rough terrain! A little amphibian tooth: EDIT:...I thought these were Amphib teeth, but apparently....they are Orthocanthus Shark coprolites! hahahhha They are 1/4 inch each What is most amazing about these fossils is the color of the preservation. Astounding reds, yellows and purples. The little Orthocanthus shark teeth that were mostly complete. The Permian "moonscape": I decided to hit one other site before I headed to Ada where we were all meeting. It was the Ordivician site that I found a lovely Oklahomacystis echinoderm last year. The cold front had moved in and the temperature dropped almost 20 degrees and was just LOVELY hunting! I didn't find any more Oklahomacystis and wasn't finding much except a few nice brachiopods, but then I saw a crinoid calyx piece upside down (all I saw was the edges but I recognized it as crinoid) picked it up and got a nice surprise!! Too bad it's not the whole thing and just one segment, but I'll take what I get! It's a beauty...the geometric patterning is amazing. It is a Pleurocystites echinoderm. It's 1 1/4 inch wide. Early on Saturday, the whole group goes to Yellow Bluff which is a huge area above a creek and up a hillside. It's a great site with a plethora of fauna. It is completely possible to spend an ENTIRE day there! But first we had to drive through the pasture and the cows! They were nice cows. Yellow Bluff - It is primarily Silurian with a cap of Devonian at the very top of the hill. It is Henryshouse formation (which I keep wanting to call Harryhousen.... hahahha - that's for any of you old school animation lovers out there) And not only were the fossils abundant, so were the Missouri Primroses! A few nice finds in the field- A Gastropod Platyceras, Crinoid cup - I think this might be Ollulocrinus? A pink Brachiopod! Here's that pink brach again: I found a couple of Trilos, nothing quite good (last year I found the best one!!) but I did find one large one which still has lots of matrix on it, an interesting half a one, split vertically, not horizontally and then some others not very well preserved. This is an odd bit of crinoid : not sure what it is: So aside from the above pics of the in situ pieces, my only other really good find was this brachiopod Dictyonella. It was originally thought to have a bryozoan growing on it, but turns out it is actually the pattern of the brachiopod! There was also this cool bryozoan which I thought was a horn coral when I picked it up, only realizing it was bryzoan as I photographed it! It's 1 1/2 inches in size! But I did bring home a bucket of matrix and am having fun going through it, so will post some of those at a later time. Oh, and there were scorpions out and about enjoying the cool weather too. Hopefully no scorps in my bucket of matrix..... if so, now they are Texas Scorps. So Sunday was Black Cat Mountain Day. If you are not familiar with the trilobites from Black Cat Mountain...you are in for a google treat. Of course, finding the rare trilobites is.....rare. But there are plenty of other amazing things to find at Bob's quarry! The Quarry is Devonian with Haragan and Bois D'Arc Formations. But the trilobites are of course, the favorite. While I love the rollers the best (not sure why, I just do) I actually found better "open" ones this time than rollers! All of these are about an inch long. Paciphacops sp. Kainops sp. and not sure what this one is...probably Kainops and a surprising find of a (sadly not complete, but more complete than the typical) Huntoniatonia huntonensis Usually you just find the pygidiums...they are ALL OVER THE PLACE and they get HUGE. The biggest pygidium I found was 2" x 2"...just the trilobutt! It would have been a monster trilo. But the brachiopods are almost as amazing as the trilos. My favorite is this Howollella (I think) covered in Beekite: This is a big silicified Anastrophia (1 inch) An interesting Meristella with some crystals Orthostrophia and a neat coral which I think is Syringaxon perhaps? And one of my favorites to find - straight shelled cephalopods. This by far the most intact one I found. They are usually only three or four chambers but can get to be almost an inch in diameter. This one is 5 inches long And finally , my other favorite find from Black Cat Mountain.....a beautiful bryozoan ring:

They're building a new highway and I found this where they had just dug up. Could this be a fossil or just an interesting stone created by nature. Hopefully you don't mind helping.

Hi gang. Just 72 hours away from my first real endurance run in years. Starting the thread now as is easier for me to share everything in "real time" rather than writing one big post. Will be hitting a new to me site in Indiana first, a brief stop in Virginia, hitting my olde home state of Pennsylvania for a few days, and will button it up with Mazon Creek. The scienceMobile is loaded down with gear and sampling supplies for both my hobbies and my job. More to follow...

I love the forum, and not sure I’ve been in this area before. I’m willing to donate one of my top three finds if it will help the forum. I have an Elephant Patella that I’m willing to donate. One of my favorite finds ever, but willing to donate just from the value I get from the forum. If I need to send somewhere, let me know and I’ll send it out. Rick

Hi everyone! My son was curious about fossils in India, since we are visiting to see family. All of our knowledge about palaeontology is limited to North America, so India is completely unknown for us. I am aware of some Indian dinosaurs thanks to Prehistoric Planet and a local museum, and dinosaur egg finds published in local newspapers, but nothing else. I am pretty sure that India was once covered by a sea at some point in time, so maybe there are shells and ammonite beds in the country? If anyone can let me know about anything palaeontology related or fossil related in India, it would be greatly appreciated!

There are road trips and then there are road trips. I've planned many a family vacation without a single mistake. Sometimes we hit a hitch if the plane gets rerouted due to weather or something. As much as I love Chicago, I avoid it not because strange things happen when we get too close. (I'm a little concerned about what tomorrow may bring as we pass close by.) But, it was never due to my poor planning. The last two weeks have been crazy! I had it all planned out around being in the Black Hills on Monday and Tuesday of this week. Five days out from approximately Philadelphia, five days in South Dakota, and five days home with a day to sleep off the trip before Rick went back to work. I checked the itinerary twice. I asked my hubby, Rick, to double check it. We hit the road. The first few days went as planned. If this is Saturday, this must be Ohio kind of things. We spent the night in a castle and fossil hunted at a dam spillway in Ohio. We looked for more fossils along a waterfall in Indiana. We spent the night in a wacky, artic themed hotel room in Illinois. We visited a cave in Minnesota and looked for more fossils. We camped out in Buffalo Gap National Grasslands and looked for gemstones. It was all going swimmingly. The first goof was missing lodging for a night in South Dakota. No biggie. we'll just find a place for the night, although if I had figured it out, I would have opted to sleep under the stars in the free campground at the national park for an extra day. At least we had a nice shower. It also gave us extra time to admire the geology of Spearfish Canyon, complete with a run down the natural waterslide at "Devil's Bathtub." Two days later, we got to the field station for our Hell Creek dinosaur hunt, the whole reason for the trip. We got there 15 minutes early… and waited. Eventually we realized that people should be there by now and checked the reservations. It wasn’t Monday and Tuesday, it was Tuesday and Wednesday. Oops. This means that everything for the rest of the trip is now off by a day and the lodging for this leg of the trip dries up a night earlier than we need it. We decided to camp out in the Spearfish municipal campground the last night in SD. I rested a continuing migraine and Rick sat down to Google Maps and Expedia to figure out the rest of the trip. The Hell Creek Hunt was freaking awesome and will get its own trip report, but the highlights included unearthing a big fossil log along wit a triceratops tooth, a champsasaurus tooth, a 66-million-year-old turtle toe bone, and a rather large log that will probably take years to fully excavate. The next big thing on the agenda was hunting with a fellow fossil buff I’d met on The Fossil Forum. He lives on the Iowa/ Minnesota border. Somehow, when was copying and pasting Google maps told me that I needed to go to Indiana, not Minnesota. Well, that puts a monkey wrench in things! We rerouted everything and I sent my fossil friend a message about the change in plans. Then I forgot to hit send. I wondered for two days why he did not reply. Finally he asked if I was still coming. I said yes, we’d be out his way tomorrow; that we were on our way to DesMoines, a few hours away. Well, It IS a few hours away, but we were already EAST of him and had no buffer time before Rick had to be back to work on August 1st. So, this is the one thing we just had to skip. BOO! Crossing my fingers for our next trip west, @minnbuckeye SO, now we are playing the next few days by ear as we hop from DesMoines to somewhere to Cleveland and then home. Do I dare to try Mazon Creek in the heat of summer with a million ticks? Brave my Chicago jinx? Find crazy roadside attractions and just stop as we see signs? Only tomorrow will tell. Regardless, we’re having a ball. The roof rack on our minivan is loaded with fossils and pretty rocks. We got loads of sunshine. We have stories to tell. It’s all good.

I am visiting the area for the next couple days. What are the best areas to find shark teeth? I have access to a private beach in the Western run area which is right up the road from Calvert Cliffs. I have limited time so I want to make sure I hit the right spots over the next couple of days. I’m very new at this and don’t really know what I’m doing. Any assistance would be greatly appreciate it. Signed hopeless

Hi! I'm posting a bunch of finds which I keep in my 'unidentified/concretions' pile from Monmouth NJ. Can anyone help identify if these are concretions or something else? Will keep posting finds here if there's interest and if it proves helpful to others. See some ? finds below!

My 15-year-old daughter and I dove Venice, FLA, on the 28 and 29 of March, and here’s our 2 day haul (6 dives). We had a great time. Some of the dugong ribs have possible bite marks as well. Doing it again in September!

Heading to South Carolina, Summerville area for 3 days next week to search for shark teeth and fossils with my 19 year old son. August 2nd - 4th. Anyone interested in meeting up, let me know. I have been there once before years ago, and have been trying to best prepare as it seems the results haven't been so great (reading posts online). Last time we went we had lots of rain and water levels were prohibitive. I read the rules of no tools, which I presume means no sifting. Does anyone know if the rules are only for Summerville itself or surrounding areas too? I know no one wants to give up any spots, but if there are any tips/considerations, please let me know. Thank you