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Hello all. I am posting a link to a calendar I created for 2023. It showcases twelve different late Paleozoic gastropods I have recovered over the past three years in Armstrong County, Pennsylvania. Eleven of them are from the Pine Creek limestone, and one other comes from the Brush Creek limestone. Each month features a different gastropod, photographed after coating it using ammonium chloride vapor, using an iPhone to capture photos through a microscope lens. The cover photo showcases all twelve, and the images for each month typically showcase an additional view at a much larger size. While this is a color print calendar, all the content throughout is black & white. If you enjoy natural color photos of fossils, you might skip this. I am selling this calendar without profit to me. I am still waiting to receive my copy, and I can follow up on print quality when I get mine. Lulu says this is 100 lb paper, but I'm still determining what to expect. Please PM me for purchase information.

I joined with the hopes that someone here may know more about Natlandite fossil stone. My wife inherited a polished three piece set and unfortunately there is very little information available about it online. Within the two articles I could find we have learned that "it was first discovered in 1954 in Los Angeles, Ca. by geologist Manley L. Natland, during a small dig he made in his offices backyard. He was given a rock brought up during soil testing for an annex to the old Atlantic Richfield Building at 6th and Flower streets. Natland estimated the fossil stone to be between 5 to 7 million years old and said that it was likely formed when an earthquake dislodged a great mass of sludge from the Los Feliz area (then the seashore) and moved it to the Arco site, where it solidified. He had it cut and polished, revealing shells of bivalves, gastropods and coral in a marble like material, but thought no more about it until 1969, after he had retired from Atlantic Richfield, now Arco. That year, he asked to examine the excavation site where the building and it's annex were being torn down to make way for Arco towers, now known as City National Plaza. What he found was an entire bed of the fossil stone that he had seen years earlier. Natland arranged to have 500 tons of it hauled away and eventually had the rock cut and shaped into tables and statuary. The rock is about as hard as quartz and it contains about 350 different species. It was also named the official gemstone of Los Angeles in 1981." I have spoken with a paleontologist here at our local museum of natural history and he stated that he believes that some record of the stones should be preserved in a museum, if that has not already happened. He gave me the contact information of a paleontologist at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History and suggested that I contact them, as they would be the most appropriate place to store such fossils. They are absolutely beautiful pieces and any info or suggestions will be greatly appreciated! Thank you so much for taking time to read my post. Brandon Massey

Yesterday I was able to get out to Onondaga County in central NY. While I was there I got a chance to do some fossil hunting at two locations. The first was in Pompey Center, NY near Pratt’s Falls. The second location was a creek in Delphi Falls. The rock at both of these locations was the Skaneateles formation. I was able to get into a different formation at the second spot that was more shaly and had better preservation. This was my first time fossil hunting in the middle Devonian and I was amazed with the number of bivalves I found. (I’ve never found one in the lower Devonian near me). As well as bivalves I was able to find a few very well preserved gastropods, some brachiopods, a bunch of ostracods, and what I believe is a partial phyllocarid carapace.

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

Cephalopods Bivalves Brachiopods Gastropods Coral(wearing a sponge hat) Geodized sponge Geode

In the summer of 2020 jpc and I had planned to get together in Eastern Wyoming to collect. That trip was unfortunately aborted by the coronavirus outbreak that year. This year, that conversation resumed and a new plan for a three day excursion in June emerged. I decided to make it a two week long car trip, driving all the way from New York, a longer car trip than any I've made in the past 25 years. That would afford me the opportunity to stop at some other sites on the way there and back, plus see some family. Another big reason for driving was an opportunity to visit and collect at the Big Cedar Ridge Cretaceous plant site. Having the car would afford me the opportunity to bring the necessary tools and be able to transport the fragile specimens safely. The rising price of gasoline certainly had an impact, and my plan was to cut costs as much as possible wherever I could. Part of that plan was camping 10 nights I departed the suburbs of New York City on Saturday, June 11th. That evening I arrived at Sturgis, MI, just off interstate 80. Spent the night in a motel and headed off the next day, driving through the heart of Chicago enshrouded in mist. It was my very first time driving through that city. I headed north and in the middle of the day arrived at my cousin's place in Madison, WI. He had moved there from Manhattan five years ago to teach music at the University of Wisconsin. This was my first time visiting him there, my first time in Wisconsin, actually. He took me on a lovely tour of the school and the town. I spent the night and was on my way again just before noon the next day. It rained off and on as I drove through Western Wisconsin and crossed the Mississippi into Dubuque, Iowa. From there it was a short drive to my first fossil stop- at Graf. This Upper Ordovician site in Maquoketa Formation is famous for its nautiloid death assemblage. I have found quite a few nautiloids over the course of my collecting career, but I've never encountered a site where they are thoroughly dominant. There was a layer of limestone, a few feet thick that was in many places just packed with their shells.

Hopefully I'm not breaking any rules here posting a link. I spent my weekend finally putting my catalog into a proper database, and creating a user interface for it. I used to use Google Sheets, which is pretty great. If I wanted to, I could use them as the source of data, but I decided to create a proper MYSQL database so I can keep relationships across tables, such as the stratigraphy of particular find locations. I have many more improvements coming for it, but it is at least functional right now. Everything from CG-0001 to CG-0161 is from the Glenshaw Formation, Conemaugh Group. https://fossil.15656.com/catalog/ I also maintain a thread with individual photos here, just not everything: https://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/94495-pennsylvanian-fossils-from-the-glenshaw-formation/

A couple of finds at Mimico Creek (gastropods, ) and Lake Ontario (bryozoans? coral colony?) ... Thanks for any assistance! Camille

Hello, I have recently found some gastropods in a village of Teruel, East of Spain. They are from Albian Cretaceous. Visiting the local museum has not solved my doubts about their identification, they had some gastropods as mine, but, to my unexperienced eyes, there were identical specimens under different labels: Paraglauconia picteti, Cardium Voltzi, Glauconia lujani, Orthostoma verneuilli, Turritella vidalina and Cassiope luxani. I am sure it is not Cardium Voltzi, as it is a bivalve, I have doubts about Glauconia lujani and Cassiope luxani being synonims, and I haven´t been able to find anything about Turritella vidalina or Orthostoma verneuili. I have separated them in 4 groups according to their ornamentation, I hope someone can identify them: Ruler is in centimetres and inches. 1st group, two rows of lumps per whorl: From left to right, 1A, 5A, 2C. 2nd group, two spiral ribs per whorl: 8B. 3rd group, a spiral rib and a row of lumps per whorl: From left to right, 4D, 3B, 4C. 4th group, smooth surface: From left to right, 5D, 6D, 8D. Thanks in advance for your help!

Hello again, I found these tiny specimens today, and I'm not quite sure what they are. If I had to guess, I'd say the spiral shelled creature is Amphiscapha and the more clamish one looks a bit like Kozlowskia without the little side wings. No idea what the last one is. As always, all help is greatly appreciated. Also, sorry about the bad pics, these are quite small specimens.

My parents were gifted this piece years ago and now that is has passed to me, I was curious to find out details. I see gastropods and a shell. The piece is almost a foot long with a bright green felt attachment on the back. Unsure if they received it in Australia or in America. Any other information or feedback is greatly appreciated.

They are from Isla Margarita, Venezuela. Anyone know what these are?

These came with only vague data: Sahara Desert, Morocco. They are apparently three species of Cerithioidea. A similarly preserved gastropod (a stromboid) with a carnelian shell that I came across had good data: (late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian), western Sahara Desert, Dakhia Region, Assa, Morrocco). They have fine white silica sand with silica cement infill and attached, making cleaning very difficult. Any help would be appreciated.

I found several kinds of gastropods and two other uknown fossiles in the Kalvsjøen formation, late Ordovivcian at Hadeland in the Oslo field, which I like to share. The limestones in this formation are called 'the Gastropod limestones'. Can anyone please help ID some of these fossils. I guess some of the gastropods cannot be ID-ed, but I hope some of them can be at some level and the other unknown animals. Any help are appreciated. The first rock (the first 3 pictures) has one strange fossile (to the left) and several small gastropods, some very small, which I could only see by taking several pictures from different angles and by using different light sources: Enlarged left side: Picture 3, the right side enlarged: The next, rock no. 2, has a nice shape of the cross-section of a gastropod with 5 levels or spirals: It also has a strange very small fossil, near my finger. Picture 4 Pict. 5 Pic. 6-8, enlaged small fossile: Rock 3, picture 9, another gastropod in cross section, size is about 2 cm broad: Rock 4-5, picture 10-11, two very small and nice gastropods, which I did see only after I enlaged a picture I took of the rock with a microscope:

Anybody know what these are?

Anyone know what this is?

Found near Melbourne, Florida. Does anybody know the Genus or Species of this Shell?

The lower Hunter Valley is underlain predominantly by Permian strata, and encompasses the region around Newcastle, NSW, Australia. It is here that a diverse fossil macrofauna can be found at a disused quarry standing on private property. Mulbring quarry is characterised by excellent exposure of the Permian strata with macrofauna dominated by abundant bryozoans and brachiopods, associated with bivalves, gastropods, and echinoderms. With the weather typically windy this time of year it was no surprise when we hit the black top with a strong westerly wind blowing, fortunately the sun was shinning. The plan was for my family to meet up with my retired geology teacher friend and his wife at the gate to the property. Two weeks earlier I received access permission from the property owner and we met my friends at the gate and headed up the track. Stepping out of the car upon arrival at the quarry our excitement peaked quickly with fossils bearing rock lying all around us. It didn't take long for my friend Col to find a lovely Bryozoan, my find with a specimen of fossil debris, including fragmented gastropods, isolated echinoderm ossicles and small brachiopods (pictured Mulbring 001) followed quickly after. We spent the next couple of hours fossicking around, then stopped for a well prepared picnic in the Australian bush. A few more hours of fossicking revealed the beautiful Bryozoan also pictured (Mulbring 002). These fossil beds also contain a particularly high abundance of fenestellid bryozoans and brachiopods (spiriferides and productoids), with bivalve molluscs the next most abundant. Minor groups include gastropods, rostroconchs, corals, trilobites and several types of echinoderms. Sadly, the trilobites and intact echinoderms evaded our gaze. I've already began my visit to one of the State's Jurassic sites early next year! Cheers Adelotus

I was so disapointed with the last concretion I started that I put it aside and started working on making some short fossil videos to put onto you tube. Here is one of many. My plan is to publish 2 each week. Enjoy RB https://youtu.be/pcTBB-QRKGw

Hello everyone. I offer interesting gastropods with calcite crystals - perhaps someone will be interested I have a lot of them. Pseudomorphoses of calcite after gastropod shells of the genus Nerinea from Upper Jurassic limestones of the Oxfordian stage (Izyum Formation J2-3iz); 163,5 mln years. Ukraine, Donetsk region. I'm interested in everything - I invite you to private messages Have a nice day VID_20220122_135535.mp4 VID_20220122_135732.mp4

I got the chance to go to the Oxford Clay twice over the last few days. I'm always looking for echinoderms at this site, and I prefer this one in winter when the vegetation has died back and I can spot lots of small, delicate detail. These are some if my favourite finds from the last few days.

I believe I got the material from someone on here years ago and I get a chance to go through some from time to time. This is Alafia River stuff from Lithia Florida. It had a note of Oligocene/Miocene for age. One of them is kind of hard to see but right beside the other and I suspect these are internal molds in a piece of coprolite.

Hello everyone. I offer interesting gastropods from Neogene - perhaps someone will be interested I have a lot of them. They are found in the Khmelnitsky region of Ukraine; the exact age could not be determined. I'm interested in everything - I invite you to private messages Have a nice day

Hi ! So I went on a walk in some marls in Lozère, France. Usually, I find some amonites and belemnites but this time I decided to change from my usual spot and searched around. I found an isolated marl which is a couple of kilometers away from the main marls which are known to be from the Toarcian. In the whole region (région des grands causses), marls can be either from Toarcian or Pliensbachian according to french wikipedia (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marne_(géologie) ). Anyway in this new marl, I didn't find the same fossils as usual, at all. I found mainly gastropods, very small bivalves as well as some rare cases of amonites (which are abundant on the contrary on the other spot). So I was wondering what they were. I believe there are at least two different species in my findings : those on the upper lines look like some pictures of Amphitrochus pictures I found on this forum and on the net. On the second line are what I believe is a second species I didn't really manage to find similar thing on this forum. Under it I put the best looking very small bivalve I found in the very same marl. Do you know what could those be ? I hope it interests you ! Alice

Hello everyone. Proposing a trade of NSR miscellaneous stuff for trade for ammonites. I have mosy verts, gastropods, calcite covered gastropods, calcite covered clams, couplebfish verts, one more tylosaurus tooth, sharks teeth, etc.. Tell me what you want and I'll see if I have it.