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Hello 👋 I am so happy to have found this forum! I have already gleaned some excellent I formation and look forward to more. I am an avid researcher. If my interest in something, in ANYTHING is piqued, I have to KNOW all there is to know about that particular subject. A blessing and a curse. My curiosity is rarely, if ever, fully satisfied. I have been told by many, many experts that several of the things I have been finding recently are absolutely NOT in Southeast Kentucky amd I MUST be mistaken. Ummm... I live in Southeast Kentucky and most (99%) of what I have found in the past several months has been from an area within 10 miles of my home. So, what am I missing? Only so much can be explained through the occasional drop or glacial deposits. Just in the past 24 hours I have found over 30 small geodes! All between 1 inch and 4 inches in diameter. All within 30 yards of each other. NOT in or near water. Also found were bits of agate, small agate nodules, crinoids, crinoid crusted geodes, loads of Rugose (horn) coral, etc...

OK so I'm very new to basically everything about rocks and fossils. And my questions might seem ridiculous to some and I'm sorry. OK are all rocks that have crystal inside geodes? I know what round cauliflower looking geodes are. But are there untraditional ones that aren't round. And I'm find huge huge coral fossils and some other that are swirly . They all seem to have quartz inside . I guess I'm wondering are they all crystal inside and what's the best way to see without using acid and ruining the fossil itself. Cut them? I'll attached a few pics and more tom when i goto the creek . Some are still connected to the flat rock bottom of the creek.

Sparkly Rock in Museum Turns Out to Be 60-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Egg In a remarkable find, a lustrous mineral formed inside a fossilized titanosaur egg. Gizmodo, Natural History Museum of London The first known dinosaur egg? A new discovery from the Museum's collection Josh Davis, Natural History Museum of London. Yours, Paul H.

This was from a trip quite a few years ago to collect crinoids and geodes. Found this in shallow area of the river. Any ideas? thanks!

I found these several geodized Mississippian marine fossils in southern Indiana. They may not all be hollow with quartz crystals inside, but many are. The fossils usually balloon in size in the geode-forming process. Here's 2 sides of a crinoid calyx...

We were geode hunting near Mississippi river at Illinois Iowa border. Found lots of nice yet small geodes & this. It looks like a vertebrae bone? Or some kind of bone. Was at the same level of the rock bed as the geodes. I try to show measurements in pics. Its skinnier on one end than the other & "slopes" a little? Any ideas? Could it be a dinosaur bone?

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

One of the rock clubs I belong to decided to go on a geode hunt near Keokuk, Iowa. Our private hunting area was not accessible due to flash flooding that previous evening, so we went to another dig site. A good 20 inches of goopy muck unfortunately overlayed the rock that contained the geodes. So I was hot and exhausted by the time bedrock was found. For fear of heat exhaustion, I quit at about 3/4ths of a bucket full. I will take these to the children's fossil pit for the kids to "find". Here is what the collecting site looked like., a split slab showing some geodes surrounded by MUD! With geodes in hand, or at least in the back of my truck, off I went to collect some Burlington Limestone that contained fish teeth. Permission was granted from a quarry known to expose the layer needed. Once the correct "pile" was located, I quickly put about 50 pounds of matrix containing the teeth in with the geodes. This matrix will painstakingly be broken down this winter in order to extract the teeth. Here is some of the material collected showing how rich the rock is in fish pieces. All of the black specks are fish remnants. While loading the truck, mother nature was beginning to expose a mayfly hatch. No mayflies were present when I arrived, but a short time later, the hatch began. I had multiple routes available to take home and decided on one that took me through some Pennsylvanian strata. This would be new territory and hopefully interesting material for me to explore. An old mining operation near Oskaloosa, Iowa was converted into the Russell Wildlife Refuge. There are 5 mine pits on the property exposing the mississippian Pella Formation. I chose this site because it contains blastoids. Unfortunately, the blastoids evaded me. But plenty of new fossils were found!!!!!!!! Brachiopods were the predominant fossil found, but some bivalves, crinoids, gastropods, and bryozoans showed up. Brachiopod ID was difficult due to the lack of much information. I tried my best and am open to changing the identity of anything labeled or adding a name to the unknowns. The rugosa coral has a beautiful appearance and is know for the protrusions on its surface. Most fossils found needed very little cleaning and are presented as shown like these corals. All fossils found are on the small side, That is why this burrow surprised me. I wonder what "large" animal existed in this environment. I have always had an affinity for epibionts. And they were plentiful here! As mentioned earlier, this site is known for blastoids. But the other unique feature is the presence of crinoid stems with bryozoan epibionts. This was a fun spot to hunt and recommend it for a great variety of Pennsylvanian fossils!!! Mike

Hi guys! I am looking for new areas to hunt for rocks and fossils around the KC area. I have been to the Blue river, Kansas river, Cedar creek, Tuttle creek, Perry Lake, Mill creek, and abandoned quarry areas. Anyone have any general locations of where I can find some stuff? I am an avid hunter for all sorts of fossils and rocks (rockhounding is my favorite past time)! I've had the most luck at the Kansas river and Perry lake. Some of my finds include cow skulls, cone coral, shells, agates, vertebrae, and a bunch of druzy quartz geodes and chalcedony. I have included pics of some of my finds - the petrified wood was sanded down and polished up to 3000 grit. Any suggestions are GREATLY appreciated!!!!! Much love KC!

I went out with Paleo Cris from YouTube (and the Fossil Forum! @Cris ) and we found some killer fossilized coral geodes in South Georgia. It was so much fun. The riverbed was basically just coral instead of rocks. I’d never seen anything like it. Video here: https://youtu.be/J9h4twIG_d4

Has anyone ever found any geodes while out along the Niagara river?

I believe this is a large geode or vug? Do I open it, or not? Any suggestions??

I think this is a geode, but it's pretty big. Can anyone tell me if it is, or whst it is? Please. I received it from a friend, I believe they found it in Montana, but I can't say for sure.

Last fall a buddy and I attended the annual Geodefest in Hamilton Illinois. Its a 3 day festival to collect and crack open the famous Keokuk geodes. The organizers hold half day hunts at various private and public locations to collect geodes. I have gone for 3 years now and its always a great time. And I always come home with buckets of geodes, big and small. My buddy and I had been talking about setting up a time to go through and crack our geodes but never found the time. Well last weekend I pulled out my soil pipe cutter and rigged it for a night of cracking! I loaded my truck with my buckets of rocks and my cutter and met over at my buddy's house. We spent 5 hours cracking over 4 five gallon buckets of geodes. His daughter also joined in the fun of the cracking! You never know what you are going to find in these rocks which is the fun. Here's highlights of the night. Enjoy!

Yesterday morning my cousin Matt picked me up at my in-laws in Alpine, UT at 6:30 am and we travelled down to U-Dig south of Delta to dig for Cambrian trilobites and other marine life. It was a three hour drive and we came into the quarry at the perfect time. Robin (Rob), the helper on site brought out some very neat finds including an ammonite hash, ammonite, and an Asaphiscus wheeleri with a green tint to it. Rob guided us to a spot that had been ripped up the previous day by their onsite bulldozer. There were large slabs of shale everywhere for the splitting and we where the only ones out there besides another early riser who's name also happened to be Matt. I'll call him M2 (Matt the second). To my utter shame and disappointment I did not take any pictures of us or the quarry we where digging in because I was having so much fun splitting shale open and going through large slabs of shale as fast as I could. My arms and hands are very sore today but it was worth every second. Towards the end of the day Rob came over and let us split some shale in their 15 foot layer which is famous for containing large Asaphiscus wheeleri. These trilobites are much harder to find than the ever so common Elrathia kingi and the layer is usually off limits to the public. Within about an hour at the 15 foot layer I pulled out 3 complete A. wheeleri along with 3 large A. wheeleri molts and some E. kingi's. There were molts everywhere. It was a really good day and despite getting very sunburned I walked away with a large bucket of about 25-30 complete trilobite molts and complete trilobite remains. Unfortunately because I flew out to Utah I was only able to bring home about 5 nice ones from the trip. The rest are in the bucket and shall just have to wait for when I'll return to reclaim them. I might move out to Utah soon so hopefully they won't be in my parent-in-law's garage for to much longer. Rob showing off a large and nearly complete A. wheeleri. I swapped M2 a ryolite nodule from a nearby location for some shark teeth. He was more than happy to do the swap and Rob used the onsite rock saw to slice the nodule in half revealing the inner crystals. The bucket full of trilobites (Asaphiscus and Elrathia) in my in-laws garage. The other half of the nodule. Large E. kingi that needs some more polishing. I'm not certain that this is an Elrathia nor is it an Asaphiscus. The pygidium on an Elrathia is much wider. There's a slight chance that this could be an Alokistocare because a Bolaspidella's axial lobe would be much thicker. I would be happy if this was a Alokistocare because they are very rare. Regardless of the species this appears to be a molt. To bad it's not the real deal but I still like it and Rob did a good job at prepping it out of the shale. Rob puts mineral oil on the tops of the trilobites to give them a dark black coating. @Fossildude19 please call in the trilobite experts to assist in the identification of this one. It could be a compressed Elrathia but I'm not certain. This is a large Asaphiscus I found a few years ago and it has a greenish hue. About 6 diggers went through U-Dig that day and I found the largest Elrathia kingi. Doesn't that merit some kind of free dinner or gift card? ;-) Large Elrathia kingi. Another decent sized Elrathia. Rob showing off his green Asaphiscus from his own personal dig from last week. M2 showing off some topaz on a piece of ryolite. Rob gave me a little baggy to place my large Elrathia in and it had this cool info sheet in it. I'm very impressed at the way U-Dig has gone above and beyond to get everyone in the family involved in the thrill of paleontology and geology. Rob showing off a compressed ammonite he found a few weeks ago. I absolutely love the color on this rare (for Utah) fossil. The entrance to U-Dig. Really wish I would have taken a before and after photo of the quarry because we tore up so much shale that day. Here's a nice multi-plate of two Elrathias. One is a real specimen the other the molt. Perhaps the real specimen was buried shortly after it shed it's exoskeleton. I ordered some Riker cases a few weeks ago and was pleasantly surprised to see them at my door step upon arriving home from Utah today. Here's some of my nicer finds from U-Dig in a smaller Riker case.

I have an amazing shallow creek I have recently found , I think I have found shark teeth , geodes and some sort of fossilized bone, oh and even a fossilized crab! Please help me identify what kind of shark.

This was an 8 inch rattler that when I opened it to my amazement ther was some type of fossil stuck in it. Seems to me to be a good sized piece of petrified wood. But as old as these are is that even possible? The geode is the typical round sperelke the many others I have opened, but I found this in there stuck in the crystals! I am curious if this adds much value to it or is it fairly common and this just happens to be the first one I have found like this. Most of the smaller rattlers I open are puffed fossilized clams of some type, the larger ones are generally speres. It just seemd odd and really kewl to find such a unique specimen. But any thoughts on how common this is or how valuable it could be would be great. I am an amature rock hound, but know a bit on gems from studying gemology for a few years. I just got a fairly large claim for herk mining here where I live. The tennessee and keokuks I purchase online and the kids and I have fun opening them I just got the claim yesterday for herks and have already mined a ton of druzy stones and nice smaller herks.If the geode sounds remotely interesting I can certainly post a couple pics of it to share or help any of you help me out with it. I appreciate any insight on any of this, thanks Kerry.