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A 280 million year old fossil that purportedly showed early reptile development and supposedly showing rare soft tissue preservation has been shown to be paint over a carved skeleton..... Even museums can be fooled I guess. The should have posted it here in the us it real section first I guess! https://phys.org/news/2024-02-paleontological-analysis-renowned-fossil-thought.html

So I've just realized the "alligator skull" fossil my parents got me for Christmas last year is for sure a fake. I'm embarassed I didn't notice until trying to ID the species, the real mosasaur teeth threw me off. My parents really went all out spending a couple hundred dollars on this thing, it's the most expensive gift I've ever recieved. So I'm pretty upset they got scammed out of that much money. I imagine it's been too long to demand a refund, but is there anything I can do about this? Was this even legal? The place that sold it to us is an actual shop, not some shady pop-up vendor. I apologize if this isn't the correct place to ask my question, let me know if it's not appropriate.

Location: SE Portage County, Central Wisconsin, USA. Geology: South Western advance of Green Bay Glacial Lobe. Former Glacial Lake Oshkosh. Niagara Escarpment Debris. My land. Ordovician onward. I am still shaking. Went on first walk of the year in my fields. Found these, along with a few other fossils. Have never found any teeth, other than modern ones here before. My questions are: What are they? Look like shark to me. What era, species? Is this a significant find for my location? These look way too clean compared to my other fossil finds here. Is someone messing with me? Note that I only saw the upper ½” tip of the larger one sticking out of the ground. The smaller one had the base sticking out a little. Ground is still frozen here after about 1-2” on the surface. I used the screwdriver I had brought along to dig the larger one out. Thank you.

Hello everyone, this is my first post on the website though I've browsed many threads for useful information. I've been collecting fossils for years but only recently got into dinosaur fossils. Anyway, I bought this supposed Thescelosaurus dorsal vertebrae from a reputable shop that I've been a patron at for years. Everything until this that I have bought from there has been authentic, so when I wanted to buy a nicely preserved vertebrae as a center piece for my display, I didn't look this over enough before I bought it, having sort of trusted this store. Took a little look at it, it was packed for me and I was out the door. Got busy with work, didn't even take it out of the box for a week. When I finally did, it felt really light, lighter than fragmented dino bone fossils I have only half it's size, and when I tapped it, the vibration sort of sustained. Obviously shouldn't happen with a rock. Seen paint brush marks, which was the red flag that got me to do the following because who would paint an authentic fossil? Curiosity was killing me, so I decided to make a small break in it to see what the inside of the bone looked like, because seeing the middle would make it more obvious, and I was absolutely floored to find metal wire holding it together. Broke a few more pieces off, more wire. Nothing porous that would indicate it was even pieced together as parts of bone with fill in parts on or around it or inbetween the pieces, it seems to be completely fake. So long story short, seems I was duped. I'm going to mess with it some more today and see if there is ANY bone at all in this supposed vertebrae. "All sales final" with the store. A young idiot with more money than knowledge. (It wasn't cheap) I'll have to do a lot more research and be much more careful when I buy, and sort of made me mistrust any specimen I haven't surface collected myself. Just thought I'd share and ask if anyone has seen anything like this.

I found this newspaper article linked to the Wikipedia page about the Tully Monster. A fascinating tale about the discovery of extant Tully Monsters, dangerous creatures that like to dance and share milk. Enjoy. https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1499&dat=19680618&id=jRkqAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ESgEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5277,5081896

Is This a Giant Seahorse Fossil? Alex Kasp, Snopes, September 15, 2017 http://www.snopes.com/giant-fossil-seahorse/ http://www.snopes.com/category/facts/photos/ Also, it seems implausible that a person would find such a fossils on a corestone. A paper about real fossil seahorse can found in: Teske, P.R. and Beheregaray, L.B., 2009. Evolution of seahorses' upright posture was linked to Oligocene expansion of seagrass habitats. Biology letters, p.rsbl20090152. (Open Access) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781918/ Yours, Paul H.

Hey guys! If you have bids on hadrosaur eggs currently being sold on our favorite auction site STRONGLY RECONSIDER your purchase... There are several of them being auctioned right now from two different sellers. I bought one and received it on Monday. I was pretty suspicious from the get go, but my curiosity got the better of me. It came from Malaysia (red flag), was packaged well, and came quickly. It looked nice, but a little sketchy. Texture wasn't great. Already I decided I wanted to return it...but I also needed to know if it was really a hoax. That's when I decided to take a knife and scrape away the matrix from the egg for a few hours (I don't have any prep tools). Eventually my knife plunged through a hole. Within the hole I could see there was a small space between the base of the egg and matrix. At this point I decided, what the heck, and grabbed a nail and a hammer. I hammered away until eventually the matrix came off in chunks. One chunk came away with a piece of egg shell. Under the egg shell there were large amounts of glue. It was quite obvious at this point that this was just a piece of junk... With that said, don't make my mistake. I'm sure most people on here are wiser than I am, but the eggs looked reasonable, and the guy offered a full return. Maybe if I hadn't hammered at it I could have gotten my money back, but I had to know. At least I may save other people from getting scammed . Kind regards, Lauren