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Hey everyone, I'll be in central Idaho (near Stanley) during the week of August 21 to see the eclipse, and it would be great to get some fossil-hunting in while I'm there. Does anybody know any good spots within a day's drive of central Idaho? I've read a little bit about Clarkia and the fossil bowl to the north. Has anybody hunted there? How was it? Thanks!

I peer into a small geode at 80x to look at what look like small blooms of crystals covering bulbous blue crystal mounds. Originally I wanted to see why the geode had white crystal patches on one side and the top side had darker spots. First I see that the "blooms" are actually super small stones that look to be growing their own crystals. I had to look further, I wasn't sure if the geode was opened when I chipped it free from the breccia or if had been open while it was encased. The crystallization was perfectly clean, so I surmise it was. Either way, how in the world does a geode crystallize and then later adopt a speckling of microscopic stones? So, I'm looking over the surface and there is this anomaly. does not match any of the features inside the geode. I look closer and it appears to have, internal organs, segmented legs, and antennae. Could this really be some type of shrimp? Or similar crustacean? I'm really curious to hear what you all think. Hopefully the images suffice, I have a biological microscope so it is not the best at 3D. Posterior Head/Antennae I know I've been looking at a screen all day, but this sure looks like a segmented/armored leg. And, I'm spent

I will be in Idaho Falls in August, what are some good spots for fossils within an hour or so?

I apologize that this is just one photo taken by my phone, but that is all I have to use at the moment. This fossil (about 6 cm long) is from the middle Cambrian Spence Shale of Oneida Narrows, Idaho. I am leaning towards a sponge? Does anyone have any idea what this is? Thanks for the help!

Hello, I am a student at Centralia Community College working on an identification / analysis of fossils from the Clarkia Formation. I was wondering if anyone here has worked on this formation? If so, do you have any advice on how to properly set the sediment they are in to limit breakage/crumbling? Thank you! ~ AQM

I am new here so I am sorry if I am doing anything wrong. I was in an area with sea fossils it's a bit of an unknown area and I found this. it is fairly brittle and fell apart even after I gently picked it up and I am not sure what to make of it I am hoping somebody can tell me if it is a fossil or just a rock extra photos

Tammy and I left South Florida yesterday and arrived in Spokane, WA after a short stopover in Las Vegas. Didn't win any money in any of the hundreds of slot machines in the Las Vegas airport but then it is significantly more difficult to win when you don't sit down and pour your hard earned money into the gaping maws of these one armed bandits. We drove from Spokane up to an area in the northern panhandle of Idaho near Lake Pend Oreille to a small town (population 530) called Clark Fork. We settled into the Clark Fork Lodge and had a surprisingly fancy meal at a quirky little place called the Squeeze Inn. I had not suspected I could get a really tasty IPA and a dish of gnocci gorgonzola in such a small rural setting but it was a truly welcome surprise after a long day of traveling. This morning we headed a few minutes out of town to a locality I found in my Rockhounding Idaho book. Someone took the time to transcribe all of the 99 sites listed there and make a Google Maps map out of it which can be found here: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1yS2FsEzCIFPU2_G1Pr5SH3oN9DY&ll=45.56234707000023%2C-114.16501500000004&z=6 We were at site 8A (48.15076, -116.15902) in this book which listed fossil stromatolites in a roadcut just out of town. With the help of Tammy's iPad we easily navigated to this site and spotted the roadcut and got out to have a look. There was lots of rusty brownish rocks on the talus slope of this cut as described in the book's description of the site. We could easily see the outcrop at the top of the hill from which these broken chunks of rock were sliding down to the road level. We scanned the rocks for the distinctive rusty squiggly pattern described in the book (which said these were quite common here). Try as we may we could not find anything matching the stromatolite description in the text. We did see evidence of extremely ancient shorelines with rippled and cracked muddy sediments frozen into place hundreds of millions of years ago. I tried to load one nice looking piece into the back of our JEEP but, given the current laws of physics, I did not succeed. I tried several times to work my way up the talus slope but the rocks were just too loose to gain much of a foothold and get very far up-slope. Any attempts to climb up resulted in sliding back down on a carpet of rocks that dropped away just as quickly as I stepped upward doing a pretty good mimicry of the stairmaster endless escalator exercise machine at my gym. As I couldn't see any definite stromatolite pieces down lower in the piles I suspected I'd not find anything different higher up and didn't feel like a major injury on the first day of a 10-day trip (for once, common sense got the better of me). I did find a smaller piece of ripply shoreline that I considered lugging back in my suitcase and an interesting layered piece that was quite different from most of the other rocks but I was there for (what was supposed to be an easily obtained) sample or two of fossil stromatolite and, striking out on this locality, gave up with only photos to remember this fun but fruitless hunt.

I got back last week from a two week collecting trip in Idaho, Utah and Wyoming with my wife and our two friends Bill and Jean. In addition to collecting, sunstones, topaz, agates and fluorescent minerals we collected Cambrian,Silurian, Jurassic, Cretaceous and Eocene fossils. We collected trilobites outside Delta, Utah and Liberty, Idaho, Marine fossils in Emigration and Riley Canyons in Utah and fossil fish in Kemmerer, Wyoming. The results of the trip was 15 boxes shipped home and many hours of preparation ahead of me. My friends came away with 13 boxes of fossils. If anyone wants tips for successful shipping of fossils please PM me as I learned a lot shipping with both USPS and UPS. Perhaps a post about shipping might be valuable. Photots from the trip will be posted at the end. Our first fossil excursion was to U-Dig quarry. Within ten minutes of arriving my friend Bill found a beautiful Asaphiscus wheeleri molt. That was the start to a great day of collecting. By the end of the day my wife and I had a table covered with trimmed examples of all of the common trilobites. The highlights were Bill's Asaphiscus, a huge 2 inch Asaphiscus I found, two brown trilobites and a 1 3/4 Asiphicus my wife found in the discard pile as we were getting ready to leave. We left with four flat rate boxes in total. After collecting in the Delta area for fossils and minerals we went back to our condo in Park City, Utah and visited Emigration Canyon for Jurassic marine fossils in Salt Lake and Riley Canyon, near Jericho, Utah. We found some brachiopods in Emigration Canyon but the fossils were not abundant. Our next stop was Riley Canyon for agatized horn coral. After a hike that resulted in a 3000 foot elevation change from 6000 to 9000 feet we eventually found the horn coral site. It wasn't what I expected. The searching involved looking for loose rock on the mountain among vegetation. While we found pieces of red agate, the agatized horn coral was elusive until my friend Bill found a nive 3 inch horn coral. We continued to search the area with little luck. By the time we left I found one small agatized horn coral and several chuncks. I did find one fossil that was mostly buried in matrix. At the time I thought it was a horn coral but imagine my surprise when I started prepping it and found that it was a large brachiopod. I do want to say that Riley Canyon material is one of the hardest materials I've ever prepped. The matrix is very stick and doesn't want to release from the fossil. It is also extremely difficult to remove with micro-abraision. Our next excursion was to Spence Gulch outside of Liberty, Idaho for Cambrian fossils. Fortunately I had read many different directions to this locality, otherwise we wouldn't have found it. It was a solid miles walk from where we had to abandon our rental vehicle. My wife and I found the matrix at the site to be very similar in consistency and friability to Spring Creek material in Alden, New York. You definitely want to bring cyanoacrylate (super glue) or some other stabilization agent as well as foil to wrap your fossils in so that they dry slowly. Otherwise your prized fossil may be dust by the end of the day. As soon as we arrived at the site I found what looks like a partial Zacanthoides trilobite. By the end of the day our party had found three partials. Bill and I started the morning climbing the slope and excavating pieces where someone had exposed a flat section of rock outcropping. We were rewarded with trilobite pieces and a few hyoliths. We then moved to the base of the outcrop and started splitting small pieces of shale. By the end of the day we found about 20 complete Achlysopsis (at least that's what I think they are). By the end of the day we had a good representation of the Spence Shale. Our last fossil excursion was to Forum member Sseth's fish quarry in Kemmerer, Wyoming. I want to start off by saying that the people working at his quarry are some of the nicest people I have ever met. They were very friendly and always checking in to see if we were having a successful trip. If you ever make it to Kemmerer to collect I have the following pieces of advice. Visit Fossil Butte National Monument Visitors Center first so you know what things look like. Bring boxes and packing material. Bring lots of water. Four people can drink a case of water by early afternoon. Bring sunscreen. Be ready for the dust. You will be covered in dust as will the interior of your rental vehicle or personal vehicle. We had such a good time at Sseth's quarry we actually went back a week later for another day of collecting. We had a lot of fun at his quarry. We came away with many individual fish and several plates of multiples. Most of the fish were larger than three inches and we came away with at least five different species of fish. Our largest fish were a 10 inch Diplomystus my wife and I extracted from a very large rock and an 8 inch Phareodus my friend Bill found in the discard pile splitting discarded rock. While we were there Sseth was excavating a turtle and while excavating it they found a second one. Photos will follow.

This is ridiculous. Ive been trying to upload my pictures for over an hour. This site will not upload. Anyone care to take a look through another media?

Is this a fossilized fish?? Help anyone? Kim Approximately 1 foot in length

I found this and thought it might be a claw? Found in the Eastern Washington/North Idaho area. It weighs 20 oz and measures 5" x 4" and is about 1.5" at its thickest point. I do have more pictures but I'm having sizing issures. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Hi fellow Forum members. My wife and I are planning a collecting trip to Utah, Idaho and Wyoming the last week of June and first week of July. We have a condo in Park City. This will probably be a one time trip so we want to make the most of it. So far we have added U-Dig in Antelope Springs, Utah, and are planning on visiting Spence Gulch in Idaho. We are also looking at fossil fish collecting in Wyoming. My question is this; 1) Can anyone recommend other collecting localities in Utah for trilobites and/or Gogia? 2) Does anyone know if the Riley Canyon agatized horn coral site is still worthwhile? 2) There are several pay quarries in Kemmerer, Wyoming to collect fossil fish. Any thoughts on the best location to go? 3) Does anyone have more detailed directions for finding Spence Gulch in Idaho? I have a Google Earth map but am not sure how accurate it is. 4) Is there someplace we just shouldn't miss? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Andy

After Earth’s Worst Mass Extinction, Life Rebounded Rapidly, Fossils Suggest, Trilobites, Nichlos ST. Fleur, New york times, Feb. 16, 2017 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/16/science/great-dying-permian-extinction-fossils.html New fossil discovery suggests sea life bounced back after the 'Great Dying' faster than thought, PhysOrg, February 16, 2017 https://phys.org/news/2017-02-fossil-discovery-sea-life-great.html The paper is: Brayard, A., Krumenacker, L.J., Botting, J.P., Jenks, J.F., Bylund, K.G., Fara, E., Vennin, E., Olivier, N., Goudemand, N., Saucède, T. and Charbonnier, S., 2017. Unexpected Early Triassic marine ecosystem and the rise of the Modern evolutionary fauna. Science Advances, 3(2), p.e1602159. http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/2/e1602159 Yours, Paul H.

Can anyone confirm if the is fossilized bone or simple an unusual stone? I am clueless on fossils so I will try to be as specific as I can and have included a measuring tape in photos (just over 5" long x 2.25" around at widest) and the items weight (14.6 oz). The history is totally unknown to me. I saved this from being tossed in the garbage so I am assuming it came from the local area (SE Idaho near Idaho Falls), but that is just my guess. I have made no attempt to clean the item as I do not wish to damage it in anyway. This thing has significant heft for it's size and weights about as much as a can of beer. Several sections show porous areas very similar to a bone's marrow. I would like to know if this is truly bone and if someone has a clue as to what type of creature it may have come from. 7 Full sized photos may be viewed at the following link https://1drv.ms/f/s!ArHBEK85krjphGEJ4rCtBFIZXHFR Thank You in Advance for any assistance and insight you may be able to provide.

I found this fossil at 11,000' on a remote portion of Idahos tallest peak. Mt. Borah. I believe it's coral. I know nothing about rocks and any info would be great.