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Fossil found in Fukui identified as new primitive bird species By Naoki Hirano, The Ashi Shimbun, December 4, 2019 http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201912040008.html Science News http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/fukuipteryx-prima-07808.html The open access paper is: Imai, T., Azuma, Y., Kawabe, S., Shibata, M., Miyata, K., Wang, M. and Zhou, Z., 2019. An unusual bird (Theropoda, Avialae) from the Early Cretaceous of Japan suggests complex evolutionary history of basal birds. Communications biology, 2(1), pp.1-11. https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-019-0639-4 Yours, Paul H.

A news article about the first Early Cretaceous avialan from Japan is available at the following link: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/newly-discovered-fossil-bird-fills-gap-between-dinosaurs-and-modern-fliers-180973551/ Fukuipteryx is the first Early Cretaceous non-ornithothoracine avialan to be described from an Asian locality outside China or Mongolia. Since Fukuipteryx has a pygostyle and is recovered as basal to Jeholornis, it is unclear whether some non-pygostylian birds had a pygostyle. Link for original description of Fukuipteryx: https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-019-0639-4

https://phys.org/news/2019-09-hadrosaur-japan-dinosaur-diversity.html https://www.brightsurf.com/news/article/090519491504/a-new-duck-billed-dinosaur-kamuysaurus-japonicus-identified.html

Does anyone have a copy of this Japanese paper? M. Murata. 1969. Molluscan fauna of the Toyoma Formation (Late Permian). Saito Ho-on Kai Museum of Natural History Research Bulletin 38:1-22 http://fossilworks.org/?a=taxonInfo&taxon_no=194381 I am trying to identify a Euphemitopsis gastropod. I need any photos and descriptions of Euphemitopsis kitakamiensis. Thanks for you help, John @David in Japan

Last weekend was almost surreal; I've always been looking to go hunting for ammonites at some point, but the opportunity finally arose while I visited Hokkaido, Japan last week. Ammonites from Hokkaido have always been captivating; they definitely represent some of the best the Asian continent has to offer, and are also known to produce the biggest in the continent. In the far north of Hokkaido, iridescent ammonites could be found, while in the central region, heteromorphs are more common. In very rare occasions across the island, titanic ammonites are lifted out of the streams. On the 13th of July, my first day in the Hokkaido Prefecture, I met up with a local friend in Sapporo to go hunting. He's had quite a few years of experience, and is very knowledgeable about the ammonites of Hokkaido. After a few hours of driving, we went off the road and into the Hokkaido wilderness to search for ammonites. Not long after our arrival at the creek, we started finding clues of ammonite-bearing rock.

Small news from Japan: yesterday, Pr Kobayashi presented at the japanese paleontological society, his work on an hadrosaurid dinosaur found few years ago in hokkaido and nicknamed Mukawa-ryu. According to him, it would be a new species. The 8th new dinosaur species found in Japan. Name will be released soon with the publication. http://www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/articles/AJ201906190084.html

Hi TFF friends, how are you? I would like to have your opinion concerning the following fossil. It's a bone I found a while ago in the Himenoura formation, Santonian (Kumamoto Japan) and I forgot until I decided to clean my drawers. It has a quite distinctive shape and make me think to a sea turtle bone, a paddle or an ulna maybe. What kind of bone do you think it is? Any ID? I am not looking for the ID, I just would like to know what kind of bone it is.

TFF friends, How are you? It's been a while i post here although i still read almost daily posts on the forum. Last month on the 30 and the 31th, i had the opportunity to make a 2 days field trip to the yamaguchi prefecture with the association of the Goshoura Cretaceous Museum's friends. We spend 2 days there discovering the local geology and history with paleontologists friends. Let me share with you this experience. First day. We left kumamoto at 7 in the morning and drove for about 3 hous to our first destination called Mine. Around the city of Mine and particularly on the northern part of the city can be found the toyoura formation. It is a clastic sediment marine formation that formed during the sinemurian-bathonian period. This formation formed the same way Holzmaden formed and a lot of very well preserved marine organisms such as bivalves, ammonites, belemnites and plants can be found. We first explored a small river without much success. While everybody found plant fragments, i found 2 nice belemnites. I read that belemnites were pretty rare and that only one specie was described from this formation so i believe they are Acrocoelites mantanii from the megateuthidinae sub-familly. We found only few fossils there but it was a great occasion to enjoy our meal under a japanese cherry tree, symbol of the japanese spring. We then followed the stream until the main river where we search the river bed for ammonites. We found some nice specimens (Dactylioceras, Cleviceras and Protogrammoceras) and some plants material (i love the coloration) but we had to leave quickly the river bed as the water level rose-up in a blink of an eye. Weather was good but where we were but you never know what happen upstream. One cannot be too careful. We leaved the field and were about to drive to the Hotaru Museum when somebody told us by inadvertancy that the older part of the parking lot was filled with fossiliferous limestone from the Akiyoshidai locality. We didn't have to think twice and went through all the gravel in hope to find carboniferous fusulinas, brachiopods, and corals. We spend 30 minutes there and were about to leave when we noticed tortoise bones were here and there, lying on the floor. Do i have to explain you what followed? TREASURE HUNT! We finally left the place for the hotaru museum. It is a small museum dedicated to the fireflies but part of the exhibit contained also fossils. Here some pictures. After the museum, we checked-in at the hotel and had a rests with well-deserved beer, some card trick and a lot of fossils conversations. It is being late here so i will post the next post tomorrow. I hope you have enjoyed this one. David.

Stocker, C., Williams, M., Oji, T., Tanaka, G., Komatsu, T. and Wallis, S., 2019. Spirits of Yokokurayama: shrine of the Japanese trilobites. Geology Today, 35(1), pp.15-19. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gto.12255 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330640693_Spirits_of_Yokokurayama_shrine_of_the_Japanese_trilobites Yours, Paul H.

Here is the article but as it is written in Japanese, I will translate it roughly. https://this.kiji.is/461667067532395617?c=92619697908483575 Japanese oldest dinosaur remains have been found in Yatsushiro. 2 days ago, the professor Naomi Ikegami from the Mifune Dinosaur Museum has revealed at the Japanese paleontological society annual meeting the discovery of the oldest remains of a Japanese dinosaur. The fossil (a 8cm long, 4cm wide rib) has been found in Kumamoto prefecture, Yatsushiro city (near Sakamoto village) by a 65 years old former teacher named Mr. Murakami in 2014. It was discovered during a survey conducted by the Mifune Dinosaur Museum and recovered from the Kawaguchi formation. The Kawaguchi formation is a 40 km wide early cretaceous formation (- 133Myo, Hauterivian) composed mainly of brackish strata, which yield abundant brackish conditional molluscus fossils, and intercalates shallow marine strata, which yield marine conditional molluscus fossils. According to the professor Ikegami, as the elliptical cross section of the bone is long and thin and as the width of the abdominal side spreads toward the tip, it matches the characteristics of a theropod's rib. It was estimated that this rib fragment would be part of a 8 to 10 meter long dinosaur. The fossil, the first of its kind found in Yatsushiro has bolstered hope to find new dinosaur localities in the Kumamoto prefecture which already the richest in Japan. The specimen will be show to the public at Mifune Dinosaur Museum from the 29th of January.

Recently, I visited a special exhibit on fossils from Hokkaido, which was held in Tokyo (only in Japanese: https://dep.chs.nihon-u.ac.jp/museum/exhibition.php?l=3&r=181010-125701 ) Here are some photos.

Greetings all! I recently took a trip to a museum in Kitakyushu Japan! This museum was huge, the museum is called the North Kyushu Municipal Journey Of Life Museum and it’s address is: 2 Chome-4-1 Higashida, Yahatahigashi-ku, Kitakyūshū-shi, Fukuoka-ken 805-0071, Japan.

New papers recording new occurrences of fossil Monodontidae are available online: Hiroto Ichishima; Hitoshi Furusawa; Makino Tachibana; Masaichi Kimura (2018). First monodontid cetacean (Odontoceti, Delphinoidea) from the early Pliocene of the north‐western Pacific Ocean. Papers in Palaeontology. Online edition. doi:10.1002/spp2.1244. (describes Haborodelphis japonicus) Pesci et al. (2018). First record of Monodontidae (Cetacea, Odontoceti) in the Mediterranean Basin from the Pliocene sands of Arcille (Grosseto, Tuscany, Italy). Fossilia, Volume 2018: 37-39. Denebola and Bohaskaia were long the only described fossil monodontid species from the pre-Pleistocene, but Haborodelphis and the new monodontid skull from Tuscany shed new light on the distribution of monodontids.

Hi TFF friends, how are you? I am great, thank you for asking Yesterday I had I went to my favorite late cretaceous spot after an almost 3 month long forced break. So I decided to hunt all day long and went to few different spots with quite a good haul ( for me at least). First I went to an old Quarry in Kumamoto were the middle part of the Himenoura formation is visible. I hunted there few times in the past years and found a lot of ammonite's aptichii, Inoceramus and plants fossils. One year ago, the site was black and there was no sign of vegetation but as time goes, vegetation grows and I had to go through a meter tall vegetation to access to the place. It was a good occasion to have a look flowers : and struggle with "バカ”'s seed, litterally meaning idiot in japanese (called beggar's ticks in english). Here is a picture of the formation at the quarry. I have been able to find there nice Glycymeris amakusensis and a very unusual plant fossil.

I study the teeth of extant sharks. I’m looking to purchase a number of species of deep-water shark jaws from sharks regularly caught off the coast of Japan for food. Some of these shark jaws are offered on e-bay and other sites but the pricing is excessively high. I’m trying to get information on how I might contact actual Japanese fishermen or fish market sellers to directly purchase these deep-water shark jaws. Also any information on shark jaw distributors from Japan would be very helpful. If you can provide any contact information please PM me. Also if you are aware of any US/Japanese import/export restrictions on these deep-water shark jaws please post a reply below. None of the species that I’m looking for are protected by CITES version 4 October 2017. I've previously posted some pictures of some uncommon extant shark teeth at the below TFF links: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/83847-rhincodon-whale-shark-and-cetorhinus-basking-shark-extant-and-fossil-teeth/&tab=comments#comment-902499 http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/84144-some-uncommon-extant-shark-teeth-2/&tab=comments#comment-899269 http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/83808-some-uncommon-extant-shark-teeth/&tab=comments#comment-894590 Marco Sr.