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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.

Here is some news from kumamoto where a theropod tooth as been found and described recently. Picture of a replica of the tooth: Article in japanese Link to english articles: http://blog.everythingdinosaur.co.uk/blog/_archives/2017/07/06/tyrannosaurs-roamed-late-cretaceous-japan.html http://www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/articles/AJ201707060047.html

Few month ago, incapacitated by a broken metatarsal bone, I listened to all Royal Tyrrell Museum's speaker series on youtube when I found among all these amazing an interesting lecture about subject mass extinction event. I can't remember the name of the speaker but during his lecture, he spoke about non-avian dinosaurs' extinction like celestial body, illness, volcanic activities, ninjas who timeslipped to Cretaceous and slaughtered all dinosaurs. I have to admit that the ninja theory really upsetted me.I thaught to myself "Why didn't we hear about this theory more often?" So as I want to help science, and solve this mystery I decided to investigate. Couldn't be better place to investigate ninjas than Japan right? So yesterday I prepared my gear, ate sushis and went to Kumamoto's Tsumori formation, looking for proof... and well, I found some... I only spend one hour on the crime scene when I found one of the deadly weapon japanese ninja used to use: 菱の実 or in shakespeare's language water caltrop. That's right, ninjas used on our beloved ancient creatures this vicious weapon. they used the technic called "makibishi", the same technic that all Samourai feared and that ruined so much waraji (japanese sandal made of straw rope and used during feudal era). I found fossilized water caltrope/ water chestnuts. On a more serious note, I went to the Tsumori formation in Kumamoto yesterday. It is a middle pleistocene formation which yield mainly water caltropes and insects ( the place was a giant pond back then). I didn't find very exciting things but as I didn't post any hunt report for a while I decided to write this one on an humouristic tone and to present you.. well some japanese culture aspects. So except, the ninja time traveler, everything is true. Sorry folks, ninja didn't slaughtered dinosaurs. As during feudal japan almost all samourai weared straw rope sandals,Trapa's seed pods were dried and used by ninja during their escape to slow down ennemies. My finds of the day are Trapa sp. seed pod and leaves, piece of wood indet. with strange features. Hope it entertained you a little bit. See you, David.

Before starting my hunt report, I just would like to make a short preamble, if you only want to read the report, skip this post and go to the second one. I hesitated a lot concerning this post but I think it could answer a lot of question concerning my vacance (sorry Ash, was cut during our chat by nasty tremors but nice pictures and congratulation!). As few know, I live in South of Japan in a city called Kumamoto. I don’t know if outside Japan the event was fairly broadcast (maybe in Montana’s news as Montana and Kumamoto are twin state) but on month ago on April the 14th, an earthquake (Magnitude 6.5 / shindo 7) hit severely the prefecture at 9:26pm. What we thought to be an isolated earthquake was in fact follow by tremors, little brother (Magnitude 6.4 / shindo 6) and the day after at 1 am by big daddy (Magnitude 7.3 /Shindo 7). Since then we experience afterquake every day. Between the 14th and May the 11th the earth shaked 368 times (only tremors above shindo 3) and 1400 times (all tremors) ‘till today. What’s shindo scale ? it is a scale used in Japan which measure the intensity of an earthquake. The scale goes from 1 to 7, 7 being the most intense and effect on human and infrastructure are described as follow: 1 : Felt by only some people indoors./ Upper sections of multi-story buildings may feel the earthquake. 2: Felt by many to most people indoors. Some people awake./ No buildings receive damage./ Homes and apartment buildings will shake, but will receive no damage. 3: Felt by most to all people indoors. Some people are frightened./ Buildings may receive slight damage if not earthquake-resistant. None to very light damage to earthquake-resistant and normal buildings./ Houses may shake strongly. Less earthquake-resistant houses can receive slight damage. 4: Many people are frightened. Some people try to escape from danger. Most sleeping people awake./ Less earthquake-resistant homes can suffer slight damage. Most homes shake strongly and small cracks may appear. The entirety of apartment buildings will shake./ Other buildings can receive slight damage. Earthquake-resistant structures will survive, most likely without damage. 5 lower: Most people try to escape from danger by running outside. Some people find it difficult to move./ Less earthquake-resistant homes and apartments suffer damage to walls and pillars./ Cracks are formed in walls of less earthquake-resistant buildings. Normal and earthquake resistant structures receive slight damage. 5 upper: Many people are considerably frightened and find it difficult to move./ Less earthquake-resistant homes and apartments suffer heavy/significant damage to walls and pillars and can lean./ Medium to large cracks are formed in walls. Crossbeams and pillars of less earthquake-resistant buildings and even highly earthquake-resistant buildings also have cracks. 6 lower: Difficult to keep standing./ Less earthquake-resistant houses collapse and even walls and pillars of other homes are damaged. Apartment buildings can collapse by floors falling down onto each other./ Less earthquake-resistant buildings easily receive heavy damage and may be destroyed. Even highly earthquake-resistant buildings have large cracks in walls and will be moderately damaged, at least. In some buildings, wall tiles and windowpanes are damaged and fall. 6 upper: Impossible to keep standing and to move without crawling./ Less earthquake-resistant houses will collapse or be severely damaged. In some cases, highly earthquake-resistant residences are heavily damaged. Multi-story apartment buildings will fall down partially or completely./ Many walls collapse, or at least are severely damaged. Some less earthquake-resistant buildings collapse. Even highly earthquake-resistant buildings suffer severe damage. 7: Thrown by the shaking and impossible to move at will./ Most or all residences collapse or receive severe damage, no matter how earthquake-resistant they are./ Most or all buildings (even earthquake-resistant ones) suffer severe damage. 90 % of the houses in the little town where the epicenter of the earthquake was, were destroyed, Kumamoto castle is no more and I could continue for days. A simple search on Google will provide you more picture than you want to see. The earthquake happened at the section between 2 fault called Hinagu fault and futagawa fault at a depth of 10 Km. The prefecture is now a paradise for Japanese geologist as new fault were created and because the two side of hinagu fault slide in different direction on 2 meter. Besides the earthquake we entered few weeks ago in the monsoon season and as land is weakened by earthquake it provoked a lot of land slide. This situation caused me to be silent on the forum and forced me to stop fossil hunting for weeks until last week. Was a little bit tired mentally so I needed to get some fresh air and to think about everything but earthquake so I went to my 2 preferred spot on the 13 and tested my chance. The post that follow is my hunting report.

After 2 weeks of cold weather, today, Winter seamed to take a break. No clouds, sunny weather and temperatures above 18 degree celsius, I didn't have to think twice, let's go to the adventure ! As some of you have already noticed, I am more a seaside fossil hunter and today would have been a perfect day to make my skin's tone perfect if the tide would fit my schedule. Too bad for me, low tide time was a little bit too late for me so I decided to drive to Mifune's mountain. Mifune surrounding mountain are part of the Mifune formation. The formation age is Cretaceous (Turonian) and divided in two different Fauna. The lower part of the formation is mainly composed of marine fossil like bivalve but also turtle bones, shark teeth... The upper part of the formation is composed mainly of continental fauna and dinosaurs bones are often found. I divided my trip in two part: 1-Morning: Yoshimuta Plateau (Mifune Lower formation) I went there few times and wanted to explore the surrounding to see if I was able to find some nice spots and bivalves. 2-After lunch: Dinosaur hunt! First time I really took time to look at a geologic map and looked for bones. Yoshimuta: I arrived at about 10:30am at the entrance of the trail and had a 1 hour walk in the mountain before finding and interesting spot. A kind of road cut in the mountain. By looking closer I immediately i noticed: Cerithium Pyramidaeformis, good sign there was life here millions years ago. Now it is time to dig a little bit a see what treasures will appear. Matrix was hard as heck but, I found enough nice bivalve to put a big smile on my face for the day. Put all my found I my Back pack, ate a Rice ball and returned to the car for a 30 minute ride to the next spot and who knows, maybe Dinosaurs. 2- Yakata River I drove to Yakata river and Amakimi Dam. I noticed that part of the river dried up and where surrounded by the upper part of the Mifune formation. If Dinosaurs there are, I thought I would have a chance to find somethink there. I parked my car next to the dam and was welcomed by this sign Temperatures are still cold so I think there is nothing to fear but for someone who is afraid of snakes like me, this sign had a big effect. A picture of the dried up river bed : I tried to go down to the river bed but my adventure in Dinoland had to stop here. As I thought, there is dino bones in there unfortunately the area is forbidden and special clearance was requested to dig up fossil there. I didn't have the occasion to dig up dino bones but I still found a spot where bones are. so good experience for me. More picture on this post too: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/60896-because-the-trip-and-the-discovery-is-a-big-part-of-our-passion/

Hi everybody, Today I took part in an educational fossil hunting trip organized by the Mifune Dinosaur Museum, in Kumamoto. It was the occasion for me to go once again to a place I visit alone 3 month ago but this time with Kumamoto Paleontologists and… a lot of kids! It was so great to see kids discovering their first fossil, smile on the face. Remembered me years ago when I found my first ammonite. So the place we went was in the mountain near to Mifune Dinosaur Museum (MDM), about 30 minutes by car. It’s a formation called Mifune formation (an original name for sure) from cretaceous period. According to the paleontologist, this part of the formation is full of shell, spiral shell, turtle bones, crocodile tooth and recently shark teeth. There is a big chance that this particular part of the formation was the estuary of a large river. So today we get a briefing at the museum and went on site for a 2 hours hunt. I cannot say I made great found, only found some little shell and spiral shell but I found an imprint of very big carnivorous shell not yet named (They’re doing a study about those one which does not have name yet, they were referred by their closest parent). Anyway today was more about listening to professional and enjoying Japanese autumn than fossil. So please, enjoy these few pictures. I will put some found pictures later, I have some trouble with my camera right now. See you next week for a new hunting trip report, this time, it will be in Goshonoura Island, Amakusa. David