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It was a busy summer, and now it is snowing. I got out a few times this summer and here is my report for y'all's enjoyment. Most of my outings were into Wyoming's early Eocene. Way back in the spring I went to a newly discovered mammal site. I showed one jaw here: Here is a view of the site. This is the early Eocene Wind River Fm in central WY. (Wasathcian in age). Lots of land to look at out here, and I have only prospected a wee bit of it. My pack is down thereon the flats... let's see if we can find any fossils down there. OH, look... a mammal jaw. And can you find an additional bonus tooth in there? Right next to this there were a group of crocodile bones. Again... find the bones. I dug around quite a bit to try to find the source of these bones and got totally skunked. I usually get out into the Eocene beds of southwest WY on Labor day, but this year it happened a month late, so here are some pix from the first weekend of October. It starts getting cold at this time of year. The first photo is me at an abandoned oil well site where the oil folks had scraped up a limestone layer in their bulldozing. The layer has bones in it... mostly turtle pieces and lots of very small (and practically un-prepable) fish bones. If you break rocks long enough you will find good stuff. Below are a the best things I found on this visit. For those interested, these things are prepped with ye ole air abrasive under the microscope. Dolomite at about 20 psi. There is potential for the air abrasive to abrade the bones and I am not sure if these teeth got overly air abraded or are suffering form Eocene erosion. It is very slow prep, so I don't focus too much on this layer. First a little croc dentary. Note that the bone runs off the edge of the rock. I spent a long time looking for the rock that contains the rest of this jaw... again, skunked. But this is a good little find. The empty roundish area to the right of the jaw is the impression of a snail. fresh water snails of the genus Physa are the most common fossils. This next bone is the angular bone of a small croc. The angular is one of the bones in the lower jaw. The limestone layer is in the Wasatch Formation. After busting up enough rocks, I went to one of my favorite sites about a half mile away. Also in the Wasatch Fm. This layer sits just above the same limestone layer that I collected at the oil well site. Here I am digging. Note the weather is getting nicer; I have jettisoned the coat. This site is full of small randomly distributed fossils. Again, mostly turtle pieces, but also some good croc material and occasional mammal teeth and jaws. And here is a distant view of the quarry. The limestone with bones is seen as an small cliff just below my backpack. So, let's look at a few fossils. First an emerging soft shelled turtle piece ( a costal plate). That is a dental pick for scale. The digging here is best done slowly so you don't break the bones. You can see other pieces of bones in here. The first photo in the next post is the same turtle piece fully exposed.

I found this tooth fragment in Kelly park rock springs run in apopka fl anyone know what it is?

Hello, I bought these two Pleistocene fossils today at the fossil fair - but the seller was not sure what kind of animal they come from. The first one is 10 cm long: Picture with a flash: The second one is 15 cm long: Pictures with a flash: Can anyone help me ID these? They come from Vistula River sands, Pleistocene age. Thanks a lot

Researchers discover more male than female mammalian fossils in museum collections by Bob Yirka , Phys.org https://phys.org/news/2019-09-male-female-mammalian-fossils-museum.html The Quirk of Collecting That Skews Museum Specimens Male. Only two orders of mammals—containing bats, anteaters, and sloths—are biased toward females. Rachel Gutman, The Atlantic, Sept. 11, 2019 https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/09/research-specimens-are-mostly-male/597832/ The paper is: Gower, G., Fenderson, L.E., Salis, A.T., Helgen, K.M., van Loenen, A.L., Heiniger, H., Hofman-Kamińska, E., Kowalczyk, R., Mitchell, K.J., Llamas, B. and Cooper, A., 2019. Widespread male sex bias in mammal fossil and museum collections. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(38), pp.19019-19024. https://www.pnas.org/content/116/38/19019.short Yours, Paul H.

Not sure what this might be, but I thought is was the most intriguing find of the day. Beautiful patina, weighty for its size. Very old?

Bison?

These are a couple of odd bones from the Brazos River between SH 159 and FM 529. They appear to be the same thing, other than size, and they appear to be from opposite sides of the animal. The smaller one is 11.5 cm long and is pretty much intact. The larger one is 25 cm and is broken at the tip and the rounded lobe end. It probably would have been 30 cm plus. They are highly mineralized. Any idea what these might be?

Hi, I've collected this fossil on a beach near Balchik in Bulgaria and have wandered what it is. On the same beach I've also found small parts of bones and a partial vertebrae. Since there have been previous finds from Deinotherium bavaricum , Trilophodon angus-tidens and Choerolophodon pentelici in the region I was pretty exited that I've found a part of a tusk or one from a baby, but I am really not sure what exactly the fossil is. Please if you have any good guesses for the origin of the fossil please let me know.

I spent another great day in the Hell Creek formation of South Dakota (w/ Paleoprospectors) and found a lot of great fossils. It was a beautiful day, the temperature wasn't bad at all, helped by the occasional breeze and the bugs were tolerable for the most part. We started the day on a microsite which was eroding out of the side of a hill. The iron siderite pebbles were sharp to sit on and the slope was steep- being sure footed was certainly an asset along a good portion of this exposure. In spite of those factors, I still found some awesome fossils. A view of the microsite from the ground. My first good find of the day- A worn Richardoestesia tooth Most likely a Myledaphus vertebra A Champsosaur vertebra in situ An Amphibian vertebra- probably salamander. Probably my best find of the day- a claw whose identity is currently unknown. Two great anthill finds- Top: likely a marsupial tooth (Alphadon?)- Bottom: a multituberculate tooth (Cimolodon?) After these finds, I went to prospect with some other people but unfortunately came up empty handed. At least I got some pics of the cool looking exposures. After we returned from prospecting I decided to finish the day hunting the microsite where I started and spend some time at a channel deposit below which was also producing some solid finds (Another participant found a nice Acheroraptor tooth and a small theropod or bird claw there earlier) Center left: Myledaphus tooth A nice croc tooth. My last good find was a small section of theropod claw which I unfortunately did not get a pic of. Stay tuned because tomorrow we visit another Hell Creek ranch in North Dakota this time!

I'm not a huge fan of large bones but here we go: a glimpse to mammalian fauna of California 7-12 million years ago. Video is from our Christmas break trip to South California/Nevada. My favorite was a rhino tooth.

Since I have been having such good luck with tooth ID I thought I would dig in to some of my old collection. I got out my old bucket o teeth and found some that look like they were something other than bison or cow. I’ve put these in order from top to bottom. The first one is broken so I don’t know if there is enough there to ID. That one kind of looks like bison anyway. I have no idea on the last three. Found in Nebraska. Thanks for your help!

Although not the same fan fare as with Dinosaurs my collecting days has yielded some very cool turtle specimens. Channel deposits deliver a host of species which include Fish, Crock, Reptiles and Turtle. You never know what the next flip of the knife will deliver and skulls are as good as you can get. Lots of broken ones but every once and a while a complete one surfaces. I am not that knowledgeable on identifying turtle specimens so bare with me if you see something misidentified, just let me know. I have a pet Dog but I call these skulls my PET FOSSILS. They are a lot easier to maintain no walking or feeding required. I don't have names for them but just enjoy them and are always a big hit with everyone. My first skull is in the Trionychid family softshell turtle. Very cool skull looks like it has arms for walking. Identified it as Axestemys byssina (8 1/2" - 22cm) Long Hell Creek Formation Perkins Co., South Dakota The next skull is in the Baenid Family Identified as Bubaena cephalica the atlas vertebra was found with the skull. (3 1/2" -8.9cm) Square Hell Creek Formation Powder River Co., Montana Same as above just slightly smaller specimen at 3" (7.6cm) long, same locality The next skull is also in the Baenid Family Identified as Palatobaena choen approximately 2 1/4" (5.7cm) square. Very odd shaped nasal opening Hell Creek Formation Powder River Co., Montana Same as above just slightly smaller specimen at 2" (2cm) square

Hello, A few years ago me and my daughter found this tooth on the beach in the Netherlands. Since then we started to go regularly to several beaches to find washed off treasures. I though one of them was a horse tooth from the pleistocene...now i am not sure..it's too compact and short..i would love to have your expertise on it

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/kangaroo-fossil-hop-australia-marsupial-balbarids-skeleton-research-study-a8764731.html