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Hi all, I went to the beach a couple of days ago (Ocean Grove in Melbourne, Australia) and found what appears to be a beak or jaw of some kind with a row of teeth. I found it in the sand where other rocks and shells were washing up. I am not knowledgeable at all about fossils but have read that due to its colouring it may be a fossil? I’m also aware that no birds living today have actual teeth like these. Any replies would be greatly apppreciated!

Hi everyone! So my dream is to find a full shark tooth (I have found just one tooth so far, but not a full tooth) I was wondering if anyone knows of anywhere in Melbourne (Australia) where I can be almost guaranteed to find a chunky shark tooth My daughters and I always go to Beaumaris and need somewhere new that isn’t too far away. Thank you for any help any of you can give me.

Hey everyone, i've just yesterday returned from another four day fossil trip to Beaumaris: a coastal suburb in Melbourne, Australia with fossiliferous exposures of the Beaumaris Sandstone Formation. The fossils are about 5.5 million years old (latest Miocene) and comprise an extremely diverse range of both marine and terrestrial animals. A great overview of the Beaumaris fossil fauna is provided by this PDF, for those unfamiliar with the site: https://www.bayside.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/beaumaris_fossil_book_museum_victoria.pdf In short, everything from sharks, rays and bony fish to whales, dolphins, seals, birds, echinoids, gastropods, corals, bivalves and others can all be found. It's almost like you need a checklist when collecting here, to mark off the faunal groups that you find one by one. Which makes the collecting rather exciting as you never know what might turn up! Loose fossils can be kept, but the cliffs and foreshore are protected so no excavating or digging of anything in situ is allowed. But this is fine as most fossils are loose on the beach or adjacent shallow seafloor. Lots of people that collect here do so by snorkelling the shallow waters just offshore, and i also brought my wetsuit, snorkel and fins on this trip to search underwater which was very fun. As well as fossils, the waters are rich in modern marine life and it's fascinating to see them up close. The snorkelling and beach collecting proved very successful! The location: Marine mammal bones (whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals): A selection of indeterminate bone chunks. Small pieces of bone are fairly common finds. A small mammal vertebra (caudal?), probably from a dolphin or porpoise. Shown in front and side views. Bony fish: Right and left fish lower jaws, probably from the same species, but found separately so they're not associated. What luck though to have both matching sides! Although the left jaw is from a smaller individual. Crushing toothplate from Diodon formosus. Continued in the next post... (sharks, rays, invertebrates)

As the year comes to a close i decided to do a bit more collecting at one of my favourite Australian sites: Beaumaris near Melbourne in Victoria, Australia. Once again i travelled down and stayed at a motel near the beach for three days (27/12/18 through to 29/12/18). This trip is a sequel to the previous two trips i have made here which are also posted on the forum: Jan 2016 trip: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/61248-fossil-hunting-holiday-in-victoria-australia-dec-2015-jan-2016/ Feb 2017 trip: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/71996-fossil-hunting-holiday-at-beaumaris-australia-feb-2017/ Beaumaris is a significant site with both marine and terrestrial fossils from the latest Miocene aged Beaumaris Sandstone Formation (5 - 6 million years old), which crops out in distinctly red-coloured coastal cliffs and also in offshore rocky reefs. An impressive diversity of both vertebrate and invertebrate fauna occurs here, and the Melbourne Museum has put together a neat PDF of the fossil diversity for those unfamiliar with the site (https://www.bcs.asn.au/fossils_of_beaumaris_2015-02.pdf). My plan was to collect every single low tide across these three days, and sleep during every high tide. Yes, this meant going out collecting in the middle of the night too! My main interest was to collect shark teeth, however they can be tough to find here and are certainly not as common as at many other sites internationally that the people on this forum would be more familiar with. This often seems to be the case with Australian vertebrate fossils. It does however make it quite rewarding when you do eventually find them! The first day of searching (27/12/18) proved to be rather disappointing. I finally got to try snorkelling for fossils, which is a popular method here for finding things exposed along the seabed, but alas after about 3 hours in the water i had not found any bones or teeth. I was unable to locate the nodule bed where most of the vertebrate fossils originate from, which i think played a part in my lack of success. The seabed was also quite sanded over and it was hard to see much. I was definitely out of my element here, but it was also a lot of fun to get close to some of the local marine life, including stingrays! I decided to return to land collecting after not doing very well in the water and when i did so my luck changed greatly. The next two days and nights of land collecting (28/12/18 and 29/12/18) proved to be much more successful and i even got to meet two TFF members on the beach (coincidentally)! @Echinoid and @Tympanic bulla were also out looking, and we had a nice chat before they headed off to continue snorkelling. I then spent most of my remaining time on the beach flipping rocks and examining the pebbles up close, ultimately finishing the trip with a total of five shark teeth which i was very happy with! Carcharodon hastalis tooth as found. 24mm long. Large Carcharodon hastalis upper anterior tooth, as found at 2 am (with a head-torch) on 29/12/18. Measures 56 mm long. I had long been waiting for a tooth of this size! Carcharodon hastalis posterior tooth as found. 15 mm long. Another Carcharodon hastalis posterior as found. 13 mm long. And a small fragment of cetacean bone. Worn pieces like this are the most common vertebrate fossils at Beaumaris. Pictures continued in the next post

Hi. I was just wondering if anyone knew any places for fossils near these places in Australia: Port Douglas, Sydney, Melbourne, Hervey Bay, Brisbane, If not it doesn't matter i was just wondering (:

G'day everyone! This weekend I was able to go down to Melbourne Museum with my family to check out the new Mesozoic marine reptile fossils. There we checked out the paleontology exhibits (The Dinosaur Walk and 600 Million years of Victoria) The Dinosaur Walk displayed many dinosaur skeletons from around the world as well as Australian Mega-fauna. The 600 Million years of Victoria was about the evolution of life in Victoria with fossils from the Cambrian all the way to the Pleistocene displayed. This was my favorite exhibit because of its large collection of Victorian polar dinosaur fossils. Here are some photos of the trip: Thanks, Daniel Gallimimus - Mongolia Mamenchisaurus- China Deinonychus - USA Protoceratops - Mongolia Tarbosaurus - Mongolia Megalania - Lake Callabonna, South Australia Inostrancevia alexandri - Russia 600 Million Years of Victoria Whale skull (Janjucetus hunderi) Ogliocene, Jan Juc, Victoria Shark teeth from all over Victoria (Aged Oligocene to Miocene) Echinoderm and coral fossils from across Australia Seed pod fossils from Victoria Fossil fish from Koonwarra, Victoria Ammonite fossils from Australia & overseas

I recently moved to Melbourne, Australia to be with my husband and it has always been on my bucket list to basically go out and hunt for fossils in my spare time. I grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada, and for a brief time frame I lived in Colorado (and will forever regret never being able to find the time to fossil hunt there, ugh!). Since I am new to the area as well as the hobby, any tips and guides would be greatly appreciated by anyone willing to offer! I even went to scope out Beaumaris today. Not at low tide, sadly, so I didn't find anything neat but I think I may take a look there again sometime soon. It's only about 40 minutes away. Geelong is next on my list, so if you have tips for there, I would love any! Any tips on possible gear I should bring in terms of diggin' around? I can't wait to gather a little collection.

G'day, Just went on a 4 day long trip to Melbourne to go to Beaumaris and while we were there we bought/traded a few things from a dealer. For the first few days we were there we snorkelled at Beaumaris and found a few alright things... These two Cosmopolitodus (Carcharodon) hastalis teeth were encrusted in 'stuff' when we first found them. Nothing much compared to what you find in the U.S but they are pretty good for Australian teeth!: Posted multiple times again :/

G'day all! I have just returned from a three day collecting trip to Beaumaris, a coastal suburb of Melbourne in Australia. This report acts as a pictorial overview of the trip and provides an insight into what collecting at this beach location is like. A similar trip was undertaken by@digit late last year (http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/70070-quick-trip-to-beaumaris-cliffs-australia/). I too had previously spent two days at this location in early 2016, during my first Victorian fossil hunting trip. Pictures of the finds from that trip can be found in this thread: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/61248-fossil-hunting-holiday-in-victoria-australia-dec-2015-jan-2016/ I decided to return to Beaumaris for a second time as i haven't been collecting for quite some time and i wanted to find more vertebrate material from this location, as i knew the potential that the site possesses and didn't manage to do it enough justice on my first trip here. All of these finds were collected on the shore across the three days that i spent here from the 14th through to the 16th of February. I spent most of that time rummaging on hands and knees in the beach shingle near the Beaumaris Motor Yacht Squadron. As mentioned my main goal was to collect vertebrate material and i was especially interested in finding shark teeth. The fossils come from the Beaumaris Sandstone formation and are between 5 and 6 million years old (latest Miocene or earliest Pliocene). Most of the vertebrate material is derived from a phosphatic nodule bed at the base of this formation, just above the unit contact with the underlying Gellibrand Marl. This nodule bed outcrops only at the very base of the cliffs and on the shore platform which is normally covered by the sea except at low tide. Because i was collecting loose material from the beach shingle a lot of the bones and teeth are heavily worn and fragmentary, but they are still very cool! Beaumaris is highly significant as it is one of the only places in Australia where you get fossils of both marine and terrestrial animals from this period of time, capturing a snapshot of almost the entire ecosystem from fish, birds and mammals to corals, gastropods, echinoids and many others. It is also one of the only places where you can collect vertebrate fossils so close to a major Australian city (only about 30 minutes drive from the centre of Melbourne). The Location: Fossil bones in-situ and in my hand (these are most likely from whales): Many more pictures still to come!

While my wife Tammy and I were down in Australia celebrating our anniversary (we honeymooned down under way too long ago), we looked around to see if there was a quick place we could indulge our passion for fossil hunting while we were there. I found a lot of great information on TFF (valuable resource that it is). In addition to many fine offers to be shown the fossil goodness around the Queensland area and excellent suggestions from Dave (@sandgroper) on what to see on the western coast of Australia, I was able to plan a short fossil excursion in the Melbourne area. I had searched TFF before the trip to see if anybody had posted information on trips that were fairly quick and easy without needing to setup permission ahead of time or trudge through the countryside looking for the exact locality. What I found was a posting by @Paleoworld-101 detailing a trip he made back in January which included a stop at the Beaumaris Cliffs near Melbourne: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/61248-fossil-hunting-holiday-in-victoria-australia-dec-2015-jan-2016/&do=findComment&comment=653003 While the less commonly found items such as cetacean bones or shark teeth would be fun, what intrigued me was that a particular species of irregular (heart) urchin called Lovenia woodsii seemed to be there in some abundance. This is just what I was looking for--a target on which to focus my hunting in the limited time I'd have there and something that would display nicely. Another forum member, Tom (@Seve78) was incredibly helpful in providing us some detailed information on where to hunt at the site (and sending us tide tables for the dates we'd likely be able to be there). I was also able to contact Dr. David Holloway, Senior Curator, Invertebrate Palaeontology, Museum Victoria ahead of time and inquire about legally taking my finds out of the country. Australia (rightly so) has put in place the Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage Act 1986 which requires that objects such as antiques, artifacts, fossils, meteorites and other objects of cultural significance be verified to be adequately represented in public collections in Australia before they are allowed to be exported. The fact that Lovenia echinoids are very common at the site made me certain that there would be no issues exporting them but making contact before collecting allowed me to receive a letter of authorization shortly after collecting at Beaumaris. A little planning saves a lot of effort in the long run. So with all my preparations made we flew off to Australia for our extended (and busy) tour of southern and western Australia. The day we flew back into Melbourne we picked up a rental car at the airport and set the GPS for our destination in Beaumaris. Having spent the previous week in relatively sparsely-populated Tasmania, the traffic around Melbourne was hard to get used to (especially driving on the opposite side of the road ). In time, we finally made it to the site by the Beaumaris Motor Yacht Squadron. I always think of jet fighters when I hear the word 'squadron' so a 'yacht squadron' always make me grin with silly images in my head. We parked the car in an appropriate location on one of the residential streets and followed the instructions to the site. When we arrived the tide was out but was slowly returning. Having access to the further reaches of the site is only possible during low tide (unless you want to get wet from the knees down). We spent a few minutes at the first beach area and then proceeded to further down the beach. Here are some photos for those not familiar with the site. The area just past the section roped off with orange netting becomes unpassable at higher tide. You can't walk further up the shore and the water comes to the base of this area so you'll get wet if you attempt crossing at anything but low tide. The cliffs are composed of a bright yellow sandstone material (Beaumaris Sandstone) but did not appear to show much in the way of fossil material. I was told that the best place to hunt was in the 'shingle' or broken rocky area at the base of the cliffs. Even if the cliffs were better hunting (and they're not) there are usually laws about digging into cliffs and causing erosion so I never do that anyway. Here is the first part of the beach (accessible at any tide and likely hunted more thoroughly due to that fact). We didn't spend much time there and moved on further. The second beach was where we started to find Lovenia. We just started looking in the rock rubble (shingle) till we got the search image. This is what that beach looked like: The beach was well full of enough rock to search through for some time: We ignored the sandstone cliffs and instead hunted in the gravely area near their base (and all along the beach):