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Found by my buddy on a river gravel bar/bank in southern Minnesota. As I've stated in some previous posts the geology in our area is upper Cretaceous. However, the river where this specimen was found pulse floods and is like a giant gravel mixer. In the past and more recently Pleistocene fossils have been found in the river gravel deposits in my area (mammoth, bison, etc). It general it is very difficult to age by geology/context. I'm hoping ancient horse but more sets of eyes on it are better. What do you think and thanks!? Any thoughts on age? Ancient horse or not?

Hey everyone! This will be my first attempt at a trade in the TFF. Im offering a variety of fossils from the Price Creek Formation of Humboldt County, Northern California. This formation has been dated to late Miocene early Pliocene. As far as to what I’m looking for in this trade, I love all things Mollusca! Gastropods, Bivalves, Ammonites, Belemnites or Brachiopods, I’ll take them all. Invertebrates of any kind will strike my fancy though. The weirder the better. I’ve seen some Ram’s Horn Oysters that are awesome! I have no qualms about trading for these as a whole set, however shipping would be cheaper. I’m willing to ship anywhere in the United States, if your international I’m afraid that you’ll have to absorb that cost. I really appreciate all the knowledge that members have been forthcoming with sharing. Please pm me if your interested. -Nick

I found the silicified and brecciated laminar structures in Miocene lake deposits north of Phoenix, Arizona. Could they be disturbed algal mats? I envision a drying algal mat in a lake that is disturbed by an event such as a flood, windstorm, landslide or earthquake. Compare to Kinneyia trace fossil: https://woostergeologists.scotblogs.wooster.edu/2015/10/23/woosters-fossil-maybe-of-the-week-kinneyia-ripples/ Confirmed stromatolites occur nearby in the lake sediments. Photo 1: typical wrinkled/ cracked marks in surface of laminar structures. Photo 2: typical piece of folded and brecciated laminar structures. Photo 3: detail of photo 2. Photo 4: edge of rock in photo 2. 4.5 cm field of view. Photo 5: Another piece. Photo 6: detail of photo 5. Photo 7: edge of photo 5. 3 cm field of view.

To start off, I love whale teeth. They seem to love me also. I find many of them. This one seems different and thus special. In circumference, it is a 3rd the size of my pinky. It is 57 mm (2.25 inches) in length, 7.5 mm wise, and it is all there. Note also that the tip has been shaved by an opposing tooth. and it was found in SW Florida. Is Aulophyster a possibility? Hopefully, Bobby @Boesse can provide options.

Nice weather finally. But with schools closed and people bored at home, have seen increased competition at "my" sites, but yields have been small but plentiful. Fish should be biting soon.

A friend found this bone on the shores of the Potomac River in Virginia... mostly miocene marine fauna. Closest we could find was a picture of an ocean sunfish beak from the Calvert cliffs.. but we are eager to hear what others might think? Thanks!

When I first found this tooth, I paused. Many times I have stated that horizontal banding in the Peace River means one thing--- marine mammal, likely whale. This tooth is very small, could be something like Aulophyseter, but I am no longer so sure. Decided to see if others recognize this tooth.

I am sitting at home, sorting ziplock bags of fossils collected in the last year. You know the problem. Too many fossils in the house. All these fossils came out of a Bone Valley Creek, definitely Miocene. For those of you who are fortunate enough to collect Bone Valley teeth, what is happening with the white on these teeth? Especially the Hemipristis.. A white tip. or the "bourlette" on the Tiger?

Good evening folks. I am requesting a verification/confirmation for a tooth I purchased over 10 years ago listed as Platybelodon, Miocene, Gansu, China. It measures 7cm long, 4.2cm wide and 6.3cm tall.

All this fossil needs is Buffalo sauce! https://www.thejakartapost.com/amp/life/2020/03/15/fossil-of-43-million-year-old-penguin-skin-found-in-argentina.html

A new paper on extinct elephants is available at this link: Shi-Qi Wang; Xiao-Xiao Zhang; Chun-Xiao Li, 2020. Reappraisal of Serridentinus gobiensis Osborn & Granger and Miomastodon tongxinensis Chen: the validity of Miomastodon. Vertebrata PalAsiatica in press. doi:10.19615/j.cnki.1000-3118.200310. It's quite interesting to see Miomastodon resurrected from synonymy with Zygolophodon because given that Zygolophodon aegyptensis is known from early Miocene deposits in Egypt, Miomastodon may have evolved from a population of Zygolophodon in central Asia that evolved bunodont cheek teeth, and then entered North America from East Asia in the middle Miocene.

I was sorting thru a box of old fossils that came from a site rich in late Miocene fossils. In Florida that means miocene fauna, and everything that comes later. That is not a guarantee, more of a likelihood. I did not initially pay a lot of attention to this find because it did not seem to be one of my favorites. Let me explain. I like the small horse teeth from the late Miocene. One of the smallest is Nannippus peninsulatus, like this lower jaw m3. It has a Hypsodont (long crown) type of tooth. Here is my find for Identification. Ignore the "Sm Horse" designation, that was my initial guess. This tooth is a Brachydont form, more common for Artiodactyls ( Artiodactyla, or cloven-hooved mammals, include such familiar animals as sheep, goats, camels, pigs, cows, deer, giraffes, and antelopes). This is a very small tooth, but the surface is well worn so I start off thinking adult. This tooth size is in the range of small horse, but the crown and roots are wrong. All suggestions, comments, and input are greatly appreciated.

I found this fossil several years ago while I was looking for shark teeth along the bank of the Potomac. The exposed cliffs in the area are part of the Nanjemoy formation, and the fossils I find are usually Miocene or Eocene. I have no idea what this fossil is (Maybe a tooth?). I figured that I would finally get around to posting this in hopes that someone on this forum can help identify it for me. More pictures available upon request. Thanks, Christopher

Beautiful spring weather here! Nothing new and exciting from me, but lots of small teeth, some colorful. One rootless weathered cowshark tooth, bunch of glossy drum teeth, angel shark or two. Mostly spikes, sand tiger, some with nice cusps. The two burrows are from the beach, as is the tiger shark tooth (not much of a winter, and not many makos on the beach-- or maybe others are after them!) Great being out, although pollen is clearly coming fast here.

Help request! I am putting together a tool for judging rock age based on very crude, whole-rock, hand-sample observations of fossil faunas/floras -- the types of observations a child or beginner could successfully make. I view this as a complement to the very fine, species-level identifications commonly employed as index fossils for individual stages, biozones, etc. Attached is what I've got so far, but I can clearly use help with corals, mollusks, plants, vertebrates, ichnofossils, and the post-Paleozoic In the attached file, vibrant orange indicates times in earth history to commonly observe the item of interest; paler orange indicates times in earth history to less commonly observe the item of interest. White indicates very little to no practical probability of observing the item of interest. Please keep in mind that the listed indicators are things like “conspicuous horn corals,” purposefully declining to address rare encounters with groups of low preservation potential, low recognizability, etc. Got additions/amendments, especially for the groups mentioned above? Toss them in the comments below! Thank you..... https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tVm_u6v573V4NACrdebb_1OsBEAz60dS1m4pCTckgyA

Turtle humerus found in a fallen block. From the Pope's Creek Sands of Virginia.

Miocene lakebed deposits north of Phoenix have revealed more than palm and unknown reed like plants. I found stromatolites preserved in black, gray and white chalcedony. Although not as common as in the Precambrian, stromatolites still occur in oceans and in lakes. See article about the ones in Utah’s Great Salt Lake: https://geology.utah.gov/map-pub/survey-notes/glad-you-asked/is-there-coral-in-the-great-salt-lake/ My favorite one is this 10 cm high detail of a much larger stromatolite. #1 This 38 cm one came home with me. #2 Here is a detail of #2. 9 x 13 cm. #3 Here is a 6 cm high relatively flat stromatolite. #4 Detail of side of #4. Scattered pieces of palm occur. 9.5 cm high. #6 This silicified palm has calcite crystals growing in it. 13.5 cm long. #7 Detail of #7. It looks like an art piece.

Thoughts on age/epoch? Ancient or not? Found on a gravel bar on a river in Southern Minnesota.

Hello, The indentions in these two pieces of Sharktooth Hill bone are very unlike anything else I've found there and I'm hoping someone recognizes them. Very smooth and very round, about 2-4 mm deep. I'm including pics of the backs of the pieces, not because they seem interesting, but just so you can see that they're not. It's a little hard to tell, but the large piece has a partial indention on one of the broken edges on the right side of the pic. Thanks for any insights you can offer! Larger piece - Front Larger piece - Back Smaller piece - Front Smaller piece - Back

Hi people, I'm visiting the ernst quarries on Friday June 5th 2020. First time there, I'm from Spain so it will be an intensive and exciting day. If someone from the forum joins just let me know. Cheers!!

I was out to a marine location today, and besides some nicely colored little shark teeth, there were 2 items that are trip makers. One is a small piece of coral, 2+ inches wide. I would love an Identification, but I have other simpler questions. This piece of coral looks "complete". Is it? What happened to whatever it was attached to? Because there are polyp remains in the "holes", does that mean the holes were original? There are about 200-300 polyps on top of the coral.. Did this coral "die" at that point or could it have grown larger? much larger. I am relatively new to coral fossils. Any insights unique to this fossil are greatly appreciated!!

The last time I got out on the river was back in mid-January. Since then, I have watched the USGS gauges while the weather stayed mostly dry. The river height and flow was dropping steadily and just when I was ready to go hunting again, the entire house got sick with the flu - this was right before the coronavirus started grabbing all the headlines. It was very frustrating to sit inside the house while the weather was so beautiful and the river getting so low. Yesterday was the first day where the wife and I both felt close enough to 100% to brave the trip and go hunt some fossils. I loaded up the truck the night before and we headed out the door just before 7am. The drive was uneventful and we arrived at the Gardner ramp on the Peace River about 9am. We hadn't been back to Gardner since 2017, so it was a pleasant change of scenery from my usual spots. The plan was to revisit a couple of old spots we had found on previous trips back in 2016. I hadn't laid eyes on this stretch of river in a long time, so I was not sure what changes to expect. To my surprise, the ramp area was dead. Nobody else was there. Usually the ramp is quite busy, but our timing must have been very good. We had the entire area to ourselves. (Going on a tuesday morning helps) The last time I was at Gardner, the water level was almost two feet higher, so I was pleased to see how low the water was. The current was also quite lazy. The USGS Zolfo Springs gauge read 4.6 feet and the flow was about 120. You can tell in the photo below how low the water is by looking at the opposite bank. Now, I am not going out of my way to obfuscate the exact location of my search spots in this report. This is because this stretch of river is heavily hunted and these spots are known to other hunters. This fact was reinforced on me when we arrived at the first spot and found shovel holes and spoil piles nearby. But more on that later... I have been to Gardner a handful of times previously, but the water was never this low. In fact, I ended up jumping out of the kayak and dragging it behind me while I waded through knee-deep water. My wife rode like a queen in the front seat of the tandem kayak and snapped photos. Our first destination was about a mile upstream, so there was a combination of wading/pulling the kayak and paddling. The water was running surprisingly hard in a couple of places, but the paddling was never too difficult. Most of the paddling was fairly easy with the wind pushing us from the south. We were looking for a clayey layer exposure known for producing prolific quantities of common fossils of mixed types - Miocene and Pleistocene material intermingled and then compacted into a tight cemented matrix. This material falls out of the sandy banks and into the river, where it breaks apart into gravel, fossils, and sand. There are several of these exposures along the Gardner stretch in both directions from the ramp, but each one has a slightly different character and mix of fossils. Some are heavier on Miocene material and some are heavier on Pleistocene, but all are mixed from being reworked over long periods of time by river action. Before the fossil spots, we passed the entrance to Charlie Creek. You can't really tell from this photo (below), but the water is less than waist deep here. Charlie Creek is on the right and the main channel of the Peace is on the left. We didn't explore Charlie Creek today and we kept going. Finally, we found the first part of the exposure I was looking for. Flood action has lengthened the visible exposure and there was a gravel bed present that was missing on my previous trips. You can see it in the photo below as the dark stripe on the lighter-colored sandy bottom. The sun was lighting up the water and it had the color of weak tea. Here there was a fossiliferous layer of rocky-clayey matrix weathering into the river channel. You can see it as a white layer in the sandy bank in the photo below. There were shovel holes and a few spoil piles in the area, so other hunters had already visited this spot. The holes and piles looked fairly fresh, so it was likely within the the last few days. Still, the exposure is productive and a lot of new material is crumbling out the bank and ending up in the river. There is a lot of gravel and clay lumps to sift. Digging test holes along the water-line yielded a mix of small common fossils - dugong ribs, small shark teeth, megalodon teeth, turtle scutes, mammoth ivory fragments, mammoth tooth fragments, horse/camel/bison teeth, and the occasional vertebra/skull. I was hoping to find some nice intact megalodon or mammoth teeth. I found small pieces of both, but no large intact examples. Here are a couple of in-situ photos. In the first, you can see a nice bluish-colored shark tooth weathering out of the sandy matrix. In the second photo, you can see a piece of bone coming out of the matrix material - which is crumbly and loosely-consolidated with pieces of varying sizes. My wife was still not feeling too great physically, so she mainly surface-collected along the water-line while I shoveled a ton of sifters worth of gravel. I found a lot of dugong ribs. It was an All You Can Eat Ribs Special and I filled up a sack with them before I stopped picking them up. I left a bunch behind - just too many to mess with. I would work a spot for about 30-45 minutes and then move on further upstream searching out more exposures to sample. We sampled four different spots along a roughly mile to mile and a half stretch. All told, we spent about six hours on the river. Eventually, we turned around and decided to head back to the ramp to beat rush hour going back into Tampa. We had a leisurely, slow, and pleasant float back downstream to the ramp. On the entire trip, we only saw two other sets of humans. One was a husband-wife fishing duo who passed us in a flat-bottomed bass boat with a small outboard motor. The other was a group of three locals fishing from chairs near the ramp when we got back. Surprisingly, we only saw one small gator near the confluence with Charlie Creek. We did see and hear lots of birds though, which was nice. Here is some of the stuff we found. Some is still drying out. Big chunks of micro-matrix are on the right - those will be searched later from home. Lots of ribs in the foreground. Lots of bone chunks and oddballs on the left in the rear. Unfortunately, I didn't find a single intact megalodon. The half-tooth in the photo was a tease. I saw it sticking up out of the sandy bottom and was excited when I reached down for it. I was disappointed when it was only half! LOL.

Beside all the bone fragments I've seen from Sharktooth Hill, this one really stood out. I'm hoping that the relatively good condition it is in will allow for identification. Taking a swing at it, I'll say turtle but definitely not too sure. All 3 pics are the same bone. Thanks!

Hi, just going through some rocks I brought back from Norfolk, UK, thinking quite a few may be fossils (I didn't have long so just grabbed anything I thought looked suspiciously organic by intuition) and as it turns out I think I was quite correct in a number of cases - I think I have quite a few pieces of whale and and a few little bits of mammoth tooth. Trying to confirm this to myself led to a lot of reading and learning online about the local geological formations involved and also whale anatomy, both new topics for me which I always enjoy delving into - part of the enjoyment of fossil hunting for me - I'm less of someone looking for beautiful specimens for display (though I'm not going to turn those down!) and more someone who loves the detective work of trying to identify obscure parts and recreate some aspect of the vanished world before us from its traces. And searching through whale anatomy and what these weird chunks could be I came across a picture of a whale periotic and realised that the weird little pot structure I had was almost definitely one of these, which if I am correct is good because I believe they are one part of a fragmented whale anatomy that is quite diagnostic. Also I then realised that a strangely hooked piece I found right next to it could well be the tympanic! The preservation here is unusual because many theorise that these kind of whale fossils were first laid down in sandstone in the Miocene when Norfolk was covered with a shallow warm sea, and then later in the Pliocene and early Pleistocene when temperatures dropped sea levels dropped too and the area became land (part of the reason the geology of this area is interesting is the constant transgression and regression of the sea over a few million years), these Miocene rocks were eroded away and the harder fossils reworked into new estuarine or nearshore sediments of this era, often but not always with a layer of hard iron-rich concretion coating them which helped protect them (I guess one question would be, is there anyway of easily removing this hard concretion layer?) So if I am right, these are bones from Miocene whales (many showing signs of shark damage), reburied in the Pliocene / Early Pleistocene and then finally eroded out again in the modern day - quite a journey! Anyway, enough background, for starters I'd love to see what people think about this periotic / tympanic. Am I right? Here's a summary of my findings (note I used a pic of dolphin periotic someone posted here for comparison so I hope that isn't too cheeky)