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Hello there! I'm still in the process of deciding which fossils to put in my new display cabinets, so I'm looking for some identification help, if possible. All of the items pictured were found in the Toronto area (Georgian Bay Formation, Upper Ordovician) along creeks or rivers - please help me identify them if you can! Thanks in advance! Monica Picture #1: A trace fossil, but of what? Someone suggested trilobite tracks, but I don't know - what do you think? Perhaps @piranha can have a look... Picture #2: This may or may not be a trace fossil - I only just noticed it today. It vaguely resembles trilobite tracks to me (cruziana), but I'm definitely not sure...

I have had the urge to go find more echinoids for a while. I’m still not finding the variety I’d like to have. I have lived in North Texas many years, but recently moved to a new area. So I don’t know where the good sites are yet. I got out the satellite map and searched for a good creek with a good span of dry spot near a bridge and headed out to check it out. I’d never been to Oliver Creek, but I have heard a lot about it. So I headed out to part of Oliver Creek near Roanoke, TX. I have the phone app “RockD”, which told me I was in the Paw Paw. I just got it last week and haven’t had much time to play with it, but if it could tell me the right formation that’s great. It definitely saved time trying to figure it out. It was helpful, because the USGS map told me I was in the Plestiocene Alluvium Formation, which I knew wasn’t right by the looks of the creek bed. It was in the 50s, but bright and sunny with no breeze. I could have parked on the shoulder near the bridge and gone down into the creek, but it was a very busy road and I saw a field a short ways back with 3 trucks parked by a gate. I drove back to the spot which appeared to be a popular spot for hikers and hunters. However the hike to the creek seemed close to a mile. Not a problem walking there, but walking back carrying what must have easily been 40 lbs was a different story. These are pictures of the creek and formation. The just limestone shelf on the left is where I found all 3.25 echinoids that I did find. Along the banks was this densely compacted sedimentary layer with pebbles, small rocks and the occasional sea shell. The riverbed didn’t have hardly any fossils in it as I expected it to have. The scarcity of them seems a bit odd to me. I’m use to seeing a lot more river worn oysters and such at the very least. Before turning around to go back to the creek I attempted to find an entry down a dirt road. I ended up at a trailhead with a dry creek by the parking area. I thought I’d check it out while I was there. I found a bunch of Waconella wacoensis brachiopods and Llymotogyra oysters there and iron concretion fragments, but not much else. That creekbed was maybe 1.5 miles away at most, but I didn’t find a single instance of those shells in Oliver Creek. The most prominent fossils I found in Oliver Creek were burrow fragments and what I believe maybe Inoceramus? clam shell fragments, fossils most people wouldn’t either want or know what they were. Here are some pictures of the burrows that were on the tops of small boulders shortly after I entered the creek. I believe these are thalassinoide burrows. You can see my foot in the bottom right of the pic for some gauge of size. I’m 5’10” so my feet aren’t tiny. Some of the burrows were easily 3 inches in diameter. I tend to think they were made by some crustacean like a lobster or crab. You can see a couple of the openings to tunnel on the bottom of the pic. Another boulder with burrows right next to the other. Much of the creek bed was gray or tan limestone. The tan sat atop the gray. Then the rock and pebble sediment sat on top of the tan. The lowest layer of sediment is where I found the echinoids. The gray and tan layers of limestone are where the nautiloids where. Many fossil hunters had been there before me. The limestone appeared recently hammered on in many places. Also the sedimentary layer above the tan limestone had been hammered away at. Strangely enough I found multiple nautiloids with just the center broken out and the bulk of the nautilus being left behind. I’m not sure why someone would want only part of it. It isn’t like they were washed away. I could see where the whole thing had been chinked out of the limestone, the center taken out and the bulk discarded. I consider myself to be a bit of a naturalist. I prefer to make very minimal impact if any on ecosystems and the environment or do anything to advance erosion or the breakdown of layers. So I tend to not like to hammer things away too much, but if I find a real beauty I’ll probably give in and extract it. My preference for me individually is to only take what is readily available. I do believe it can be acceptable in the name of scientific research and education, but I’m not a fan of it for capitalistic, opportunistic or personal gain. The earth and our environment need all the preservation and tender care they can get. It comes from my training as a biologist. I found 4 nautiloids. I think all are partial. I did take 2 of the scavenged ones where the outer whorls were left behind. I also found 3 echinoids and a top of one of a different genus. I don’t know what genus they are yet because I haven’t gotten them cleaned up. I found 2-3 oysters. Two of which looked a bit like Texigraphaea. That is the slimmest pickings for oysters ever for me. Normally they are the most abundant and are everywhere you turn. It makes me wonder if there is a dam upstream or some pit or other place they get hung up in. I found 2 other brachiopods, but they could be bivalves. I also found the nicest denture clam I’ve ever found. I’m not really a clam or brachiopod person though. Here are 2 of the nautili that I found. They were not in good condition. They split as I was removing them. This is a 3rd one I picked up. Someone had extracted it and left it sitting on the bank. There should be part of a whorl covering all the sutures or growth lines in the lower half, but it is completely missing. I think it was the part with the aperture, because I don’t see an aperture on it. This one is in the best condition of the 4 I found. I only had a tictac for size comparison when I took the pic. They were all Paracymatoceras genus. @BobWill said if it was Duck Creek and possibly Grayson formations that it would be a texanum species, but I was in the Paw Paw. So I’m not sure it is a texanum. These are cool fossiliferous rocks that I found. I’m not sure what the wavy lines are. Looks more like the front edge of a sea shell than a spiraled shell. This one looks like swirled caramel with nice colors and contrast. This is the best echinoid I found and it isn’t even whole. It is maybe 2.5 cm long at most. Center of pic. This is an echinoid top that broke away from the rest of the Test. If I had a dime for every time this happened I’d be rich. This is the first time I found the top without the body. Usually I find the body without the top or bottom. Here is an oyster with the denture clam. It appears largely while and well preserved. I found dozens of these brown layered fragments with 2 holes equidistant apart. The first plate I picked up was about 11 inches square, very thinly layered and felt like a very fine sandstone. So I put it down and moved on. Then I began seeing these everywhere. The majority with 2 holes equidistant apart. I figured it has to be biogenic and therefore a fossil remains of some sort. There are fossil traces on both of them. Several had snail boring marks. The only thing I can think of is Inoceramus clam shell fragment. Any other suggestions or input will be gladly accepted. I’m quite curious. I have pictures of more if needed. The rest of the pics pics are just nature and scenery pics along the trail. I took time to enjoy it walking back, whereas on the way there I made a b line to the creek. This is something a bit unusual that I noticed. The moss and lichen start growing on the trunk only about 5-6 feet off the ground. The whole forest was that way. I can’t recall ever seeing that. I’m not sure if it is natural or the result of a maybe flooding of the area. If it had been a result of Fire I would expect the height to be variable and trees affected in patches, but height wasn’t variable and different areas had the same pattern. Ita just curious to me. A mistletoe plant. I cut a branch off with my knife and brought it home for Christmas decor. Probably should have cut the whole thing down now that I think about it. It’s a parasite plant and damages the tree like the strangler looking vine in the background. That tree doesn’t stand a chance. The sun was starting to go down and was just above the tree line as I walked back. The sunlight was hitting the top of this tree. I thought it was pretty against the blue sky. This is the trail to the creek.it might have been 3/4 mile walk, but it was a nice walk. On the return walk my bag was just too heavy. It had to weigh at least 40 lbs. With the car in sight about a 1/4 mile away I put one bag down and took the rest to the car and came back for the other. My bag is the black speck in the distance in the pic below. I think the last 2 times I went fossil hunting I managed to have men ask me if they could help me carry my fossils and insisted they do so. Maybe I was walking too slow or looked too pathetic carry 40 plus lbs of rocks and fossils. One was a first time fossil hunting buddy young enough to be my son and the other was hunting buddy wanna be. LOL I ran into him while he was fossil hunting too. I’d never met him before, but he gave me his number and asked me to call him if I wanted to go hunting with him. I get that quite a bit for some reason. People sure are just friendly in these parts especially so out in the woods. But yesterday there wasn’t a man in sight! They were all out hunting deer rather than fossils. While I was in the creek I kept having the feeling someone was watching me, but I never saw a soul until towards the end. I’m not the least bit paranoid so I don’t usually have that feeling. I think they must have been in deer blinds, because finally a guy walked out of the woods in full camo with hunting gear and kind of walked in a grumpy, frustrated manner further down the creek. I think I must have been ruining the mood for the hunters, but didn’t put 2 and 2 together until the moment I saw the hunter in camo. I forgot to mention that the creek was covered with deer, coon and coyote tracks, but mostly deer. There were also these little things all over the ground on the trail and in the creek. You’d think I’d get a clue and get gone, but I only had 30 min before I planned to leave and I was heading back by then anyway. I probably should have mosied a little faster though. Dusk, deer and shotgun shells. Not the best place to be at dusk, but I’m blond and it takes me a while to catch on sometimes. That and I’m in the fossil frame of mind.

Hi All, Another chapter done on our study of the enigmatic Fort Apache Limestone! We found one orthocone, and juvenile coiled conchs in our search in 250 pounds of limestones. One larger specimen which we thought was a huge nautiloid turned out to be a big Straparollus gastropod when we finally made a clay cast of the mold in limestone. So without delay, here is this weeks write up! Lower Permian Nautiloids are found in both the Fort Apache Limestone, and overlying Kaibab formation. Far more commonly found in the Kaibab, they range in size from quarter sized to 12 inch monsters. But in the Fort Apache, we have found so far only two nautiloids in our years of searching. Fortunately, they are both different morphologically and offer an interesting cross section of cephalopod life in the Fort Apache Sea. It is notable that Winters, in his monumental GSA monograph memoir 89 found only the orthocone type and identified it tentatively as Psudorothoceras knoxense. Aperture comparison. The differences in similar mollusks can be ascertained by comparing the shapes of the openings. (Aperture) On the left, Bellerophon - a monoplacophoran has a decidedly triangular opening. Center are a gastropod called Knightites sp. which looks very much like a small Bellerophontid, but is a gastropod. And on the right, the cephalopods have a much larger and oval opening, such as the small pea sized specimen we found below. This little cutie was found mixed in with our first picks for gastropods out of the acid fines. This was the only one like this, and you can clearly see the septa evenly spaced along its periphery. The center is filled in with sediment thus appears as a mound here hiding the details of the inner whorls. View of the aperture, a bit crushed showing the inner whorls tucking into the opening oh-so-nautiloid style! Orthocone nautiloid section found at site 2 as well. This is an orthoceras type cf. Psudorothoceras knoxense. The septa can be seen inside the eroded openings in the outer conch. Fortunately, one end has a great view of one of the concave septa. This then would have been the side that the animal lived on in the conch. It is difficult to say how long the original conch was, perhaps 6 inches or so. We Well, thats it for this week. We were hoping for some really big nautiloids like we find in the overlying Kaibab formation - which is the same age. But no, that will have to wait till next year! Next weeks posting will be on the gorgeous Straparollus gastropods we found, ranging in size from pinhead to hefty 6 inchers.

I ran into this box of stuff today while at my other property. Im going to keep one of these specimens, but my kids will get the rest for christmas. Nice that I can do this for them. I bought this stuff many years ago and this box never made it to any of my fossil shows. So glad now. RB

Just looking to hear some opinions on the following pictures for a piece I was looking to buy. Thank you in advance for input!

I traveled to check out the very first outcrop that I collected at a young age. The Nancy Member of the Borden Formation, lower Mississippian in age adjacent to Cave Run lake in Rowan County, KY. These are VERY large outcrops that when I was younger I climbed around like a mountain goat. Now I just look in the float. As typical of other trips I found abundant straight nautiloids (Michelinoceras). A few coiled nautiloids, two nice brachiopods and two nice gastropods including a rare left coiled gastropod (Only the third one I have ever found.)

Disparities in the General differences between Nautiloids and Ammonoids Thanks to the amount of money I had to spend recently to keep my two cars running and my Lady bravely taking care of her ill Mother in Ohio, I am unable to do any field work, at least till I get paid again. I am trying to come up with things to keep busy. I started doing some additional research on my favorite fossils Nautiloids. One of the main problems that occur in some specimen found in the ages between the Devonian and the Cretaceous is how to tell the difference between Nautiloids and Ammonoids since they sometimes have the same general shape. The three most commonly used features to tell them apart, (fig. 1), are septal curvature (Fig.2), simple vs. complex septa, (the wall in between the chambers), (Fig. 3), and the location of the Siphuncle, (the tube that goes through the septa and connects the chambers), (Figs. 4 & 5). I have two nautiloid genus from the lower Mississippian that not only are from the same age but can be found in the same outcrop that do not conform to these general differences. The first nautiloid is Subclymenia in the family Trigonoceratidae. Subclymenia does not have the typical simple suture that nautiloids have owing to the name clymenia (Devonian Ammonoid), (Figs. 6, 7 & 8). Later nautiloids in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic also do not have a simple suture. However, the siphuncle in Subcylmenia is very prominently shown in the middle of the septal wall as is the typical nautiloid (fig. 9). The other nautiloid, genus Solenochellus, that displays a difference also includes these difference with a number of genus under the Super family, Aipocerataceae. The genus Solenochellus does display the typical simple suture of nautiloids but the siphuncle is found on the outer ventral portion of the shell as found in Ammonoids (Fig. 10, 11, 12 & 13) . Well this took care of the majority of this week, now I have to figure out what to do next week.

Last Wednesday was a sweltering 94 degree high humidity day. I had an appointment in the area and couldn't help checking out a favorite site; the Dave Elliot bed on Route 209 just west of Kingston, NY. The bed is highly fossiliferous silty sandstone, just a few inches thick in an exposure that's 30 to 40 feet high. The bed is Middle Devonian age with tiny bivalves and cephalopods dominant. I spent a total of three hours chipping away hunks of rock from the crumbly cliff and had my best day there so far: seven complete or nearly complete goniatite ammonoids, Tornoceras mesopleuron. a three and a half inch nearly complete straight-shelled nautiloid, Michelinoceras sp.?, five Eumetabolotoechia brachiopods (normally I just find one or two per day), a tiny spiriferoid brachiopod (unidentified) I've never found at this site before, bivalves, Nuculites sp.?, the twig of a fossil plant, and two other unidentified fossils. The day was well worth it, despite the heat. The unidentified fossils I'll show Dr. Bartholomew, professor of paleontology and stratigraphy at the State University near where I live. Dr. Bartholomew is doing an extensive study of the Dave Elliot Bed in eastern New York. The Dave Elliot fauna here in Kingston is similar to the fossils from Hannacroix Ravine except that brachiopods are rarer at Hannacroix. The presence of well preserved fossil plants in marine sediments would suggest the presence of a nearby river that carried their remains from some terrestrial habitat. The absence of corals and relatively low species diversity also suggests the water contained a large ammount of sediment making it hospitable to only those creatures who could adapt to this cloudy environment. Finding fossils, especially cephalopods, and speculating on what the prehistoric environment was like is a great source of fascination for me. I try to get there whenever I have a chance. Less than a mile north of here, also on Route 209 is another even older Middle Devonian fossil bed that produces abundant spiriferoid brachiopods and rugose corals, and about a mile and half west is a site where spirifers and occasional bivales and cephalopods can be found.

Last Friday I visited the Helderberg Plateau southwest of Albany NY for the first time in search of Middle Devonian fauna. In a thin bed of dark gray silty sandstone in one of the cliffs along Hannacroix Creek, preliminarily called the Hannacroix Ravine Bed, I collected numerous ammonoids, straight-shelled nautiloids, tiny bivalves, and plants. Brachiopods are rarely found in this bed and none were found that day. The fauna was similar to those I've found in the Dave Elliot bed exposed along Route 209 just west of Kingston, NY except that complete ammonoids appear more abundant here. The ammonoids are the goniatite, Tornoceras mesopleuron. I found three nearly complete individuals roughly about an inch in diameter and two smaller ones, one less than an eighth of an inch, as well as numerous partial specimens. One slab contained three large partial specimens lying side by side. Could only upload one photo taken from my cellphone. Any suggestions on to how to upload the rest?

Good evening TFF! Today I ventured out to the same creek bed as yesterday - Austin Chalk - Cretaceous (maybe could be lower Turonian in age...I am resarching....) Today I took my mom hunting with me so I wouldnt have to be alone and she loves nature hikes. She was in awe. The more I explained to her what we were finding....she started to find even more than me!!! The vast majority of Nautiloids I was only able to photograph as they couldnt be removed from the limestone...but got some great pics and did bring home some a few awesome Nautiloids and Ammonites. So I have some really fun stuff to share with you all Thanks for looking and going on my hunting journey with me!!!! I am of course saving my favorite "find of the day" for last....it's just a fun little project on a HUGE (biggest one yet) Nautiloid. Happy viewing....Lets pretend in advance I DONT have dirt under my nails, thanks! GURRR!!!! Kim SITE PICS: Went MUCH MUCH further down the creek bed today - My mother and I - I am the one in black. **NEXT**