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I thought this 6" split was an interesting conglomerate of various barchipods and others impressions from a drift pile near Newberry, MI. About the only impressions it lacks are a good trilobite impression, (though there is a softly pressed one on the other side) and graptolites. I don't know what any of these are, but they are pretty common in my splits... the little #3 image has brothers in almost every split ranging from 1/2 Inch long to 8 inches long ( longest one I have found there. ) such a cool degrading hill. Everyyear I go, more rocks have tumbled out of the hillside , waiting to be picked up. Locals come and scoop the stone up and use it for refurbishing their driveways...Nothing earthshaking here I suppose, but lovely, lovely fossils, all of them impressions or thin remanants like # 7.Most of the impressions do contain some remnant of the original creature, so they are fun to look at, but none of them would survive being chipped out of the rock. Almost forgot, I am actually interested if anyone knows what # 6 is, that ridged brachipod. thanks.

I have several pieces similar to this from a drift hill near Newberry, UP, Michigan. I have been told it is Collingswood?, and found very nice pseudogygites impressions there, none whole however, just adding that for the location. At any rate, I have been trying to figure out what these orthocones are. I have several layered from various rocks which are quite small...little cone shaped impressions from 1/2 " to these. all of them are flattened, with that distinctive crush mark down the middle, where the oval part collapsed. My reason for this post, other than still being curious as to what these creatures were, is how do I preserve them...most often I have both top and bottom impressions, filled with the flattened material of the creature between them...much like a flattened trilobite. But as they dry, the animal part is beginning to flake off...is there something I can do to preserve them, other than slathering them with some kind of glue...I have used butvar b76 on some of the bones I've collected, but these seem too fragile for that kind of application. Suggestions would be greatly appreciated. (1 is the rock with layers cracked, 3 is the image from the third layer, 2 is the image from the second layer, each of these layers have orthocone images in them, ranging from about 6" down to 1.)

While browsing the Dinosaur Mailing List, I came upon a news article regarding Dystrophaeus: http://fox13now.com/2014/08/28/skeleton-of-dinosaur-first-unearthed-155-years-ago-now-being-excavated/ With respect to the discovery of Dystrophaeus in 1859, it is noteworthy that the discoverer, John Newberry, couldn't excavate the whole skeleton of this species because of the difficult terrain, but at least was able to recover some bones, all from the forelimb and scapular regions, and loan them to the Natural History Museum of the Smithsonian in Washington DC. Now the Dystrophaeus Project crew has continued where Newberry left off, and we're hoping they have unearthed all parts of the Dystrophaeus skeleton so that they can be shipped to the Natural History Museum and united with the holotype specimen of Dystrophaeus. Although the excavations are ongoing, you can find images at the following links: https://www.facebook.com/Dystrophaeus http://dystrophaeus.blogspot.com/