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So found this recently - any educated guesses on what it is? I have found similar material, and IDs seems to range from fish bone chunks to turtle shell. This came from North Sulphur River near Ladonia, and is believed to be late Cretaceous. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks, and Happy New Year!

First Fossil Hunting Trip I decided to take the family on our first fossil hunting trip today and we had a great time exploring. I'm new to this forum and also new to fossil hunting. We didn't exactly know what we were looking for, but I came across this interesting piece. Does anyone happen to know what this is? To me, this looks like a tooth, but have no clue if I am right or not. Thanks in advance!

Everything was pretty well picked over in my regular spots so I took a thirteen mile eleven hour hike with a friend at the North Sulphur River Texas. Here's my finds. The mosaaur tooth, fish fin with verts, fish occipital condyle and the big Tylosaur vert made my day. The water moccasins were mating and did not appreciate us walking by. They both took the time to open their mouths and warn us to get away.

The first week in April seemed like the perfect time to make a trip to the North Sulphur River (NSR). On the day the river was fairly high and mud was a big problem in spots. Fortunately, I was wearing a pair of hip waders; otherwise, the day was nice but largely cloudy. After about an hour of walking and finding nothing, looking down, I saw what looked to be a black circle under the water as I approached a gravel bar. The water was murky and the river bottom, about 5 inches below, was covered in about an inch of fine mud. I bent down and tried to “dust off” the area. Immediately, I could see that there was a mosasaur skeleton, with a good number of unarticulated vertebrae, ribs, and assorted fragmented bones. The black bones showed well against the light grey marl before the silt resettled or the muddy river bottom got churned. My first instinct was to call Mike Polcyn at SMU, however there was no cell service at the spot. I considered leaving and returning when more prepared, but the skeleton was right next to a major walkway for anyone winding down the river. There were already footprints nearby. I knew that if the water dropped just a couple inches the fossil may be completely exposed. Rain was also scheduled for the next 3 or 4 days. I made the decision to excavate what I could, hoping to cause the least amount of damage to the skeleton. As I have never had to use any type of tools in the NSR before, all I had was an old rusted wood chisel. No hammer, so I used a nicely sized rock. You couldn’t really excavate directly at each bone piece or they would fracture. Fortunately, the shale was layered, so that I could go in from the sides and hope that the bone would just pop out. I had to stop frequently to let the water clear as it would get churned up, with zero visibility. At times I had to feel my way around for shale edges. It was getting dark after about 5 ½ hours of digging so I determined to head back to the car. As it was fairly difficult getting to the spot in the first place, it was a lot harder getting back loaded down with 60 pounds of rocks. Adding that much weight when going through fairly deep mud is not ideal, and as many know, the shale river bottom can get as slick as ice. After a number of rest stops I made it back to the car. I got the bones home, washed them in water, and used a metal bristled brush. I was glad to see that almost all the vertebrae were fully intact, although I am sure that I must have lost a few process stems in the removal. I then gave the bones a soak in vinegar and again scrubbed with the brush. About a week later I revisited the spot, this time wearing ice cleats on my waders for traction. The spot had been untouched and I attempted to remove the remaining ribs and bone fragments. I saw no indication that there were any more mosasaur bits, as there didn’t appear to be bones any deeper or in a wider area. Unfortunately, it was sunny and over 90 degrees that day, so after another 5 hours, this time with a geologist hammer, I was again really dragging getting back to the car. I hadn’t gotten into Texas “heat shape” yet this year. After cleaning I could see that some of the vertebrae had been crushed and that a lot of damage had been pre-burial and not in removal. Given the unarticulated nature of the fossil it would appear that there was a good deal of predation before burial. I ended up with 24 vertebrae (cervical and thoracic), a good number of associated ribs, a broken quadrate, the parietal, a portion of the pterygoid, and the braincase. Generally, I retrieved from the back portion of the mosasaur’s skull to right before the rear paddle, with no paddles, jaws, teeth, or caudal vertebrae. I am guessing that it is possibly a platycarpus. The challenge now is getting the rest of the matrix off and assembling the vertebrae in correct order. I have emailed Polcyn for his input, but any suggestions would be appreciated. Using a Dremel tool with a wire brush worked on small spots, but not so well on large patches of matrix. I will make a final trip to the spot when the weather allows and when the water drops a bit more. Happy to provide more photos if needed.

I found these fragments of something crabby on my last trip to the North Sulphur River in Texas. They were partially exposed in one of the red bed layers of the Ozan Formation, and were so delicate that they started to crumble when I extracted them. I saved the more whole and identifiable pieces. They're a kind of muddy yellow color, with maybe some hints of the original pigmentation in the blue areas. The red beds tend to either turn fossils black (when they're phosphatized) or a dusty red, so this was quite an unusual find for me. The closest to an ID I've been able to get so far is some sort of lobster like an Enoploclytia, but other than that I'm unsure. Any help with an ID would be appreciated, as would any advice as to how I should go about preserving the fossils to make them more durable, as they are still extremely fragile.

So far the fishing has been good this year at the North Sulphur River Texas. Here's a few of my cretaceous fish finds from my past three hunts.

Here are some pictures from my latest trip to the NSR. Nothing special this trip but I was wondering what the last two pictures are of. Seems like a more recent fossil possible a tooth of a mammal?