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Hi there, a girlfriend of mine has recently brought a property in Peachester, Queensland. This property was previously owned by a geologist, as well as a archaeologist, (... something along those lines ) who had a couple truck loads of "rocks " dumped at the property, for whatever reason. They've since run out of money so they sold up and hit the road.... my friend and I are discovering some amazing things but we have no idea what most of them are - please help... this is just taste of what's there...

Hi there all, I'm new to this. Please help... View the photos attached and any info would be amazing. Thanks kindly. My name is che-ruby wood.

Hi,is there anyone on here know about opalised fossils. Thanks. Maxx

This is from an email exchange between Dr. Elizabeth T. Smith (of Lightning Ridge and author of the singular "Black Opal Fossils of Lightning Ridge") and I, last month. [Liz also co-authored "Ornithopod diversity in the Griman Creek Formation (Cenomanian), New South Wales, Australia" which was first published in Peer J magazine and which established the new species of herbivore, Weewarasaurus pobeni.] "To explain, it's 0345 and I have insomnia intensified by my excitement about an opalised Lungfish plate I bought today from a top bloke mining at Emu Field (Coocoran), and a little bone I found while going through several hundred pieces of a Ridge miner's selections over the last 4 days. I know it was unfair of me, Liz, to send you that photograph and ask you to guess where/what the piece was from one photograph, not having the advantage that I did of the dish in front of me, pieces wet, under a light. [Digression: before you read on, have a look at the rocks in the dish below and see if you can spot the 'treasure'] : I have sent the same photo again (above) and I'll guess you have a grasp of some Cartesian Geometry so I want you to imagine that the dish has a horizontal X-axis and a vertical Y-axis through the middle which becomes the Origin, the point (0,0). Let's say each axis is 20 units long (which is pretty close to its actual length of 22cms). . The piece in question is approximately at the Point (1,3). What caught my eye was the nearly circular concavity, which irl is about 6mm in diameter. As you know, bones (neck, tail, if turtle) often have those concavities which made that piece stand out in the dish as my eyes roamed at first glance over the contents. The second photo, cropped, is a close-up using the rock at 6 oclock (at the bottom) as (0,0). As I said, I had been going through the material for nearly 4 days, about 20 hours all up, and I was close to the end of the lowest grade of potch and colour (well, potch and potch, really, ha! ) in the bottom of the container he gave me as part of a deal that we did, oh, I don't know, maybe 4 or 5 years ago. I had been through the rest of it not long after I got it, but I went through it all again this week, including the lowest grade (but the latter for the first time). It's not a big-money or spectacular piece with any colour through it. In fact it's rather dull (grey), unassuming, and could easily be mistaken for just another piece of Grey potch in host Rock. A small bone of inconspicuous presence, it does not shout "OH WOW!!" like the little croc tooth on the cover of your wonderful book. If it was one of Portia's caskets from "The Merchant of Venice", it would be the lead one. However, I am typically/predictably enchanted by it, as plain as it is. In your own language, one of the transverse processes on one side of the neural arch has been worn away, either in the process of deposition, or washing in the agi. It's a bone with only one wing, so to speak. But you'll see more of that in the next email when I send you some more photographs. Until I found it, I was going to text the miner and congratulate him on not missing anything. The more unusual or really interesting pieces he takes out --- he has a great eye for detail and for the unusual --- and puts those in separate small bags and has often identified small bones himself, for example a lovely small grey croc scapula (July 2017) and another small bone which I think is turtle and has a little colour in it. The miner is quiet, unassuming, never skites about anything he finds and through our common fascination with opalised fossils, we have become opalised-fossil mates. The sheer volume of non-commercial opalised pieces that he has found and kept only because he finds them so interesting is staggering. Some of the pieces are so tiny I am surprised that he even sees them. I believe he worked two claims at Allawah which were smack on top of an ancient Cretaceous billabong or maybe a creek or similar. The hundreds of pieces that he has kept contain just about anything and everything opalised that you can imagine, or have seen, and plenty of stuff I've never seen before! To my knowledge I don't think there have been any fish vertebrae, but many gastroliths ("yabby buttons"), opalised pine cones, many hundreds of pieces of opalised wood some of which are very pretty or have great shape/contours/lines. Gastropods and other shells, too. Also turtle remains (a few pieces of shell and bones), croc too, and I think at least one Dino bone (not sure). There's also pieces that look like coprolite; worm tubes as well. I can't wait for you to see the whole collection and although I have spent many hours rebagging and measuring and weighing and adding notes/descriptions there will be many more hours spent on it. I can foresee somebody doing valuable research or even a thesis on his collection alone. The wealth of opalised geological, flora and fauna pieces from one small area is jaw-dropping. Most miners would have thrown a lot of it away. His collection is also an excellent summary of the story of opal mining. A lot of hard work over many hours for not much reward and even when there's a huge volume of opalised material only a small percentage of it contains colour, or commercially valuable stones. My guess is that this latest piece --- one tiny bone in many hundreds of pieces, about 5kgs of rough --- is turtle but it has one really unusual feature that I've never seen before but I'll save that for your call after the next email. I may not finish it this morning. It's now 0435 and I'm starting to fade a little bit. All the best, M. P.S. In this 3rd photo where I am holding the piece, a very small fragment has been broken off (middle top left) but is held in place by host rock. Very unusual. Hi Liz I'm sending you some more photos now. One end has a round, smooth and convex protrusion. The other end has that lovely little concavity. Both are about 6 mm across. I'm guessing that the rounded concavity is the rear of the Piece in which the rounded convex protrusion of another piece would fit and move smoothly. Is that right? Separated by cartilage when alive? One of the little "wings" (transverse processes) on the left side is missing, probably broken off by mining or when being washed in the agi. No colour, but otherwise the preservation is very good thanks to the host rock I suspect, as you noted. In that same photo you can see that I started to clean off some of the host rock on the bottom right hand side but I stopped when I realised that some of the host rock also contains other little bits of detritus or whatever that might have scientific interest, so I'm not going to clean it any further. At its widest, it's 14mm but that would be closer to 19 or 20 mm across if that "wing" on the rhs hadn't been broken off or damaged. 10mm high. As is, it weighs 9.6 carats but I would estimate that at least 2 to 3 carats are host rock. Both of the convex and concave ends are about 6 mm but not really circular as much as rounded trapezium, if that make sense? I await eagerly your thoughts! M."" Dr. Smith has confirmed that it's from a turtle, probably caudal at the base of the tail. I know the above is a long read, but I've tried to explain how tedious going through 5 Kgs of potch'n'colour can be, except when one is rewarded by such a lovely little treasure!

So, some of you may have heard of the small outback opal mining town of White Cliffs, New South Wales Australia. For many who read this post, I suspect that you have never even heard of it, or even know that it produces opal fossils. White Cliffs is a 12 hour drive from Sydney, traveling north west (towards Broken Hill), you travel over the Blue Mountains, through the farms of the central-west, the gold and copper town of Cobar and then hitting the historical town of Wilcannia and then traveling north to White Cliffs. White Cliffs claim to fame is an opalised replacement of ikalite - known as a pineapple - presumably cause if its spikey appearance. Not much in the town... A post office come grocery store, a pub and petrol station opposite. Geology: The Wallumbilla Formation (Doncaster Member) crops out as mesa overlaying palaeozoic conglomerates. It represents a near-shore costal setting based on size fraction of the rock (sandstones - claystone) and the invertebrate / vertebrate fossil assemblage (gastropods, bivalves, crinoids, belemnites, ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs). Low-lying hills (mesas) in the distance - white dirt representing the the Wallumbilla Formation (Doncaster Member). I was really hopeful that because of its long history of opal mining, its remoteness and the fact that fossils had been found here in the past, that finding fossils here would be really easy and plentiful. I was proven so wrong. 101 holes and none of them had fossils... This is all that remains of the opal rush that took place in 1889. So in the four days that we were there I found lots of opalised wood, a few shells and that was about it. Top left and bottom left - partial shells. Middle - a really nice example of a cut and polished slice of opal wood, and right one of the bits of wood found. Overall if you are prepared to put in the time, you can find fossils, but from my experience it was very hard to find material from just specking.

Hello everyone I have recently obtained an opal parcel of rough to cut into gems from the opal fields at lightning ridge Australia, however right before I was about to grind this one rough opal something stood out. I remembered walking in the natural history museum in Sidney Australia and noticed the opalized teeth of varies animals/dinos etc. This one was just like one I had seen many years ago. I cleaned it only; no polish just water and a soft paintbrush as not to alter it. From my research, I found a possible match a Hypsilophodon it lived in the area where lightning ridge opals are found and some recorded fossils of this dino are sometimes unearthed there in small pieces. I have tried to contact museums and or universities as I live near OSU and they have one of the best paleontological programs in the country (or so I’m told) and have not heard back after 6 months of trying from any of them. I would like to know if it is a real opal replacement of a tooth or a lookalike. It measures 13.33mm long X 10.9mm wide X 4.02mm thick. And is very detailed under a microscope with tooth like root. Any ideas? I have cut thousands of opals from rough, and have seen millions of pieces of rough easy, including opalized fossils, even some plesiosaurs teeth but never this. The miner, who sold me the opals, said that he has been finding some opalized dino bone fragments lately but they are unidentifiable as they are crushed, and very small pieces, and I also purchased a opalized finger or toe bone from a very nearby find, possibly a turtle flipper bone.

Received in an opal parcel, i have been told this is a fossil, maybe of a plant stem. If so, i would like to at least put a definite name of some sort on it. Any and all help is appreciated! feel free to ask any questions! Thank you! IMG_2225.MOV

Hey all this is my first time posting here! I found a fossil (i think) that i need some help identifying. Its unlike most fossils i have seen. I work in landscaping so i see a lot of rocks, this one was different and appeared to have all sorts of shells and mollusks trapped inside. I cracked it open to find it was full of bones, iridescent bones that looked like an oil sheen had dried over them. I have tried to look up opalization but find mostly plants and nothing really comparable. I need help! More pictures available on request. The pictures do no capture the true sheen of the bones and some of the opal looking substance has started to oxidize i think. You can see where it is starting to peel away. Some of the bones that cracked in half revealed more fossils inside the bones including a large grub worm looking thing sticking out of one. I was only able to fit these 2 pictures per the limit, just ask for more. Thanks for any help!

Good afternoon, Well here goes my first post and I hope some of you might find it interesting. Two years ago, we found this in our mine at White Cliffs NSW. For those of you who don’t know, White Cliffs is an opal mining community and was Australians first commercial opal field and today it still produces some of the finest opal in the world. You will hear people say that mining there is non-existent as it is mined out; well nothing is further from the truth. Only one percent of the field has actually been mined, so there are still lots of discoveries being made. Anyway, I am getting off track. Here are a couple of photographs of the opal when we found it and what has been partially cleaned so far. The whole fossil when finally reassembled will be about 20cm long and tapers from 16mm wide at the top down to 10mm wide at the end. I was surprised at the quality of the opal. When we first uncovered it, it appeared to be mostly potch, however on cleanup, it runs about 90% precious opal. It is all full colour opal, and varies between $2500 per carat and about $100 per carat. Most of the opal would value at $500 per carat and so working on an overall average value of $350 per carat, the opal value of this fossil alone is around AUD$25,000. There is still a fine layer of white clay across most of the opal which makes the colour almost impossible to photograph, but it really is a beautiful specimen (there is still more pieces to be cleaned to be added – the photos are incomplete). If I may ask advice from the forum, I would really like to lightly polish the opal while still retaining the fine detail of the individual vertebrae and at the same time displaying the brilliant colours of this opal – would this be recommended or frowned upon by fossil collectors? I plan to reassemble the fossil using a clear two pack resin (same as we use for mounting opal in settings), would this be ok, or should I be reassembling it by another means? The original sandstone it was found in was very friable and decayed quickly. Should I mount it on a small block of sandstone (or maybe basalt, I think it would look spectacular with the black background in contrast). There is still a lot more cleaning to go yet and many smaller pieces to be reassembled, but any advice would really be appreciated and comments welcomed. Best wishes and thank you for your time, Chris.