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Two weeks ago I decided to make a weekend trip to several Pennsylvanian and Cretaceous sites in North Texas. I had these sites on my list to visit for a while so it was nice to get to finally check them out. Fortunately @BobWill was nice enough to meet me at Jacksboro on the Saturday. Being my first ever trip to Jacksboro, it was nice to have someone with me with some experience and expertise on the site. Bob kindly told me that it was uncommon to find vertebrate material at the site, but that still didn't stop me from finding the root of a petalodont tooth and the base of a cladodont tooth! On my drive to Jacksboro, I stopped at a couple Pennsylvanian sites near Lake Bridgeport. I first stopped at two exposures of the Jasper Creek Shale. My best find was a dorsal cup of a Delocrinus pictus crinoid. From there I visited three exposures of the Lake Bridgeport Shale. It was fun to sort through the broken concretions and pick up some of the colorful gastropods that had weathered out of them. I even found a tiny pygidium of the trilobite Ditomopyge scitula! Glabrocingulum sp. Straparollus pernodosus Ditomopyge scitula Waking early Saturday morning I beat Bob to Jacksboro but that gave me enough time to quickly eat my breakfast and put my gear on. Being close to the water there was a bit of a chilly breeze in the morning but the weather quickly turned once the sun came out in full force. It was truly a beautiful day to be out fossil collecting. I spent the better part of the day crawling around the site, trying my best to put eyes on every nook and cranny of the exposure. I had read a lot about the diversity and abundance of fossils at the site, and it surely did not disappoint. Here are some of my favorite finds: The aforementioned cladodont Glikmanius occidentalis tooth as found Fortunately all of the pieces went back together nicely! The aforementioned petalodont Petalodus ohioensis tooth I got a little carried away looking for the bigger cephalopods at the site but did manage to find a few Eoasianites sp. and Imitoceras grahamense goniatites Gonioloboceras goniolobum Neodimorphoceras texanum Domatoceras obsoletum Poterioceras curtum Metacoceras sp. Euloxoceras greenei Pseudorthoceras knoxense Brachycycloceras normale Conularia crustula Linoproductus cora Juresania nebrascensis Antiquatonia portlockiana Soleniscus primigenius Trepospira illinoisensis Worthenia tabulata Cladochonus sp. On Sunday I made my way to three sites that exposed three different Cretaceous formations. My first stop was a construction site showcasing the Austin Chalk-Eagle Ford Group boundary. It was a lot of fun splitting open large blocks of chalk from the Austin Chalk in search of inoceramids and crawling through shale from the Eagle Ford Group in search of shark teeth. I was excited to find my first ever Ptychodus tooth. Some Austin Chalk inoceramids Ptychodus whipplei Squalicorax falcatus From there I checked out two exposures of the Britton Formation. While I had hopes of finding some of the famed Britton Formation decapods, all that I found was a tail section of the mud lobster Upogebia rhacheochir and a crustacean claw. Most of the concretions will need to be prepped to exposed more of what they have inside before I truly know what I found. I did find a couple of ammonite pieces too. Crustacean claw Ammonite chunks A tiny Sciponoceras gracile My last stop of the trip was a roadside ditch that I had noted on my drive on Friday. The site is mapped as Denton Clay. I did not really know what to expect, so I was pleasantly surprised with what I found. This Pliotoxaster inflatus(?) was my first sign that this site could be productive From there I just kept finding echinoids, and big ones too! At one point I looked down at the ground and there was a line of Macraster sp. just waiting for me to pick them up. I also picked up this Mortoniceras sp. prepped by nature

Calling on the usual crowd to either confirm or refute my meager attempts at identification. I'm not sure on any of these three. @bigred97 @connorp @deutscheben @fiddlehead @flipper559 @Nimravis @RCFossils @stats @TheRocksWillShoutHisGlory I truly appreciate your input. Thank you in advance for taking a look. And anyone else who would like to offer an opinion -- thank you as well.

Yesterday I took my second trip of the year to do some collecting at Pit 11. A little chilly, but once the sun came out it was a nice day. An idea of how overgrown it is, even this early in the year. The first find of the day A productive hillside A nice handful of concretions I broke my personal record and was able to collect about 3 gallons in the 6 hours I collected. Not many open finds, although I did find this fairly nice Annularia, hopefully a sign of things to come!