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A little slow in getting around to posting. 2 weeks ago my son and I got back from our yearly trip up north for fossil hunting. Like most years, we haul the tenement on wheels with us to save the crazy costs of hotel stays. We started out for the first 4 days in the Hell creek, digging with Walter Stein of PaleoAdventures. The first day was a little slow with lots of small tumbled bone bits and spitter teeth. Only bigger find was an unknown that I began to uncover, but didnt complete that day. The second day we changed where we were excavating and I found the first tooth of the trip. I found a great pinecone, the second ever, and 13 years since our last. A beautiful Nanotyrannus (our biggest ever by a hair). It had some acid etching and gypsum fouling, but would prep out well. 3rd day we went back to the first spot where I finished uncovered my unknown which turned into an unknown long bone next to a Thescelosaurus left ilium. The ironstone rocks it was bound in were crazy so it took me all day to finish exposing the surface. Day 4 was back at the ilium and clearing above it so I could pedestal and put on a plaster jacket. In the process of clearing, I uncovered an croc lower left jaw with a single tooth still in place. So then day 4 was spent finishing the ilium pedestal and pedestaling the jaw. The ironstone made the work slow, but I did pop out a beautiful (and huge) mammal tooth in the process! Walter said it may be the largest mammal tooth from the HC thats he's seen. We had originally planned to head over the fish quarries of Kemmerer WY, but we decided to stay and explore the Pierre shale and museums for a few days and then dig with Walter a couple more days. We went to the Belle Fourche reservoir (actually the Carlisle shale, not the Pierre) to look for ammonites and shark teeth. We did manage to find a few partials and one possibly complete ammonite, but we struck out in the search for teeth. After that we started to do some map recon of govt lands in the Pierre formation and driving back roads to find an area we wanted to try. I had little hope of being success in such a blind hunt, but we hit a motherload site I named "baculites heaven". They were everywhere. it was difficult not to walk on them in some spots. We filled 2 cardboard boxes with what we could carry and left super happy! Also found a set of deer antler sheds as a bonus. Now, last year we hunted a site on the invitation of Neil Larson. It a fairly well known site among many, and universities make trips to collect baculites there. The spot we found was every bit as good as Neils site, except we couldnt drive directly to it, and it required a bit of steep terrain hiking. The next 2 days were spent museum hopping. We visited the Mammoth dig site museum, the "world fossil find finder" museum (both in Hot Springs) and then the Black Hills Institute in Hill City. Day five in the Hell creek was back to the ilium and jaw. We started the day by jacketing and flipping the fossils, which was still a task with all the ironstone, but we finally got them out. Right after that, my son began excavating below where everyone else had worked. Basically below where all previous diggers had been sitting. Within minutes he popped out (literally it popped up!) was the best T.rex tooth (and only 3rd) we've ever recovered. A gorgeous 1.5 inch pre-max. Amazing that among all that ironstone, where people had been walking and sitting, and coming free with an ironstone rock removed, it was in perfect shape and not broken or even cracked. Our last day was lots of BOBs, chunks of turtle shell and more spitter teeth. Although not our find, I had to share this wonderful, complete Trike rib recovered. over the last couple years, more and more elements of a very large triceratops have been recovered, which is looking to be parts of a disarticulated animal. I don't have pics, but it also seems as if a disarticulated T.rex is also present. about 8 years the first femur of a rex was found while exploring, and now in the same location, more rex elements have been becoming uncovered, the last being a second femur. So, another trip is in our history book, with lots of great new fossils found. As a side note, a few years ago my son found a mammal jaw which was later sent to the Burke museum for study. This new mammal tooth uncovered is hopefully going to be part of the same collection, although Denver would probably like to have it too. A Pachy skull hornlet my son found last year, has a new home in the Melbourne museum. When I find out where any other element find a home, I'll update.

Hello, I have another tricky ID request with no provenance, for this section of a heteromorphic ammonite. Technically I did get an ID and provenance from the seller as a Nostoceras malagasyense from Madagascar, but the preservation looks very different (more grey/white than brown). This was a chinese seller on that auction site who had that generic ID for a variety of pieces so I suspect it isn't accurate, and he couldn't provide more info when I asked. In the past I did ask about this specimen on this forum using seller-provided photos; I was told it looks instead like material from the Pierre Shale of USA, but was unable to further ID beyond "Nostoceratid ammonite". Now that I have the specimen in-hand and done some research I figured I'd ask again. Here are photos and some observations I've made: -Dimensions: the section is about 8 cm long; the chamber thickness is about 3 cm. -The preservation is of a chalky/pearly white+grey coloration, uncharacteristic of Madagascar specimens which appear sandy/grainy and brown. It has parts of white nacreous shell which are faintly iridescent in greenish-blue, though this is not as obvious in the static photos. Might indeed point to Pierre Shale, as I have seen Didymoceras specimens from there with a very similar look. -Based on shape of coiling, I suspect this heteromorphic section includes the last whorl of a helically-coiled turret/spire and the initial part of a U-shaped living chamber which coils "down" and away from the turret. I think this points to either Nostoceras or Didymoceras. You can see the direction of coiling changes sharply midway where the living chamber would've started. -The helical whorl section appears to have been in close contact with the whorl above it. There is a clear impression and maybe even part of the adjacent whorl's nacreous shell. I figure this is significant as it seems characteristic of the genus Nostoceras. Didymoceras stevensoni also has whorls touching each other, while D. nebrascense and D. cheyennense do not. -It seems to lack any tubercles/spines on the surface, which may rule out Didymoceras. -The oak leaf-like sutures are visible in parts, though I'm not sure how useful that is. So far, my best guess is that it's of the genus Nostoceras, and with the big assumption that it is from the Pierre Shale I've done some research into the heteromorphs that occur there: 1.https://digitallibrary.amnh.org/bitstream/handle/2246/1597//v2/dspace/ingest/pdfSource/bul/B251.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y 2.Kennedy et al. 2000 9626-31949-1-PB.PDF 3.https://www.mindat.org/paleo_strat.php?id=13232 Kennedy et al. 2000 especially describes several heteromorphs from the Pierre Shale including a few species of Nostoceras. Nostoceras cf. N. approximans Nostoceras cf. N. obtusum Nostoceras larimerense Nostoceras cf. N. splendidum N. larimerense is the only one with a described body chamber that departs from the spire, but even then it is very slight and doesn't seem to point as sharply away as in my specimen. The holotype is shown below. Size is another inconsistency. The Nostoceras described here range from 2-4 cm height; the above N. larimerense holotype is ~4.3 cm tall. On the other hand, a single whorl in my specimen is about 3 cm thick, so it seems much larger than any of these described Nostoceras. Finally, all Nostoceras described here (as well as Didymoceras) have tubercles on the outer whorl faces, especially on either the last whorl or body chamber. But as mentioned, mine does not seem to have any discernable tubercles. That was a long post and I thank you if you've gone through it. I've tried my best to piece together what I could, and I'd appreciate anyone's thoughts. When it's all said and done I'm thinking it might just have to be Nostoceras sp., whether or not it's actually from the Pierre Shale.

Hello, I'm considering picking up this section of Didymoceras cheyennense (I believe living chamber) from the Pierre shale of Pennington county, South Dakota, USA. However I found out that a lacquer layer has been applied to it to accentuate the iridescence. Is this something that can be removed without damaging the ammonite? And would I use something like acetone to remove it? Thank you.

Good evening to my fellow fossil lovers! This report has been on hold for a while, hovering near the top of my paleo-to do list. But to be honest, I haven't been on the forum as much these last few months and I've just sort of kicked the can down the road, pushing it off. Well here we are in August 2022 and I'm a whole year and some change removed from this excursion, but I say better late than never. With that out of the way lets jump into this adventure! I hope you're ready for... The Roadtrip Through Time: Colorado Part I: Pierre Shale In the winter of 2021 I had the beginning of an idea... Something a bit ambitious, but within the realm of possibility. I wanted to organize a road trip which would bookend my already scheduled excursion with PaleoProspectors to hunt for dinosaurs in Montana during the last week of July. I present this idea to Quincy @Opabinia Blues, a friend I had made on my trip to Wyoming in the summer of 2020 and a native of Colorado, who would also be hunting the same week in the Hell Creek. My idea was to fly into Denver to meet with him, visit several spots throughout the state and eventually make our way north into Montana. Joining me on the trip from New Hampshire would be my best friend of over a decade, Michael @Mickeyb06. With a week of hunting the Lance under his belt from the year before, I knew his eye would be better, resulting in him finding more this time around. Several months of creating routes, researching accessible sites and forming itineraries led us all the way to mid July, when Michael and I would fly out of Boston Logan to Denver. By the time we had landed and met Quincy it was already mid afternoon. Quincy presented us with two options, head home for the evening or push on to one of the fossil sites. Ready to explore, I chose the latter. We decided to stick to our plans and head west into the mountains. The first site on our tour would be in Kremmling to hunt exposures of the late Cretaceous Pierre Shale. While I could have chosen this area or the Baculite Mesa, I decided I would prefer the mountainous scenery. Of particular note was the Kremmling Cretaceous Ammonite Locality, a protected zone where collecting was prohibited. Within this zone were dozens of calcareous sandstone concretions, many of which preserved the impressions of the giant ammonite Placenticeras and other marine invertebrates. This environment is interpreted as storm deposits of near-coastal sand bars, with the accumulation of ammonites coming as a result of their mating rituals, subsequent mass death and eventual deposition (similar to what was featured in Episode 1 of Prehistoric Planet!). After rain, water collects within these great molds, creating natural bird baths, a colloquial nickname for ammonites of this caliber. A view of the adjacent ridgeline and the mountains which surrounded us. Note the hazy sky due to wildfires elsewhere in the state. Candid shot of Michael. The winding trails. An assortment of smaller invertebrate fossils we found in the first few minutes, clusters of inoceramid bivalves and partial ammonites. Information plaque which included a beautiful illustration by Ray Troll. The first birdbath ammonite we found, with a large section of Baculite included. Another birdbath, GoPro for scale. After checking out the site for a while, we ventured outside of the protected zone onto surrounding BLM land to hunt our own non-vertebrate fossils. A beautiful piece of petrified wood. A partial cast of an inoceramid bivalve. One of my only pieces of ammonite that afternoon, a small segment of baculite. My last find of the day, a big chunk of Cretaceous sea bed, covered by the shell impressions of its long dead inhabitants (small inoceramids and a baculite). A beautiful sunset through a hazing Rocky Mountain sky. Stay tuned for more, because there is plenty to come!

I did this prep some years ago, about 10?, and it came out purty dang good. Video is 1 minute 51 seconds https://youtu.be/IkR2SccEdrQ

I found this tooth today in Colorado Springs. In the Pierre Shale formation. It looks very shark tooth like. I prepped it out a bit to expose it more. I think it might be Pseudocorax granti ? ... but I'm not sure. Could this be a shark tooth and if so what species?

Fossil Friday once again! This is the last of the South Dakota exploration trip, hunting the Pierre shale for cephalopods and hopefully a mosasaur. Although the first half of the Pierre shale exploration went pretty slow, it wasnt without a few nice finds. The second part, we were extremely fortunate in that we got to meet Neal Larson and hear a short talk about the local Pierre shale formation, and then he took us out to his personal hunting site.

Hello, I had a question about the coloration of the beautiful South Dakota ammonites from the Fox Hills formation/Pierre Shale. Namely, many Hoploscaphites/Discoscaphites ammonites have a milky white nacre of the shell, whereas others seem to have a vibrant red/brown sheen. For example here are two photos of Hoploscaphites nicoletti I found demonstrating the two types of colorations: I was wondering what causes the difference in this coloration, and whether one is more rare/valuable than the other? I want a nice South Dakota ammonite for my collection and I'm contemplating options. Thanks!

Our local geological society does a small but very nice "Earth Treasures Show" about this time every year. While most of what I picked up were more in the line of mineral specimens, I did score one fossil this year. Nothing spectacular, I realize, but better than anything I've collected on my own. Nice sutures. Incidentally, I just got volunteered to be our program director, which means I'm in charge of finding an interesting speaker every month. With COVID, we've been meeting by Internet the last few months, which has actually expanded our scope for speakers not from our area. If any of y'all know of a paleontology or geology speaker who gives a great talk, who might be interested in doing an online for us, I'd be much obliged. We usually have a pretty appreciative audience -- both professional and amateur earth scientists, many from Los Alamos National Laboratories, though we're a hobbyist club rather than a professional society.

Hi Everyone. I was fortunate to be able to take a weeklong vacation trip the week of Labor Day, my fourth since I began collecting fossils. I wanted to visit friends and family and do some collecting. I was able to do all of that. It was busy, but there was also some quality relaxation time. It proved to be a good break. I flew into the Denver airport, rented a car and drove to Colorado Springs where I was invited to stay with my second cousin and her family. Next morning I was on my way to Florissant Fossil Quarry. I've known about Florissant for over 50 years and over 40 years ago I visited the National Monument, back when I was interested in fossils, but not into collecting them. This time I was intent on collecting and spent four hours splitting shale at the pay to collect quarry. The famous Florissant site was a lake during the late Eocene age. A number of eruptions from a nearby volcano buried animals and plants in beds of shale that were in turn covered by volcanic ash which beautifully preserved their exquisite details. These photographs show the exposure that's quarried, the area where guests like me can split the shale, and my finds from four hours of splitting.

Day 4 was a special treat! Neal Larson came to the field station to give a brief talk on Ammonites, Baculites, and the Pierre shale formation. Then we loaded up and went to hunt Neal's own site, and OMG what a site it is! The only description that came to mind was "an embarrassment of riches". From the instant we stepped out of our cars, we were walking on baculites! The ground was covered with them. It wasnt about being able to find, it was just a search for quality. Neal had a goal for this hunt, and that was to find a Baculites with the jaws still in the chamber. For all his hunting, he still did not have an example in his collection. Sure enough, the person who found the pachy dome the day before, found a bacy with jaws for Neal! Its not real clear in this pic, but this is Neal holding his new prize. I took pics of the baculites covering the ground, but it seems to have disappeared from my phone. I do have a pic of some as we were cleaning them last night. The 2 biggest are almost 2 foot long and had to be excavated. Even still in the matrix they are broken, so I will be doing some prep work on these. I also plan on polishing some of the small sections, and some only need some consolidate.

Day 2 of our exploration trip, this time we were exploring a ranch in the Pierre shale. This was a massive ranch which Walter had done a small amount of exploration years ago. The 3 teams split up again, and my group went to the farthest north of the ranch to begin. This required miles of off-road driving. Its incredible how much area some of these ranches contain! Even though we spent about an hour searching, we didnt find any fossils, although my son and I found 2 arrowheads. I was happy with those, as they were the first ones I have ever found. We moved on to another area and spent a couple more hours searching. There was a lot more exposure at this site and we began to find some scattered broken concretions and bits of bivalves, ammonites and baculites but it wasnt anything great, so then we moved on to a 3rd site (which of course was on the path we already took in). Here we began finding a lot more. There were concretions of shell conglomerate spread around, and many partials of ammonites on the surface. We picked up a lot of concretions to prep at home, broke open a few in the field, and this is where we found our first ammonite. Its small, but its a first. We also managed to find a couple sections of what is likely Baculites Grandis My son seems to have a knack for finding pointy things, either teeth or points. He managed to find a 3rd arrowhead at this last site! Walter was really hoping that we would find a Mosasaur weathering out, but we didnt do too bad. I still have a bucket full of concretions to explore.

What a trip my son and I had this year! We started out in the Hell Creek fm of South Dakota. This was a special trip through Paleo Adventures for his "veteran" guests who have already spent a few years with him and could operate without supervision. We started out hunting a new ranch. This property is virgin ground with LOTS of acreage that needed exploration. The group was split into 3 teams, each taking a different area. Our team was further split into pairs. So, it was my son and me, exploring for new outcrops. The sun was intense, the temperature hot, and hours of hiking and staring intently at the ground for float and possibly something sticking out of a wall. Eventually we worked our way down into a draw and found an ironstone layer. Closer inspection revealed a large amount of fossil material. There were bits of turtle shell, croc scutes and small bone bits all throughout. The only complete bone was this distal caudal vert my son found. The sight was thus named "Mitchells Micro Site". We bagged a selection for further study, marked the location and continued on. From the draw, we worked our way up to the main butte. Another pair was investigating the east side, so we began working the west side. Only a few minutes later I spotted a small sun faded bit of float. I began looking up the slope and saw another, and another. As I climbed the side it was obvious that I was on a hot trail, and then I found it, a bone sticking out of the wall, just below the surface. Sadly, the only thing left was about the last 8 inches of the bone (like Edmontosaur), and its full of root rot so the prep is going to be ugly. Just around the corner I followed more float down the slope and found an Ed vert centrum in the wash. The processes are gone, but surprisingly the broken edge seen in the pic, was laying on the surface up-slope, so its reattached and the prep has begun. Walter's team found a large surface exposure, about half a mile away and determined that my Ed finds, and another team's finds were all the same horizon of large multitaxic bone bed. My son ended up finding a nannotyranus tooth in the large exposure site, the only tooth found there that day. And then a call came across the radio "we've got 11 vertebrae in the wall and they just keep popping out". Of course, everyone went to check it out! It appears to be a juvenile Ed. with caudal verts exposed so far, but Walter is hopeful the most of it is still in the ground. Even though it was already late in the afternoon, I'm sure we would have stayed on the site much longer but a wicked looking storm was building fast and moving our way. So the race was on to recover what was exposed so far and get out while the getting was good. We barely got out too. As soon as we got to the pavement, I could see a lowering coming down from the storm, and it wasnt much longer someone said they could see it sucking dirt up. The last place I want to be during a tornado is in the middle of the prairie and stuck in bentonite. So that was the end of the first day. We headed back to town tired, sweaty, but ecstatic after an incredibly successful day.

I have an ambivalent relationship with the Pierre Shale. I try and try to find good sites that produce fossils but the end result is usually a fossil-less site. For a long time I quit trying exposures of Pierre Shale even though it's the closest fossil bearing exposure to where I live. About a year ago I decided to try the Pierre Shale again because it was close and I was too tired to go elsewhere, like the Fox Hills Formation in Central ND. Mostly I found worn Inoceramus fragments but to my surprise I found a nicely preserved caudal vertebrae from a mosasaur among float material. Following that I began to try the Pierre a little more and today, after finally getting landowner permission, I spent the day at a site with extensive exposures. Most of the Pierre Shale exposures in East-central North Dakota are of the DeGrey Member. The most obvious feature of this member is a large amount of iron manganese carbonate concretions. The few fossils I find in the Pierre here are usually in these worn concretions. The first fossils I found didn't come from the Pierre at all but came from glacial erratic limestone. I occasionally find older material like this among the tons of glacial material that blankets most of this part of the state but rarely do I find such well preserved/unworn specimens. Some nice brachiopods to start. I was happy to collect some of these among a split limestone boulder despite the lack of specific age/locality data. Moving towards the actual Pierre Shale deposits there is distinct worn shale with bands of worn concretions. The large tract of land I had permission to collect on was covered in these exposures.

My wife and I went on a 7500+ mile ramble to break out of our COVID doldrums. Due to the virus we had to change up many of our original plans... which conversely added a number of additional fossil hunting locals as they allowed us to mostly avoid our fellow humans and maintain social distancing by many many miles. As part of our trip preparations my wife sewed us a number of masks, including a whole series of fossil hunting masks for me. Originally we were supposed to stay in Chicago, but we elected to avoid staying in the city, so we only got to do a drive by We started the trip with a bonus dig, meeting up with fellow forum member @minnbuckeye for a guided Ordovician hunt in Fennimore, Wisconsin (THANKS MIKE!) Unfortunately I neglected to take pics of the site so I will only be able to share a farm pic we passed on the way. Mike was a gracious host who kicked off the visit with a gift of several fossil samples from his home turf As with all of the fossils from this trip, all finds are as they arrived back home, no prep. Some of our finds from Fennimore:

RJB offered an unprepped Hoploscaphites from the Pierre Shale of Montana a while ago which he was gracious enough to send to me, although he normally doesn't ship overseas. Thanks again, Ron! It arrived a couple of days ago and I could hardly wait to get down to it since I've had these on my bucket list for ages. You can see the stage he had it at in the link. Here's how it looked in my cabinet after a few hours with the stylus. It turned out that the smaller one at the front was just a partial, and since there was nothing much else except broken shell material to be found in the concretion, I decided to remove the ammonite completely from the matrix. This is the stage it has reached after roughly 10 hours of work. My abrader has unfortunately broken down and I've had to send it off for repair, so this beauty shall have to wait for a while before I can finish it off.

I won't get to do much posting from the road, but since Mike opened the door showing off some of the wisconsin ordovician finds he found and helped my wife and I collect, I figured I would add a teaser from Glendive, Montana where I finally found my first ammonites in the Pierre shale south of town. This little guy was one of my favorite singles because its exposed on one side and completely encrusted with yellow selenite crystals on the other. I will take some clearer pics once we get home and get pieces cleaned up a little

I finished up a prep of a nice double ammonite block that I got from the illustrious @RJB as part of a larger trade for a trailer load of smoker wood last year. I think Ron said these were from the Pierre Shale. Is that right Ron? If so, does anyone know the ID? I don’t know these ammonites well. Here they are, happily atop my antique dental cabinet. Don’t judge my photography too harshly.

I've been looking for hesperornis fossils for a while, and recently, an acquaintance presented me with a challenge: He would send me a bag of broken up hesperornis verts for me to assemble. In return, I had to send him the biggest and best vert back. He also warned me it could be a real headache. I took the challenge. Lo and behold! I was presented with over 60 broken pieces, some of which were tiny and terribly fragmented (not shown in picture) Nonetheless, I googled for pictures of hesperornis verts and put what limited knowledge I had on fossil assembly into this task. After 18 hours, this is what I got: All in all, it was a tiring but satisfying job and now I can happily say I am the proud owner of a chain of associated hesperornis verts

First time or second time in my intire fossil hunting life where I canceled on a trip. My son is a bit lucky cause he has a father who has connections. anyways, he took off for several days and went to a few different formations and I have to say,,, did extreamly well!!! Here are some photo's of some exraordinary fossils!!! Just a few pics,, more to come. RB Holy Cow!!! and yes, he's got the other side to make this a very large and complete Sphenodiscus!!! A super nice spheno!!! This one is going to be freakin gorgeous!!! Gunna take some work but this is the color that is good as it gets!!! Plus lots more in the rock! This one is the one I want!!! This one is special and is a very nice female spedini and a very special nicolleti! along with some other stuff!!! This looks to be a super nice medium sized sphenodiscus!!! This is a part of a big conc from the Pierre shale. Lots of stuff in these! Same concretion. Same concretion. A puzzle but gunna be fun. A bit beat up on the outside of the concretion, but could be a super good b-grade ammonite!!!?

After practically years of scouting properties in my area, I’ve finally found a decently productive site. To start, will just be some neat info about the site.

Here’s one a friend and I have been trying to settle for a little while. One end of the argument is that this is an unusual rock carried off the mountains by glaciers. the other end is that this is a heavily eroded bivalve.