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These past few days, I've been running around North Texas to a handful of sites, some old some new. The reason for occasion was the arrival of a couple of our own forum members to the DFW metroplex, my current stomping grounds. I was excited to show off a few of my favorite sites and have the opportunity to explore something new in a short span of time. One of my first forum friends ( @Jackito ) had some work to do in Dallas along with a couple afternoons to kill for fossil hunting. I decided to take him to a couple of spots that had fossils unlike anything found down in Austin. Our first stop was at my new Woodbine outcrop one sunny evening. The pocket did not disappoint this time around and Carter found himself a nice Cretodus, Cretoxyrhina, and several croc teeth! I didn't have the most luck, but I've got a baggie of the rubble that is promising for micros or so I hope. We finished the final hour of sunlight at my ole Pawpaw site. I was hoping we could score a bunch of crab carapaces, but we got a bit skunked in that department. Plenty of complete Engonoceras ammonites and crab claws were had at least. I sent Carter off to a Kamp Ranch site for the following day. I haven't seen his finds from there just yet, but I heard it was a good hunt. Another forum member friend, @LSCHNELLE coincidentally visited DFW this weekend. Anyone familiar with him knows that he is the craziest ptychodus fanatic on the forum. He and I had been planning a Paraptychodus expedition for awhile and Saturday was set to be the day. Before that though, we made a visit to my Atco site in hopes of scoring some Early Coniacian Ptychodus. Sadly, we got completely skunked and almost had serious trouble when a giant tree limb fell just feet away from us. A Long Story Short Lee had some secret intel on a possible site where we could find the elusive Paraptychodus washitaensis, the oldest species of Ptychodontiformes. When we met up, I told him I had a good feeling about our chances to which he agreed. We spent the morning walking around the place looking for any indication that we were in the right area, but nothing seemed to match. After finding a whole lot of nothing three hours in, I could sense that we were both beginning to feel defeated. Instead of calling it quits there, however, we decided to change our focus and take a long shot at another spot. As we walked along the new outcrop, I searched the exposure while Lee poked through the talus. Things were going smoothly as we began to find the usual Duck Creek stuff including a pretty little shark tooth. The atmosphere was very serene, but that took a quick turn when I heard Lee excitedly shout, "PARAPTYCHODUS!". I almost couldn't believe it at first, but then I saw the unmistakable transverse ridges of the oldest Ptychodontiformes known to science. We were filled with a renewed energy and got straight back to hunting. Pretty soon I came across my own smaller Paraptychodus specimen and an extra half of a tooth on top. After a handful of smaller shark tooth discoveries we were nearing the end of Lee's visit as he had a long way to go back to Austin. We turned around and started making our way back the route we came. The majority of the fossils had been in the talus, but I took an ambitious path looking at the exposure. I focused on a darker spot of interest in the wall that I had initially written off as just another oyster. As I looked closer, I saw its wrinkled surface and hollered for Lee to come over. In my hands was a pristine and quite large Paraptychodus tooth! It was more than anything I could've hoped for! My best Paraptychodus washitaensis (mesial tooth) My first Paraptychodus washitaensis. Note the preserved root Posterior Paraptychodus washitaensis A vert I think is sea turtle? A strange fish jaw. Any ideas?

Howdy y'all! Found these two tiny ptychodus teeth in my micro matrix from Midlothian. It's Atco formation and I am fairly sure the second one is P. latissumus (looking for confirmation) but the first one....is it too small to determine? If not, any suggestions as to species?? Thanks!! 1. Size 1/4 inch 2, Size 3/8 inch

Hi all - finally found a Ptychodus tooth here in Central Texas. Is this one in good enough shape to narrow it down to species? Thanks!

This past Sunday I had the opportunity to join in a Dallas Paleo Society sponsored trip to the Ash Grove quarry in Midlothian, Texas. As with other quarries in this area, they are mining the carbonates of the Austin Group and often expose the Atco Fm. (Upper Cretaceous / Coniacian aged) near the base of the operations. In this case, the fossiliferous rock was found in various piles that had been moved aside during their work and usually can be identified by its grey color, speckled with black bits (the black bits either being fossils or phosphatic "pebbles"). Thanks go out to DPS for organizing this and to the Ash Grove quarry for allowing us in. Due to recent rains inundating an area of the quarry containing previously quarried material, we went to a very new part of the operations, where the sought after rock had just been dug up in the last week or so. Unfortunately, fossil hunting in this case greatly benefits from the rock having had a chance to weather so fresh stuff was not necessarily ideal, but the weather was fantastic, so that was good. The Atco is a marine deposit, part of the large inland waterway that cut north/south-ish across North America during much of the Cretaceous. It is a lag deposit , although the exact details of its deposition are the source of much debate. For most of the collectors on this trip, sharks teeth are the primary target, but there are other fossils to be found in the rock. First off, a couple of pictures of the group (there were about 50 participants) getting organized, heading down into the quarry and out collecting. A picture of the rock we were primarily searching for: Here is what I found. The last quarry trip in this area I was on, I came away with well over 100 small, but nice, teeth. This time was quite different, I probably only have a half dozen complete teeth, but a couple of pretty nice ones, so I was OK with that. This one looked really nice when I found it in the rock. The color was fantastic, a nice brown (almost all the teeth here are black), a little over an inch long blade (most teeth here are quite small), and very sharp edges still present. I cleaned it up a bit when I returned home and put a scale on it (increments are CM's). Unfortunately the root on this Cretoxyrhina mantelli is a little punky I think due to pyrite or some other diagenetic change. During cleaning a nice little tooth showed up just underneath (see third picture below) that looks like a little C. mantelli or a small Scapanorhynchus raphiodon posterior The other nice find of the day for me was a Ptychodus atcoensis, my best and largest Ptychcodus by far (I don't see these a lot in my collecting) and a new species for me. I neglected to take a picture that showed the whole rock it was in, about a grapefruit sized chunk of limestone but here is a close up of what was peaking out. When I returned home, I put my air scribe to work to see if it was complete or not, luckily it was and is in great condition. I have opted to leave it in the matrix for now and have trimmed down the rock to a more reasonable size. Lastly here are a few of the other fossils I picked up. A couple of bivalves (probably Ostrea for the small one on the left and Lopha for the larger) and then a chunk of what would have been a large Inoceramus which are quite common in this material. The fourth picture is wood I am told (I'm not a plant guy) which also was quite common in the the rock. That is all for now, thanks for taking a look. Mike

Hello Everyone, I picked up some Cretaceous fossil matrix (fossiliferous rocks) from an auction that our WIPS (Western Interior Paleontological Society) group held last year. I picked them up knowing I wanted to give them a nice Vinegar bath and pull out the teeth/fossils trapped in the matrix. So far it looks like it was a very vigorus marine environment. The teeth and fossils are fairly worn and broken. Lots of fishy bits and pieces. A few shark teeth, fish teeth etc... I'm going to share the finds as they drop out of the matrix. I pull the fossils out of the solution every day or so, and refresh the vinegar once or twice a week. I manipulate and move the fossils using a small paintbrush. With what I have so far being able to sit quite comfortably in a pencil eraser's footprint. 1) My question is, what are these round things ? They have bands of light/dark and they are water polished. They don't 'look' geological. But I'm not familiar with fossils/structures such as these. Average size is less than a mm. Maybe 0.5mm if I had to guess. I'm not familar with Ostracods .. but I thought they were more assymetrical in shape. See image below. These survived the Vinegar bath and I've probably noted 2 dozen of about the same size and shape. 2) The formation I am assuming is from Colorado? The member these fossil rocks belonged to was a long-time member here in Colorado. The fossils feel like they are lying in that Cretaceous timeframe and look familar to what I have seen before. Does anyone recognize this rock type/formation ? A selection of the finds so far: The Ptychodus is about 2mm Thanks, Brett

I’ve had these three Ptychodus teeth for awhile but hadn’t made any serious attempts at ID. I’m finally starting to work on the Ptychodus display though so it’s probably time to ID them. They are all Niobrara Chalk teeth. 2 from Smoky Hill, 1 Fort Hays Limestone. First up is the Fort Hayes tooth. Roughly 6mm wide so quite small and very flat crown. It does appear to have a circular pattern so I thought perhaps polygyrus/marginalis but I’m not at all confident in that as an ID.

This month I decided to take on the challenge of finding my first Kamp Ranch sites. It's not the easiest thing to do since, to my knowledge, the elusive layer is not mapped anywhere. I spent a lot of time scouring the waterways of North Texas and by the end, I came up with two distant potential spots for a couple days worth of hunting. I traveled to the first site one sunny morning and after a long walk, I finally made it to the water's edge where I met endless limestone slabs filled with Collignoniceras woollgari impressions, meaning I was just in the right place. I readied my rock hammer and began the search. It was mostly just oyster fragments initially, but soon enough I started picking some nice Squalicorax and tiny Ptychodus anonymous. The Kamp Ranch was pretty hard, and that meant that the Squalicorax rarely survived extraction. Even the Ptychodus, which are usually quite resilient, ended up shattering more than I'd like to admit. I built up a steady flow of Ptychodus anonymous before spotting an enigmatic crusher tooth. I was excited since it appeared to be very large and of a rare species, but it turned out only to be a fragment. What's strange about it is the flat crown and few yet thick transverse ridges on top. The only species I know of this nature is Ptychodus latissimus, but in Texas those are better known to begin in the Basal Atco (Early Coniacian). I did some research at home and found that P. latissimus has been observed in Middle Turonian outside of Texas, so I suppose it is a possibility here. Possible Ptychodus latissimus After some more finds like a huge Xiphactinus tooth and Cretoxyrhina cusp, I at last flipped the slab that would yield the definitive best find of the day. In perfect condition was the biggest Ptychodus anonymous I had laid eyes on. I was familiar with the fact that the Turonian P. anonymous morphotype was supposed to be larger, but it's always different seeing it in person. Initially, I wasn't totally sure if it was P. marginalis instead, but the taller crown and anonymous-esque marginal area led me to believe it was the former. P. anonymous A couple weeks later, I ventured out to my second site. This locality had a smaller exposure on timid waters, so I was looking forward to being able to hunt for freshly eroding fossil from the limestone wall. When I first showed up, I was once again greeted with limestone slabs containing Collignoniceras woollgari impressions, however I was struggling to even find a single shark tooth among them. I recalled reading in the past that the Kamp Ranch can be spotty, so the possibility that this locality might be barren was looming in my head as I traversed the creek. Once I reached the exposure, I pulled out the probe and danced my way through the limestone blocks. I skimmed through the whole exposure pretty quickly, but only came out with a few Squalicorax teeth and a big Cretoxyrhina from the gravel. I was a bit disheartened. This was such a nice looking location, how could that be all there was to offer? Cretoxyrhina mantelli in the gravel Desperate to salvage the day, I got down low and searched the under side of the lowest slabs. After dodging a spider, I spotted the outline of a Ptychodus sticking out from a shaley layer cemented to the underside of the limestone. The matrix was soft enough I could dig it out with my fingers. Then I noticed another... and another. This layer was extremely productive and soon I pried off a slab of it to process atop a boulder. I could not believe the number of teeth I was finding. Pristine teeth from just ONE slab Not only were the Ptychodus numerous, they were also diverse. Shawn Hamm in a recent paper listed six species of Ptychodus occurring in the Kamp Ranch. I didn't know it at the time, but after some cleaning, I have EVERY one of those species represented from only a day's worth of hunting! Some of the more special ones included P. mammillaris which was a new species for me. Also, I found an upper medial file tooth of P. marginalis(?) which are always a neat tooth position with their unique proportions. P. decurrens is one I usually don't associate with the Turonian in Texas, but they made it through and I managed to snag a textbook one. Ptychodus mammillaris Upper medial file Ptychodus marginalis(?) Ptychodus decurrens The Lamniformes were also plentiful, though difficult to bust out in one piece. Dallasiella willistoni, a common smaller tooth from the Turonian Huge Cretoxyrhina mantelli One of the coolest finds was not a tooth at all or even from a vertebrate for that matter. The Kamp Ranch is a bit famous its fossil pearls. When I spotted a perfectly spherical curvature from the slab I put in 110% effort to pop it out cleanly and not have it fly away into the flowing water below. It came out in one piece and after looking through the microscope, it has the polygonal structure expected for a Kamp Ranch pearl. Inoceramid Pearl. That rock it came from also had two Ptychodus anonymous and a Cretoxyrhina mantelli as well Towards the end of my slab-splitting, I found an enigmatic fossil. Its flat and a fishy bone look with a bunch of holes on one side. The other side is completely smooth. My best guess is it's from a Plethodid fish, but it looks pretty different from the South Bosque (also Turonian) Plethodid fragments I have in my collection. Possible Plethodid After a long and rewarding day hitting the slabs, I turned around to head for the car. Of course, my eyes were locked on the gravel anything I had missed on the way in. No teeth were to be had, but I did find a thin shale ammonite entirely separate from matrix. I have no idea how it managed to survive in the gravel. It's so delicate and even has the tubercles of the shell intact on both sides. It's obviously not from the limestone, but would this still be Collignoniceras woollgari? It was a great day. I'll be visiting both of these sites again in the future for sure! Finds at the second site: Top L to R: P. marginalis, P. mammillaris, and Undescribed species Bottom L to R: P. anonymous, P. whipplei, and P. decurrens Top: Cretoxyrhina mantelli Bottom L to R: Plethodid?, Dallasiella willistoni, Inoceramid Pearl, Cretalamna sp., and Squalicorax sp. Thanks for reading!

I already wrote about in a previous trip report back in September, but I thought it worth posting here as well (I'll link the original trip report below). I'm proud to say that as of last October I was able to donate my first fossil to science - a life-long goal of mine since I was a kid! The mosasaur vertebra I found has the potential to be one of the oldest known to science, or at the very least one of the oldest found in North America. I donated it to SMU's collection after correspondence with Dr. Mike Polcyn as it only seemed right that one of the leading experts on early mosasaurs should have it. Alongside the vertebra I also donated two Ptychodus teeth found within the same shale layer to assist in the dating process. Basal Mosasaurid (anterior caudal vertebra) Upper Cretaceous (Middle Cenomanian) Lake Waco Formation Central Texas - found on September 15, 2022 Donated October 14, 2022 to Southern Methodist University ^ @Jared C and I recently returned to the site to collect unweathered bentonite to assist in the dating process. I haven't taken the several bags we filled up to SMU to deliver to Dr. Polcyn yet but plan to do so soon.

Perhaps the most definitive, lasting project I've had during my short time in paleo is the excavation and study of a basal mosasaur skeleton my step brother and I found in September of 2021 (If you missed it, it's in my blogs on my profile). The site is on a fairly inconspicuous outcrop of the Eagle Ford formation, in a zone that's atypical for the upper eagle ford, as the rock itself is very condensed compared to what is usual for the upper kef. Notably, while Mosasaur material is very, very rare in the kef (kef is an abbreviation for the Eagle Ford formation), it pokes out with greater frequency here - I have found two other Isolated Mosasaur teeth there before. Both @LSCHNELLE, a geologist who is very familiar with the Eagle Ford, and a paleontologist that I'm working with have made this observation about this atypical site. Between the three of us, we weren't sure there was another exposure like it elsewhere. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Over spring break, I was in need of some good luck (after losing the transmission in my new car ), so, finding myself back using my parents car, I made a drive to spot I had scouted a year ago, expecting to see the massively steep Ozan exposure I had spotted from a distance before. Upon arrival, I was greeted with those gorgeous grey shales in all their glory. Upon closer inspection though, I was surprised to realize that things weren't as they seemed. The shales were lighter than the Ozan, and physically much harder. I was suppressing exciting pangs of recognition for a few seconds, but it soon became very clear that this massive vertical exposure was an outcrop of that same lithologically atypical zone of the Eagle Ford that produced our Mosasaur. What's more, this site is many miles away, and mapped as a completely different geologic group. It appears that through upfaulting, a cross section of this zone shot through the layers of earth above it, standing as an Island of the Turonian in a sea of much younger rocks. One feature of the Eagle Ford (or any formation for that matter) is that the bulk of the rock is barren, only interrupted by small intervals of great fossiliferous accumulation. This stood to be true at this site as well, so I set about chasing those shelly lenses that caught my eye and changed my path of life over a year ago. It didn't take long before I came to a shell lens a couple inches thick. One con of this site being a vertical cliff is that I can't peel slabs up as I can at its sister site, so I had to slowly chip into the lens, one piece at a time. Here are some finds that resulted: Small shark vertebra Fish vertebra An oddity, insitu in the middle of the shelly lens. Try your guess first Upon removal: A really lovely Ptychodus tooth that I suspect is the unpublished species also found at our mosasaur site. Since the species has not been described yet, I can't fairly quote any exact morphological features to cement my ID, but I've seen enough by now to "know the look", and have had several of these teeth confirmed by Shawn Hamm. This tooth was one of the best fossils I could find to confirm the comparison to the atypical kef mosasaur site. Here's another view: Shortly after, I distracted myself from hammering out small chunks of the lens and took a peak under the one tiny 3D protrusion of the lens that there was. Under a ledge only a few inches wide sat a fossil that made my heart skip a beat: The tip had fallen off, likely from hammer vibrations since I chiseling not far away. But, undeterred, I extracted the slab and was met with an imperfect, though still beautiful sight. To find a mosasaur tooth after removing what was in total less than a gallon bag of slabs made for an exciting day. Though broken, a basal mosasaur is a basal mosasaur, who can complain? I was especially excited that this lightning fast find came from a new site - meaning there might just be what I'll happily nickname a "Kef mosasaur lens" that transcends beyond the boundaries of our original site. Any trip where you walk away pondering those things is a good one