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Hi all, Here's a conglomerate fossil I found on the depots of Romontbos on September 24th. It dates to the Maastrichtian stage of the Cretaceous and probably derives from the Romontbos Horizon of the Chalk of Eben Email. On the bottom left is a piece of crustacean leg, with a piece of echinoid test lying inside out on top of the large orange fossil, a spine lying on top of that. The large orange fossil itself, however, is a bit of a mystery as it seems to have a cylindrical shape - that is, both round and deep - with wavy colour pattern, is incomplete on the left side, and is hollow based on a single projection on the front of the piece. Is this just a large fragment of shell, of something else? And then there's this greyish roof-like fossil on the top right. Originally, I thought this was a fish scale, since it's got a bony texture exposed on one side and is rather thin. However, I then got told yesterday that it's too big for a fish scale - which, in these deposits, are thinner and of a reddish-brown colour to boot. I'm now wondering whether it could be the dermal denticle of a ray? Any interpretation of any of these fossils is welcome! @Manticocerasman @Mart1980 @ziggycardon @Jasperfossils

Hello everyone, I have a set of teeth from marine sediment of campanian age from the middle east. After many tries to identify, I couldnt pinpoint them exactly. Some of the rays feel like Rhombodus, but they are not a perfect match... I would Really appreciate any help! Please note there are 6 ray teeth total, just different sides. Also the drawing has (some of) the general types I could distinguish. Thank you! Dolev

Hello! Help please with identification if possible. Size ~ 0,5 mm, one of the smallest tooth which I found. Sorry for a quallity... Middle Miocene, Badenian. Ukraine. Thanks in advance!

Here are some of the cool things I have found over the years!

Hello! Help please with identification. I think it is some genus from Rhinobatiformes, but I did not found such teeth before. Size ~ 1 mm. Middle Miocene, Badenian. Western Ukraine. Thanks in advance!

Earlier this year I was fortunate enough to meet up with @digit in Gainesville Florida where he very graciously provided my wife and I the opportunity to do some matrix fossil hunting in a local stream. We sieved for a good long time collecting many nice shark and ray teeth as well as other items out of the large portion. At the end we nearly filled a five gallon bucket with gravel that we ran through essentially window screen in the creek to get out the silt and clay. My original trip report can be found here: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/114209-north-florida-fun/&tab=comments#comment-1264293 Back at Ken's house, he was nice enough to sort the bucket of matrix into sizes for ease of picking. We then ran the matrix through 3 stacked sifters since we had already picked out anything caught by the 1/4" screen in the stream. The coarsest material from the sifters would have been caught by the 1/8" screen so (1/4" - 1/8" range). The next finer size range would have been (1/8" - 1/12") and the finest would have been (1/12" - 1/20"). We bagged it up into 3 gallon ziplock bags of coarse matrix, 1 gallon bag of the medium and about 2/3 gallon of the fine matrix. Once home, I dried it out and began the picking and identifying process See some links below for my ID questions and some answers. Thanks to all those that helped. http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/119245-florida-mysteries/&tab=comments#comment-1309402 http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/119097-gainesville-shark-teeth-question/&tab=comments#comment-1305867 http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/119485-small-florida-sharkrayfish-teeth-help/&tab=comments#comment-1310743 So far, all this you have heard or seen before as numerous folks, including Ken, have made many nice posts about sorting and picking matrix for micro-fossils. Some of them are pinned under this Micro topic. What I wanted to impart with this post were the results of my picking efforts, or at least the start of it since I have not gone through all of the matrix by a long shot. But I think I have gone through enough to give a reasonable summary of what can be found in this material. After I have gone through more of it, I can always update the info. You can also search on the forum and find many other excellent posts from members that have looked at this material, but I don't think I have seen a complete summary of what can be found (if I missed it somewhere, sorry). I am not going to post a bunch of pictures of what I found in this thread because I have placed many pictures in an album. Feel free to check it out if interested: My procedure was to pick though the matrix and remove anything that was a fossil, whether I knew what it specifically was or not. After that, the first thing I did was a volume calculation to see what percentage of the matrix is fossil material. Out of the coarsest matrix, the fossils made up 3.2% of the volume, they were a bit less in the medium material (1.9%) and even less in the fine material at 1.1% When you put it all together (remember there is a lot more of the coarse stuff) it comes out to 2.6% of the bucket was fossil material. To me it seems like a small number when I think that in nearly every small scoop I put under the scope I would find numerous fossils. It of course is really only all that interesting if one can compare it to other matrixes, but it gives one an idea of what to expect from this material. My next step was to sort and identify everything. Easy to say, but that was the hardest part since this matrix was new to me. I should be able to do future batches of this stuff much more quickly. Once that was done, I counted the number of specimens of each fossil type and just made a simple spreadsheet of each matrix size. So what did I find? Here is a sample from the coarsest matrix: Keep in mind, most of these fossils are not complete specimens. So for example, while there are 608 Mylobatidae ray teeth, only a small percentage are whole teeth, but if they are in that category there was enough present to be able to ID it. You can see there are over 16% that I know are fossils, but not good enough to be part of one of the listed types or even good enough for me to figure out yet what they are. With more time (and knowledge??) I can probably ID many of those, but that is for another time. Were there differences between the three sizes of matrix? Yes, and I lumped the list of types shown above into broader categories so you can see how the four classes of material (I included the hand collected stuff) compare: And lastly, if you put everything together, you can see what type of fossils you are likely to find in the 2.6% of matrix from the creek: lots of rays, lots of sharks and a smattering of other marine material. That's all. Not sure if anyone else will find this interesting, but I'm sort of a data guy, so it was fun for me to look at it this way. Thanks for looking.

staying in the area for a bit and got out to explore a creek near summerville with my son for a few hours. Steamy hot, but it was still nice to be out searching. Nothing sizable, and many beat up teeth, but we did manage a really nice small great white (next to the penny)? Also happy to see the partial Angustidens- our first in any condition.

Hello! Help pleae to identify this tooth. I think that it is Rhynchobatus but I didnt found before this genus and dont know certainly... Size - slightly more than 1 mm. Location - Western Ukraine. Age - Middle Miocene. Thanks in advance!

Hello! Help please to identify this tooth. Is it Burnhamia? Length: 5 mm. Age: most probably Paleogene. Western Ukraine. Thanks in advance!

Hello again! Help please to identify this. Is it some rays tooth or something else? Length: 1 mm. Age: Cretaceous - Miocene. Location: Western Ukraine Thanks in advance!

Figured I might sift through some shark teeth and misc. aquatic creature fossils I have stored in a couple boxes and post them here and perhaps learn a bit more about them from more knowledgeable members. These aren't arranged in any order, unfortunately, as I really don't know much about sharks and am still learning, so if anything stands out, please let me know! I must also apologize for the poor photo quality-I don't have any fancy set ups and this is just a quick perusal of what I have and throw it up here on the forum kinda night, haha. Scale is in mm/cm; I have listed the names and countries for each specimen, but where I have typed labels in the photos, more details can be read by the photo to save me some typing. Otherwise, details are typed out. Hope y'all enjoy! In the Khouribga, Morocco display (45-70 myo): -Carcharias tingitana -Myliobatis dixoni -Squalicorax pristodontus -Odontaspis winkleri -Cretolamna biauriculata -Onchosaurus vertebrae -Odontaspis substriata -Mosasurus -Otodus obliquus -Carcharias whiter -Rhombodus meridionalis -Pristis microdons -Striatolamna gasfana -Paleophis maghrebianus -Odontaspis vincenti -Enchodus libycus -Carcharias atlantica -Myliobatis raouxi -Squalicorax kaupi -Phylodus tolyapictus -Carcharias africana Orthacanthus sp. fin spine from the Permian of Waurika, Oklahoma: Anodontacanthus sp. spine from the Permian of Waurika, Oklahoma: Myliobatis sp. stingray tail spine from the Pliocene of Whalers Bluff Fm., near Portland, Victoria, Australia: Myliobatis sp. Stingray tooth from the late Miocene, Port Campbell Limestone, Portland, Victoria, Australia: Carcharochles chubutensis, Miocene of Peru: Lamna nasus, Belgium: Squalus minor, France: Serratolamna serrata, Belgium: Striatolamia macrota, Antarctica: Protosphyraena sp., Australia: Helodus rankinei, Scotland: Isistius triangulus, Early Miocene, Upper Meeresmolasse, Owingen, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany: Helodus sp., Early Carboniferous, Blackhall Limestone, Skateraw, East Lothian, Scotland: Otodus obliquus, Middle Eocene, Romania: Xenacanthus sp. x2, Scotland: Keasius parvus basking shark gill raker, Czechoslovakia: Isistius triangulus, Early Miocene, Upper Meeresmolasse, Hollsteig, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany: Petalodus acuminatus, Scotland: Helodus sp. Dorsal fin spine, Scotland: Cetorhinus maximus gill rakers, Miocene-Pliocene, Hoevenen, Antwerp area, Belgium: Will continue in next post...

Hello! Help please with identification. Age: most probably - Miocene.. Western Ukraine. Thanks!

Hello! Is it possible to identify genus from these photos? Scale - mm. Age - Paleogene-Neogene. Western Ukraine. Thanks!

Next week I'm headed for Summerville to hunt for megs, and this week at Jekyll I'm getting a small taste of the toothy joy that is hunting at Summerville! This is the first of possibly multiple trips to the shark tooth beach here on Jekyll Island. Got some pretty nice things, too! Trip 1 Family photo;

Hi. Each time I visit Calvert Cliffs I manage to come home with several more "better" specimens of ray plates. It would be great if I could sort them a little better I know identifying ray plates is difficult, so maybe this is a lost cause, but I thought someone on TFF might have some knowledge on this better than what I've found on the internet. Frankly, when I look at photos of ray plates in text books and internet resources, they often look the "same" to my eye. Aetobatis sp. is easy to pick out - it is V shaped. No worries on those ID. Does anyone know a way to differentiate the other genus? How to tell between Myliobatis sp. and Aetomylaeus sp. ? The above fragments all look different, so are there any diagnostic features that could help in IDing them? Thanks for any insights.

For the last couple of months I've been pretty staying on a short leash close to home. You know, money is pretty tight these days and theres not much extra to spend. Saying that t's sure good having a selection of Eagle Ford areas and an Atco member site very near the house. We've explored those often. My 6 year old grand daughter has started her own shark tooth collection. I put her on a few and then she started spotting the ones my worn out old eyes could not see. Today I loaded her and my hunting buddy Mark in the car and for once we were not headed to a fossil hunting site but to meet a fellow fossil hunter and author Roger Farish. Roger invited us to his home in order that we could buy a couple copies of his book The Collectors Guide to Fossil Sharks and Rays fron the Cretaceous of Texas. Roger and his wife showed us some of their great fossils, minerals and artifacts on display in their home. She also collects and has some excellent finds in the glass case. He showed us how to use his book in great detail and looked at a few fossils we found and had questions about. He went over some other maps and publications that he thought we might find useful. His wife even entertained my little granddaughter. He let her pick out a sea urchin for her collection. What nice people and I can tell you that his book is very well written and jammed full of information. It's layed out in an easy to use format. I am sure glad to have a copy of it in my hands. We learned a great deal today talking to them and with this publication we will certainly continue to learn. He even thought he might have an extra copy of The Pennsylvanian Fossils of Texas he could hook me up with but he was down to his one and only copy. Dang it. I'll sniff one of those out one of these days and maybe I'll have a few bucks in my pocket to buy it with when I do. Roger is a member and advocate of the DALLAS PALEONTOLOGICAL SOCIETY. He invited us to join them on a field trip Aug 17th. I don't know if I will feel very comfortable doing that until I am able to join and I may have to put that off a while longer. Economics again. If this summer ever gets over things will be better so I am looking for an early fall. I also love to hunt fossils in the fall, cooler weather vs July and August. It's true we have been provided with some days of beautiful unseasonal weather this summer and I have certainly taken advantage of those days.