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Hello, I bought this megalodon tooth some time ago. I let it fall on the gound recently and now it is broken. I managed to find most of the missing pieces and started to put some glue. Is it possible to restore it ? Best regards,

I have been working on a larger prep project and i have been brainstorming ideas for how to deal with a crack that formed when prepping. The crack is between two halves of bone and they are not as close together as they could be. I have considered re breaking the two halves and then re gluing but after thinking on it awhile, im not sure i will be able to get the two halves any closer together than they already are. So for display im thinking i will fill the crack with some sort of putty that conceals this crack. My concern is just that later on, if this piece ends up in a museum collection and someone wanted to reverse this and join the two halves in tighter alignment, they would be able to remove this putty or whatever was used without to much trouble. I have used a number of different putty's but im not aware of any removable ones. Im looking for any suggestions for removable putty's or alternate crack filling solutions. Thanks, Nick

I present this here large asaphus trilobite, besides being repaired how much if composited/fake is this trilobite?

Hello everyone, I recently received this large 14inch ammonite and the shipper had no care in the world to put even an ounce of protection thus this is the result I'm not experienced with much prep and not confident superglue would cut it so what would you all recommend to help repair this specimen as well as clean off some of the dirt/dust layer coating alot of it?

Hello I'm a newbie fossil collector (and newly active member) who happens to several interesting fossils for a decent price from our favorite auctions sites 1st is are Knightia. The seller claims that they are not restored or enhanced 2nd set are 4 Spinosaurus teeth. The seller claims that cracks have been repaired, but no restoration or composition has been made (Pictures 2-9 of teeth in pairs) 3rd is a Lycoptera which the seller claims is not restored or enhanced 4th are plates of Elrathia Trilobites from Wheeler Formation 5th are Fossil Ferns from Llewellyn Formation 6th is a Hyracodon jaw fragment I would like to ask if the sellers' description of the items are accurate and/or if they are restored, enhanced or composites. Cheers!

Hey guys. So my friend recently gave me this awesome fossil canine tooth from China. Unfortunately the tooth has been very badly glued back in 2 different places after it was broken. I would like if possible to know how to remove glue, superglue in this case so I can reglue it properly. I would not like to risk the tooth being irreversibly damaged... Do you guys know how and if I could do that? Thanks for any imput. Kind regards, Thomas

Hi All, I came across this Merycoidodon Oreodont Skull and was curious as to the actual level of restoration that's been done. As far as I can tell the grey putty filling is where work has been done to stabilize the skull, but bones haven't been recreated. Am I missing anything else? Thanks! -Barret

Hey there, im hoping some of the clever folks here might be able to offer some advice on a prep im working on. Im currently prepping a large 150 - 200 pound block. In the initial prep, a part of the block cracked and opened up a small crevice. This crevice did not beak completely into two pieces, it was still held together by the un removed matrix surrounding the fossil. At the time, i didn't want this to slowly shake into a bigger crack or lose pieces due to the vibration of the air tools. There was/is a lot more prep to do and between prep and flipping over a large block i was worried about loosing pieces. So i filled this gap with super glue with the idea that i could reverse this later on and join the two pieces together much tighter so the crack would disappear or be less noticeable. As the prep continues, im getting closer to the time when im going to have to re glue the pieces. The problem is that a lot of small pieces of the fossil are glued back on around the area of the break. So i need to figure a way to dissolve the glue at the break but not in the area around the break. Normally i would place the entire fossil in a tub of acetone to dissolve the glue from the joint and then glue the two pieces back together. But since there are a lot of small, non descript pieces close to the break, im reluctant to do this. I already tried poring acetone over the break to try to separate the two pieces but this didnt work. This would all be easier if the fossil was not so large, heavy and hard to move. I may end up having to soak the whole thing in acetone to dissolve this joint but i want to avoid this if possible. Does anyone have any suggestions for alternate ways to remedy this problem? Hard to photograph this fossil so here is a basic drawing of the problem. Nick

Hello all. I recently received a fossil branch in delicate shale. It wasn't packaged well and arrived broken. It is a shame. I want to know what the best way is to repair it and hide the cracks. The first picture is what it looked like before it was sent to me. Thank you! ps: if anyone knows what it is an ID would be appreciated as well, but my primary concern is the best way to repair it.

I just returned from a collecting trip and to my dismay i realized that i am missing a piece of a fossil bone i collected.. The bones at this site are in concretions and are not always visible on the outside so a lot of the time they have to be broken to know for sure what is inside. I thought i had a fairly clean break but when i got home and re assembled the pieces, it seems that one section of the bone is missing in the center. I have delt with small problems similar to this before by filling the missing space with Durham's putty and sculpting it on the edges. With this fossil, an entire section of bone is missing. So i will want to reassemble the rock and fill the section before i start in of prepping it so i know exactly how wide the space is. My concern is that something like Durham's wont be strong enough to support the full strength of the bone during and after preparation. Can anyone suggest a similar sculpt-able putty that would not shrink and dry incredibly hard? Since the concretion is in pieces its hard to photograph in a way that conveys what i mean so i drew a picture of the problem. Nick

Hello everyone, I purchased a Keichousaurus from our favorite auction site. It was a reputable seller and using a black light and closer inspection it's real. Plus I have the added bonus of it having been dropped and split through as it was only packed with newspaper and not market fragile, then played footy with by australia postal service... so, yeh.. its' real but it's broken. The top left has crumbled and is discolored. and it has a crack through the tail. Can anyone advise me how to adequately repair this? I have been promised a replacement specimen which will be sent soon, But I would like to salvage what I can. Thanks in advance.

Hi all, I recently purchased this Keichousaurus specimen off an online seller (not online) and wondered if it was genuine or not... the seller stated that there had been repair to the matrix (don’t know if that shows up in the attached images:|) The seller also said there was no repairs, painting, carving etc and that the actual fossil was 100% genuine. Inspecting it with a loupe I could see the bone matter is raised from the matrix (slightly) and that there may be teeth present on the skull, but I don’t know if they’re painted on, as that is sometimes the case. Anyway I thought I’d come here to get it checked out as I’m not very experienced with fossils and fakes yet. Any opinions would be greatly appreciated Jai.

I got a call last week to pick up a croc skull for repair. I excitedly went to get said skull only to find a rather poorly done fake for me to repair. I said, “you know this is fake right?” The response was “uh, yah. Go ahead and fix it.” So, I have gone from fossil preparation to “art” restoration today. This is what I had to work with. Seems easy enough right? Wrong! The hard part about fixing a fake is understanding how the fake was built in the first place. This is made of random bone fragments cemented into a “matrix” with random croc teeth cemented in place. They didn’t even try to make it look real, clean up the cement, or put teeth in the right place. So, I had to figure out where these things are “supposed to go”. After the repairs were done, I scraped off some of the “matrix” and made a paste with glue to fill the cracks...

It seems that all my equipment is giving me problems lately. The newest aggravation is a hose problem that I'm hoping someone can help me with. I'm getting no air flow from the moisture trap to the pen. I can unscrew the release screw on the trap and it comes out fine, but it won't travel through the hose. I've tried reversing the flow as well as blowing it out at high pressure, but neither works. I've tried pinching the hose to look for blockage, but I can't seem to locate one. This part of the apparatus is not meant for disassembly, so I can't simply disconnect the hose from the trap to see what's going on. Is this fixable, or do I have to locate a replacement part?

I purchased a unsightly Franken-Basilosaurus tooth a few weeks ago for pretty cheap. Seeing as though i don't have $400-700+ to spend on a nice basilosaurus tooth i saw potential and a fun project in this cheap ugly duckling. Yes, it's Moroccan. It came with the typical glue/sand mix covering it, filling all cracks, voids and roughing out transitions of deceptive franken composites. How it came: Ok, first things first. Clean it. I used acetone, a razor, a needle, a tooth brush and my engraver. Hours of delicate work later i finally see what i'm working with. After cleaning: Yeesh, this might be more work than i thought...... And someone composited a incisor or canine tooth tip on the top of my premolar!! Bwahahaha!! Ok, composites need to go. Bye, bye Next i noticed this was not lined up correctly when it was glued back together. So i grab my trusty dremel tool and proceed to carefully saw this baby in half. Then i removed most of the epoxy/sand glue from each side. Continued.........

Hi All. Opinions please. I found this item on everyone’s fave auction site. 14cm Seems a side on view? Aside from the obvious repair, any red flags?

I am after a bit of help please. I have a fish nodule with a crack that has separated. How do I go about repairing it? I can either attempt this myself. What glue/joining agent do I use? Is this straight forward? Bearing in mind I have never attempted this before. I would also be open to having someone knowledgeable do this for me. If it doesn't end up costing me a fortune. Does anyone in the UK know of someone reliable. I am at work. Will post photos later Thanks

I received an awesome set of Moroccan matrices from @caldigger (thanks again!) that included a cracked elasmosaurus tooth. I didn't consolidate the tooth before prepping, as the matrix surrounding the tooth was far harder than the rest of the block, leading me to believe it had been sufficiently consolidated. It split at the crack whole handling it before prep work even begun, so I continued with the rest of the tooth and got the rest out pretty cleanly. The fossil isn't valuable, so I'm not too worried about perfection! Its all part of the learning experience for me. My question is about the correct order to go about repairing this tooth. When you line up the pieces, there is still a small hole from a missing section, and I suppose filling it with the matrix and then adding a layer of Paraloid dilute would be the best way to go? So here is my (tentative) plan of repair: Consolidate the pieces in the dilute Super glue the bits back together as cleanly as possible Fill in the cracks with wet matrix (?) Let it dry, then gently coat again with the dilute solution Would exposing it to the dilute twice be overkill? And I know acetone tends to dissolve super glue, but I assume the glue would hold if it's inside the tooth and the second coat of Paraloid goes on just the outer layer after it has all dried? Hopefully I explained my intentions well, and I'm looking for ideas as to what would be the best order to attempt these steps in or otherwise a preferable method (if there is one) of repair!

I saw this item for sale which is of interest. Dercetis sp from Lebanon - Cretaceous. Contacted the seller who informed me that the crack is a repair, not a composite. Thoughts?

I'm a fairly novice preparator and I was wondering if some of you more experienced folks could help me out a bit. I am working on a dipleura that unfortunately broke apart upon extraction. Some fragments of the pygidium were lost. I have the imprint and was considering casting the missing parts in plaster or something ideally reversible. My goal is to turn this fossil into a nice display piece. There are also some large voids in the matrix I would like to fill in. I've never done anything of this sort to a fossil before and I was hoping for some guidance on materials, techniques, etc. I have attached a couple of photos of the areas I would like to repair.

Hi! I recently posted about two weeks ago asking for techniques on repairing a 6' megalodon tooth. I only had about 60% of the tooth to work with, so my intent was to recreate the missing section. I received helpful feedback and support from fossil forum members, and I've finally taken a crack at it. I am pretty excited with how it's coming along, so thought I'd share my progress. Aside from a shattered triceratops rib, this is the only fossil repair I've ever done. I'm still finishing up the back half of the tooth as well as adding more detail to the front (trying to better hide the split). Please let me know what you think and any further advice you may have! Also, in case anyone is interested, the materials I have used so far are: Metal repair epoxy Wood repair epoxy Acrylic paint Clear gloss top-coat Thumb-tack Thanks!! Lauren

Hi, I recently purchased some fossil titanothere teeth on eBay. I don't think the seller had ever sold or shipped a fossil before, when it arrived and I picked up the box it became immediately clear that it hadn't been packed well. When I opened it my worst fears were immediately confirmed. Lying there in a single piece of bubble wrap was my fossil in pieces . I'm hoping to repair it and I was thinking of using some plaster and paint certain parts black to repair it but people here are much more experienced than me and usually have better ideas then I do. Here are some photos:

About a month ago I went to Penn with two fossil buddies and they both found prone greenops. Sadly I did not find one. However both of these greenops were split between the positive and negative and probably were missing some skin as the material was quite flaky. For one of my friends this was his first ever find of a prone greenops. Prone greenops that are nicely laid out are a very rare find in the Windom shale. Most of the ones I have found from there or others that I have prepped for people are fully, partially enrolled or distorted. So to my fossil buddy this was a bit of a special find. We wrapped up the two pieces in tin foil in the field and I agreed to take it with me and prep it for him. Well zoom ahead a month in time and I am going out with him last week to collect and he asks how is his greenops coming, whereby I realize that I have not only not started it ,but in my senility had forgotten I had it and had no clue where it was. Well when I got home it turns out that I had never unpacked the bucket of fossils from that trip and low and behold his fossil was packed just as we had left it. A careful look at both parts under the scope confirmed my opinion that the bug was in pretty rough shape , but a prone greenops, not to mention perhaps his first ever prone warranted we attempt to bring it back to life. Unfortunately I did not take any pics until a ways into the prep but here is what I did to start. 1. Washed the mud off both plates scrubbing with a tooth brush 2. Squared up what would become the fossil plate with the diamond gas saw 3. Cut out as small as possible a square from the top piece of the matrix that contained the top part of the greenops using my 7 inch tile saw with diamond blade 4. On a belt sander using aluminum oxide 120 grit thinned the top piece as much as safely possible to help minimize my prep time later. 5. Using super thin cyanoacrylate glue reattached the top portion to the main slab clamping tightly with a c-clamp. Asusual all prep was done under a zoom scope at 10x to 20x magnification using a Comco abrasion unit and in this case a German Pferd MST 31 scribe exclusively.. Not a lot of scribing was done other than to outline the bug as the skin was not in great shape. Abrasion was pretty much done with a .18 and .10 nozzle using 40 micron previously used dolomite at 30 PSI. Here is the bug after about an our of prepping . I have outlined in red where you can still see the outline of the section that was glued down. A lot of people do not realize that many of the fantastic trilobites you see on the market have actually been glued back together because the splits are often through the bug. I once did a Moroccan trilobite that was in 7 pieces when I received it Here is the bug after another 40 minutes Took some pictures of the prep but frankly they ended up too blurry to use so here is the prep after abrasion is complete and after I have repaired a lot of the parts that broke of in the split. I tend to use a white repair material and always take a picture to let the owner know what has been repaired Here is the bug after coloration applied . The repairs were allowed to cure overnight before coloration and a bit of extra carving to clean up spots.Just waiting for me to do a final cleanup tomorrow after everything has cured a bit more. A long way from being the worlds most pristine or perfect bug but I am relatively pleased that we were able to breath some new life into an ailing bug. Totally prep time about 3 1/2 hours over 4 days. I suspect the owner will be pleased with the result. I have seen people toss bugs in the field that were in this type of shape. For those of you who just need to know the bug is 27mm x 18 mm A slightly different view

Hi everyone, I've had a couple people lately asking me how I restored the megalodon tooth I posted about a couple years ago here. I decided to pick out a damaged tooth on Ebay for $15, and take you through it step by step. Here we go! What You'll Need: PaleoBond Sculp Hardener and PaleoBond Sculp Resin (You can substitute with epoxy putty but dries faster and is less malleable) X-Acto Knife Wire brush or any brush with very stiff bristles Any brand of acrylic paint from Hobby Lobby or Michaels (specific colors listed further below) A small paintbrush of reasonable quality Fine sandpaper and steel wool SITUATIONAL: Clear gloss used for acrylic paint Step 1: Examine the fossil and the damage. This is the bargain tooth I purchased. It's over 5 inches, and you can see it's actually in nice condition minus the chunk missing. The broken edge is still sharp and jagged, so it appears that the damage occurred recently as opposed to millions of years ago. To fix this tooth I will need to recreate parts of the root, bourlette and enamel. Since the tooth has fairly nice detail I will definitely need my razor blade to create fine lines and serrations. Step 2: Prepare and apply the putty Pull out a small chunk of putty from both the PaleoBond Hardener and Resin containers. Knead them together with your hands until the colors mix completely. Mix thoroughly otherwise the putty will be squishy in some places and will not harden properly. Once mixed, take a very small piece from your ball of putty and mash it into the damaged area of your tooth. Step 3: Building your shape Less is more when you're working with putty. Smaller pieces are much easier to manipulate, so build gradually piece by piece. You may get to a point where you're putty structure is not stable enough to continue building on. Take a break for 2-3 hours to let the putty dry and come back. When building the root of my example tooth, I had to take two or three breaks in order to get a foundation sturdy enough for me to continue building up. Pay attention to how your repair is taking shape and keep the edges of your putty level with the natural edges of the tooth. This is one of the most difficult parts of the repair, but it makes a big difference when you get it right. Wash your hands every once in a while to keep them from getting to tacky and sticking to your putty. Step 4: Begin to work in detail As your repair begins to fill out, work in natural-looking cracks and lines with your X-Acto knife and fingernails. Mimic the natural aspects of your tooth as best as you can. When repairing my tooth's root, I created fissures and cracks that matched up with the real side of the tooth. This really helped create the illusion that the repair is natural. To mimic the heavily detailed surface of the tooth's root, I gently pushed my wire brush into the surface multiple times. Try to do this when your putty is still wet because if the putty is dry it takes much more effort. ALSO, make sure to keep the putty very smooth in areas of enamel (excluding line/crack detail). Once the putty dries, take some fine sandpaper and smooth it out further. Steel wool can then be used to make the surface even smoother. (Thanks to steelhead9 for those two tips!) Be very anal retentive about this. You will appreciate it in the next step. Step 5: Paint! This is my favorite part because it's the point in this process where the repair finally comes to life! It also happens to be the most frustrating part. Depending on your tooth's coloring you will likely need the following colors in your arsenal: Umber Black White Sienna (maybe) Red (maybe) Blue (maybe) This step is where perfectionism (making the putty super smooth in areas of enamel) really pays off. Paint highlights the imperfections of your putty, so don't be disappointed or surprised if you have to start over. I started over probably two or three times. As far as painting technique, I would love to give more instruction, but that is really an entire lesson in itself. Don't be afraid to paint a little onto the actual fossil. You will need to do this in order to properly camouflage the merged area of putty and tooth. In fact, don't be afraid to overlap your putty a millimeter or so onto the tooth as well. My biggest tip though is make sure you paint in a well lit room. Painted colors can look spot-on until you step into good lighting... Step 6: Apply a finish depending on your tooth Some teeth with top-quality enamel will need a glossy finish applied in order for the repair to look natural. My tooth did not require a high-gloss coat. Either way, you ought to apply some kind of light finish to your tooth in order to preserve the repair from scratches and humidity. I have not yet found the perfect finish to do the job, and am still experimenting with spray finish, clear acrylic gloss, clear furniture gloss, low-gloss nail polish, etc. Feel free to add your thoughts and recommendations below! Below you can see my repaired tooth. The root could use a bit more texture and the enamel and bourlette are a little rough in places. Overall, I'm happy with the result though. I hope these instructions were helpful! If anything is unclear or too general I'd be glad to elaborate further. Good luck!!!! Your Fellow Fossil-Fanatic, Lauren

So I found a cool mammal tooth in some matrix. As I was walking over to my computer to research the ID for the tooth I dropped it and it broke into 4 pieces fortunately I can fit the pieces back together, but one piece is just a sliver. What kind of glue should i use I use to fix this?