Search the Community

Hello everyone! I hope the summer is treating everyone well. Here in Chicago it has been either great storms or brutal heat. I have had very little time or ability to get out but last week the weather evened out I got to do some exploring. I always head to areas where water has flooded and uncovered fresh places to look. Last week I found the item pictured below just siting on the surface. The shape caught my eye and it made me think of a nautilus-type shell. The ridges follow all around the surface of the "shell." This was found on the DuPage river about 25 miles West of Chicago. We are just in the edge of the Slurian area but just east of the Pennsylvanian region. When consulting online guides for Illinois, this looks like an incomplete endolobus shell. Any ideas? Thank you for your time and help!

Hello all! Sunday on the North Sulphur River in Ladonia, Texas was hot and dry, but still a great day!!! Friends found some beautiful arrowheads and shark teeth! Here are a few things from my trip! I believe I have here a piece of mastodon/mammoth tooth enamel, shark tooth?, bone chunks (not sure from what), a piece of flint??? Any ideas of the specifics? Thanks in advance!

This may not be the correct place to ask about the crystal I found in this rock , but since I found it near the other coral piece ( I’m guessing it’s coral- Lol) I thought I’d add it. What makes it so neatly created in a PERFECT square?? I know the rock isn’t that pretty but the crystal is cool! Do you think the other one could be a piece of coral? Thanks! Both found in central Ohio river area.

Hi I found these in a river in central Ohio. Was wondering if anyone could tell me more about the fossil and if the other is teeth perhaps? If so who they may had belonged to? I know pics are poor on teeth pic I don’t really want to touch them too much ha!

Hello all, thank you for providing this section of the forum. My son and we’re kayaking last week and we pulled over on a sandbar that was exposed due to low water levels. There was also a small water inlet that fed into the river at this spot. He found this specimen while were looking for fossils in the rocks on top of the bar and got excited. Any help identifying it would be much appreciated. We have not found any great fossils as of yet, just some shells and other small things. We were on the Shenango River in Mercer County in Pennsylvania between Jamestown and Greenville.

Made a trip to a Pliocene site on an eastern North Carolina River on the 4th. What a great trip it was. Found some extraordinary stuff. These 3 items made my day. First a large tiger, Galeocerdo cuvier 1.20 inch (30.6 mm) wide and on the slant. Then this 2.61 inch (66.3 mm) Carcharodon hastalis But the crown jewel of the day a 2.03 inch (51.6 mm) long by 1.82 inch (46 mm) wide Hemipristis serra. The largest I have ever personally seen. It is wider than my next largest one.

I believe the same “super silver” material (that I found from another trip here)may have once been present in the round areas on this piece of slate. But not sure as I didn’t see any anywhere this time. Do you have any ideas what may have caused them? I think the rock is slate. Right? It was found near a river in Ohio. Thanks!

I finally found one! Haha! I thought I’d show you what gave my heart an extra THUMP but turned out to be just another rock...

This area is so full of shale or slate and it’s amazing! Well it’s amazing to me anyway!! So I thought I’d take a few pics to share with others. There are much larger slabs of this same rock farther down the river but I didn’t venture down there today. The pieces there are as large as the length of cars and bigger. Hope you enjoy!

We took a trip to the river and came back with a bunch of teeth. Unfortunately we didn't find anything big and intact but the ones we did find had some nice colors. Am I correct that the teeth up top are makos and not sand tigers? Also, check out the size of what could have been with this angustiden, if only I could find one like that whole

I went river collecting one weekend in early April this year, the water dropped pretty darn low for this time of year allowing me to get to some spots that usually I can only access June through September. I found more echphora than I've ever come across in a single trip, a couple of them are HUGE and a few were near perfect/complete! Also found my first larger (2 of them!) Welch (or conc? still trying to ID it) from this site along with a great array of other items. My personal favorite from this trip was the echphora with a barnacle attached - I always love to find barnacles attached to bivalves and gastropods and this guy even had some worm tubes attached with it! . PM me if you want some higher quality images to zoom in on - I only had the four photo's and file limit size restricted what I could put that would allow you to really zoom in on each item clearly. Don't ask me WHERE I found these, I will tell you exactly what the title says, Eastern NC on a river.

Any of these identifiable? Peace River Florida

Any suggestions? 3 1/4 x 1 1/4 inch. Peace River. Looks like a root used to be on the bottom. Slightly concave.

Found this interesting piece the other day at the north sulfur river. The overall shape reminds me of a couple of the larger Ptychodus teeth i have but the texture looks completely different. Looking forward to some input. Thanks!

First regular post here and sorry that it's a more or less redundant post.... I'm trying to figure out a floating sifter and have looked here and elsewhere at them until my head is spinning. (Mind you, it doesn't take a lot these days to make it spin!<g>) It seems that many of you are using the floating pool-noodle/pvc sifters with good results. Whether wood or pvc it appears a constant is the use of pool noodles. I've been using a little "baking basket" about 16"x10"x2" / 40cm x 25cm by 5cm in size. The mesh is an elongated square (diamond?) shape, something like 1/4"x3/16" or 6mm x 3mm. I like the 2"/5cm lip of it for washing the matrix back and forth. I've got a piece of 1/8" hardware cloth laying inside the baskets. It has worked well, but I've only worked at the edge of the creek where I could sit it down in the edge of the water as I fill with matrix to sift...it didn't have to float. If I move out into toward the center of the creek this isn't going to work. For now, I figured that I could zip tie a pool noodle to both long sides of the basket and see how it works. When I got to Walmart, though, there were three different sizes of pool noodles. I ended up picking up a "medium" 2-7/8"(7cm) and "large" 4-1/4" (11cm). The large size is pretty substantial...maybe overkill? I figure I can take back the one I don't use if I don't hack it to pieces. Is bigger better? After thinking about it, it seems that noodles on the narrow ends might help keep it from pulling a Titantic plunge should the screen be loaded too heavily at one end. The reason I ask is that having a noodle on the ends will make it more difficult to hold onto...the same reason people build an extended handle onto their pvc screens, I suppose. I'm figuring on loading this small screen with two full shovel-fulls at the most. We have to walk a good piece to our hunting areas and the basket weights very little, which is nice. I'm looking at later building a slightly larger screen which I know will weigh more but hopefully be more efficient. I'm torn between pvc and wood. I really like the walls that the wooden sifters have over the more flat screens of the pvc...they can be worked back-and-forth vigorously without loosing anything over the edges. But, the pvc screens appear to be a bit lighter in weight for carrying. I take it that with the pvc sifters that the noodles are attached snug enough to create a "wall" of sorts to hold matrix in as it's be worked back and forth...??? It just seems like there could possibly be space/cracks that stuff could fall through between the pvc/wire-mesh assembly and the noodles. It must work ok, though, being as I see many people using them successfully...I just can't wrap my head around that aspect. It's probably something you have to see in action to understand. A wooden screen will be somewhat heavier but the big hang-up for me is how to protect myself from the sharp edges of the wire mesh and how to keep the screen firmly attached to the bottom. What do most people use to attach the hardware cloth/mesh? Pneumatic stapler, spring-loaded stapler, screws...straight against the bottom edge or wrap it around the sides??? Edge protection...just fold over the edges and hope for the best or add some trim to it? Maybe the pool noodles help cover the edges? We're going to head to the creek in the morning. There are supposed to be thunderstorms moving in tomorrow but the bulk of the storms are supposed to be later in the day and into the night so hopefully we'll beat them. We're gonna be wet anyhow. I thought I'd try to get the baskets and noodles squared away today. We will probably still be at the edge of the creek but it'll be a good time to do a "test voyage" and see how the flotation works out. Maybe I'm overthinking this? (I've been known to do such things! ) Thanks for any feedback, if you've made it this far into my post then you are definitely dedicated! Ed

Hello all! It's been a while since I last posted but it's been a while since I went on a good fossil hunt. These four fossils are the ones I found in the NSR over the weekend that I'm not sure of. I can tell that they are all bone and one is for sure a vert of some type. Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you very much.

I know bone fragments are hard to identify. But take a look and see if any info can be given on the samples posted today: 1. These long bones are very hollow, hopefully bird in origin????? 2. These are 2 heavy chunkasauruses, scapulas?? Can one tell terrestrial from aquatic? 3. This bone seems like a phalanx??? Again, terrestrial or aquatic? 3. 4. A weird bumpy bone, lots of projections. Anatomically, I am having difficulty placing this one.

After a nice day on the North Sulphur River, one of the things I found was this unusual fossil. Any ideas on what it is?

May I add my pareidolia-esque mis-identification here as well. Found this today on my hike (along Du Page river, Northern Illinois)and my first thought was "holy cow a dinosaur tooth!" and then my second thought was "no." But it was fun for a minute to pretend. It seemed to have an "enamel" layer on the base around the outside and such a great shape. Doubt you find those in Northern Illinois. It was near where I have been finding bison bits so maybe it could be a horn or something? Anyway, here are some pictures for fun :

I recently have been finding bone along a path about 15 or so from a river. We have had a bunch of serious flooding so it is uncovering lots of things. Today's hike produced quite a group of finds. This is all in the same place: Du Page river, Northern Illinois, West of Chicago. I have shared a bunch of bones on this thread: I was going to continue there but it won't allow me to post pictures or continue writing. Not sure why? This small piece came from the same spot. The item I just grabbed without examining to much in the field turns out to be maybe the most interesting. It has a smooth shiny patches on it. It is heavy and looks like it was part of maybe a horn or a toe of some kind. No idea. This intrigued me as it is the first thing I have found that seems fossil-like that isn't coral etc that you expect to find here in Illinois.

Hello everyone! I have found quite a few bones recently but most, I assume, deer or small mammal. I didn't think to post them here except this one I found yesterday. I assume it is some modern animal but can't be sure. When I saw this post: It made me think to just post this for more information. This came from the DuPage river in Northern Illinois, West of Chicago. It was found among gravel type rocks about 15 feet from the river ina trail. The huge flooding we have had recently is opening up all kinds of things and I can't wait for the rivers to go down to see what else is uncovered. It seems it has not become stone-like as fossilization would do but it doesn't look like the other bones I found. I know being in or near water will change the look, feel and degradation of the bones. Still curious though. Thoughts?

Hello everyone! Spring is almost here! Thank god. I don't think I could shovel my driveway one more time to be honest. Today was a beautiful day and so I ventured out to hike and do some exploring. We have had a bunch of flooding lately so my usual river hunting spots are underwater but I found an area south in the same river and I found some cool items. These are from the DuPage River, western suburbs of Chicago. Northern Illinois. I believe rock number one has a crinoid on one side and maybe a shell on the other? Hard to tell but I knew it was something as soon as I saw the circular object on top as I walked past it. The second item was right on the edge of the banks in the water. I saw the crack in it and hoped it had something inside it. I picked it up and it cracked open in my hand. It seems to be a worm. Maybe? Any guidance in this is greatly appreciated and I think you for your time! OBJECT #1: