Search the Community

I have been asked by a couple of TFF members if we have personal collecting interests in addition to what we collect for educational purposes. We keep most of our posts about the education side of what we do because 95% of what we collect is for education. We also have legal bits that guide how our own fossils are used in the education program which I covered in a previous piece. To summarize that post, there is a distinct line drawn between fossil that belong to Fossils and Wheels and how they are used. My son and I loan our personal collection for education programs plus we have donated a good portion of our fossils to be given away to students. My son and I do have own collecting interests though but we have not really picked up anything for ourselves lately. Carter loves Trilobites and he does have a couple of inexpensive fossils. Part of his high school graduation present is going to be a couple of nice Trilobites and I am starting to learn more about collecting Trilobites. I do collect whale fossils from STH and all of them are part of the education program. The first fossils I ever found were STH cetacean fossils. I still have the two teeth and the vertebra that I found. I do plan on acquiring more whale material and donating it for scientific research. I want to contribute to the scientific knowledge of whale evolution. I do also collect Carboniferous era shark teeth. These also get used in the education programs but I will occasionally pick up items that are not for the education program. We posted a number of our teeth from this era but there a few we have not posted because they are not for the ed program. This includes a Glikmanius tooth that I am quite fond of. I do also have a cladodont tooth that is likely from an undescribed species and that too will eventually be donated. We are very new to collecting dinosaurs but there are some dinosaurs that I plan on adding to my personal collection. I am totally fascinated by the Dromaeosaurid dinos. I studied birds of prey in the wild and worked with injured birds of prey for a decade so it is not a real surprise to me that raptors are my favorite dinosaur. They may not be related but they fill similar ecological niches and I have seen hawks hunt on the ground numerous times. A hawk running after a rabbit on the ground certainly looks exactly like I picture the "raptor" dinosaurs hunting. The biology and related ecology of the Dromaeosaurids is just something I really love the learning about too as it was with birds of prey. Our collection, as of right now, it is not super impressive. We have a Judith River Saurornitholestes tooth and a Hell Creek Acheroraptor tooth. They are two of my favorite fossils though. We will talk a lot about raptors in our presentations and that is a reflection of my interest. All of my purchases right now are for the benefit of our education program but I would like to make a personal purchase in the near future. I want to add another species of Dromaeousaurid to my collection and not because it benefits our education stuff. It would be just for me really. It can wait as we have our collecting priorities but eventually I will get just a tad selfish and find a nice piece to add I am leaning toward to probably putting a post on the member to member sales forum here regarding this interest before I go to a dealer. I have really enjoyed my transactions here so far. Anyway, that is the story of our personal collecting interests and hopefully it is helpful and/or slightly interesting lol Here is the Acheroraptor tooth.