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In preparation for a planned outing next week with my oldest son to hunt for fossils in the Lincoln Creek formation, I went to an outcrop of the local Blakely formation this afternoon, and now that I'm primed to spot concretions, I saw a few right away. I only grabbed one to bring home (just had a small bag), but I may go back and grab some more later. Since I lack the proper tools to prepare a fossil that's in a concretion (at least for now!), I just used my trusty hammer. I'm not really seeing any fossil remains here, but it does have a really interesting funnel shaped part coming out of one side. Maybe it's some kind of burrow that later filled with different sediment? Or just purely geological? There's also a lot more of the center bit to expose, but I didn't want to keep whacking once it shattered, since I'll probably just destroy any fossil remains that are in there. Anyone have any thoughts on this? Should I try to whack it one more time? Toss it? Secure it back together and save it for another day?

So I found this one near Tukwila Washington. I think the first one is just a clam of some kind and the second one I have NO IDEA. If anyone has a clue please let me know. I can take new pictures if needed. (Area I collected it from was in a mountain in Tukwila (more like a huge hill) and it used to be a shallow ocean back millions of years ago)

Found this yesterday in Monmouth co. Normally a Cretaceous stream but tertiary items do occasionally pop up. At first I thought it was an iron concretion but has a slightly different hue to it. Don’t think it’s modern either...

This weekend I went on another fossil hunting trip with my dad. We went to a place called Bacchus Marsh which is around 65 km east of Melbourne. Here we went looking for Tertiary plant fossils such as Laurus and Cinnamonum. The site was a creek bed under an old bridge. The bridge was located next to the Western Freeway which connects Bacchus Marsh to Melbourne, and extends north to south, eventually emptying into the Werribee river (about 2km away). The creek also goes under the freeway through two tunnels and you can look for fossils on both sides of the freeway, but the side near the bridge had the best rocks. The rocks we looked for were Ferruginous sandstones which are late Paleocene (59 million) to Middle Miocene (14 million). The creek was dry and it didn't look there had been water in it for a long time.

Hello, this is a carnivore skull from China (I bought it many years ago in Germany). All I know is that it was found in the Gansu area, though I don't know how certain this information is. The overall length is 18 cm. The first pictures are from the left side, the last ones from the right side of the skull. The distal part of the molar on the right side is broken off. I have an idea what it could be, but I'm not sure. (I'll tell about it later, but I don't want to influence brainstorming with this information at the moment). Any suggestions? Thanks, araucaria1959

I found this some years back at Pescadero Beach in California. I don't know if it's fossilized but if it is I think it would be from the Tertiary. Any help much appreciated.

Hi, It's been a while since I've put anything up on here so it figured it would a good time to share some of my finds from this spring so far. With such a productive winter the start of this spring on the Bouldnor Fm. coast was a bit slow with several trips in which little was found (odd for what is usually a heavily productive site) but as March and April came round the finds started coming in faster and better. Access at Bouldnor is now very dangerous and pretty much impassable due to thick and deep silt and mud which has covered part of the beach (which I found out the hard way trying to get through), along with two recent cliff falls which have brought several oak trees down onto the beach. Hamstead and Cranmore are as good as ever with a lot of the winter's mudflows now eroding away and making the foreshore a lot easier. (Hamstead Ledge on a spring low tide) Mammal finds have been pretty nice so far this spring, as usual all Bothriodon, and alongside them I've also made some nice alligator and turtle finds including two partial Emys in-situ in the Upper Hamstead Mbr. Here are some of the highlights: 1. More pieces of the large Bothriodon mandible I first found in January have turned up scattered over the same area. I now have part of the hinge, two sections with P2 - M3 and a part of the underside of the mandible from further forward. I regularly check the site on my collecting trips so hopefully yet more of the jaw will turn up. (The positions of the fragments may be slightly off in the image below but it gives a general idea) 2. Bothriodon caudal vertebra. This is one of my favourite finds from this spring. I was originally excavating a small micro-vertebrate site when I felt the tool make contact with a large bone, I dug a bit deeper into the clay and found this vertebra with the processes fragmented around it. Luckily with a bit of super glue the processes were easily reunited with the vertebral body, after 33 million years apart. Unfortunately I couldn't locate the other transverse process or neural spine in the matrix nearby so I think they may have been broken off on the Oligocene coastal plain. 3. Bothriodon upper molar in a fragment of maxilla 4. Section of Bothriodon mandible with a nice mental foramen. Unfortunately no in-situ teeth with this one. 5. Section of mammalian limb bone with evidence of rodent gnawing. This was an in-situ find eroding out of the Upper Hamstead Mbr. on the foreshore. Gnaw marks like these are really common on in-situ material especially on limb bones. I don't think the rodents were scavenging the flesh off the bones, more likely they were extracting calcium and phosphate or were simply using it to grind down their continually growing incisors. Either way it shows that for at least a period a lot of these bones were exposed to the elements and accessible to the variety of rodents present on the coastal plain. 6. Nice quality Bothriodon intermedial phalange 7. Large Diplocynodon alligator frontal bone Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the finds! Theo

Hi, I headed out for a full day of collecting at Hamstead on Saturday, and thought I'd share how it went. I reached the beach at Hamstead Duver around 9am and began searching the foreshore. The finds on this part of the coast are washed round by longshore drift, but it can be a productive section. This was definitely the case on Saturday, within the first 20 odd metres I picked up various pieces of trionychid carapace, Emys fragments, and the worn trochlea of an anthracothere humerus. I continued west along the coast before reaching the slipway (a disused boat launching ramp, apparently used by the US military in preparation for the Normandy Landings) the point where Hamstead Cliffs begin. Having not been able to visit in nearly a month, and after weeks of pretty violent storms over Christmas and the New Year, the coast at Hamstead Ledge has now completely changed. Most of the sand and gravel has been taken off the beach leaving large exposed areas of Bembridge Marls strata on the foreshore. The junction bed between the underlying Bembridge Limestone and Bembridge Marls is also now visible (usually obscured by sand and gravel). The Bembridge Limestone Fm. lays beneath the Bouldnor Fm. and was laid down in a series of large carbonate lakes on a heavily forested sub-tropical coastal plain stretching across what is now the northern Island. At 34.0 million years ago rising sea levels flooded the plain and the estuary/lagoons of the lower Bembridge Marls were deposited, which can be observed in the low cliff face. (A small normal fault can be seen in the Bembridge Marls highlighted in yellow, additionally the 'thin white horizon' is the western limits of the famous Insect Limestone. However it is un-lithified and does not produce insects at this locality) The largest change however was an enormous landslide just west of the ledge in the high cliff face. As well as several smaller falls and slips, this slip has littered the beach with clay debris and small trees. It's on the site of a large mudflow from last winter, I reckon the heavy rain saturated the already weakened area and triggered a large scale failure of the cliff face. I checked through the debris (and the exposed strata) and found some very nice pieces, including a huge piece of trionychid hypoplastron (the largest turtle piece I've ever found), a fragment of alligator jaw, a large fish vertebra, and two large baso-occipital bones from Bowfins (Amia sp.). As the beach was covered with clay blocks the foreshore wasn't very productive for ex-situ finds. As the tide dropped I moved further west towards Cranmore and beach conditions returned to normal with shingle, sand, and gravel, and a nice variety of finds. The best finds were a couple of anthracothere teeth, including a very nice canine. Coprolites were also very common as usual, most, if not all, are likely crocodilian. Further west there are exposures of the Upper Hamstead Member on the foreshore which if you're lucky turn up in-situ finds. The Upper Hamstead Member dates from approximately 33.2 - 32.4 million years ago. This time I was in luck, I spotted a large bone fragment and a piece of Emys weathering out of the clay. I checked the areas adjacent in case there was anymore associated material but unfortunately not. The bone fragment appears to be a rib. I reached Cranmore and collected some matrix for micro-sieving from the cliff face, and after collecting a few more bone fragments and coprolites, and with the tide now rising I called it a day and headed up to the main road. Overall it was a good collecting trip, with some good finds. Hopefully as the winter goes on the landslide debris is eroded away and some nice vertebrate remains are produced. Hope this was interesting, Theo 1. Huge piece of trionychid hypoplastron 2. 'Interior' view of the hypoplastron

Who owns this Inner ear bone? I found this on Amelia Island, Florida. I also found some shark teeth and lots of bone fragments. These fossils come from the dredges that cut into Miocene? formations and probably other younger formations. I imagine it is from a cetacean or other aquatic mammal. It is in GREAT shape, with lots of detail, including the inner cochlea. It is my favorite find of the trip. Let me know what you all think! I am a noob with this younger stuff. Mammals were still a 200 million year old length of time away from my expertise. @Boesse

Picked this up on a river bar north coast California. I read the rocks were formed during the tertiary, Cretaceous, and Jurassic time periods, hope that's useful information. I'll attach a couple more pics

Hi Folks. Not sure about the tags, best guess This was found at about 7000 feet in the southern Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico. In a different spot I saw similar specimens that looked like it was stuck to a rock, almost like barnacles. Really curious,. and help is appreciated from a complete novice! Chip

Another piece from Burleigh county. There is a large hill of ice thrust Fox Hills formation at this site, parked on top of Cannonball formation and Bullion Creek and covered with glacial debris. Fox Hills is a near shore marine formation. The others are terrestrial. The surface texture looks like some of the bones I have seen here, but the inside of the rock seems wrong for bone. It is 31 mm long. 20 mm high, and 22 mm wide. Photos are top, bottom, and side view respectively.

Please help ID these items I found years ago on the site of the so called Vienna Basin, near Bratislava, Slovakia. Thanks in advance!