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Finally I can share an incredible piece with you all!!!!!!!! I have been very fortunate to be able to do invertebrate fossil preparation for The Royal Ontario Museum (The ROM). I have recently been given permission to share pictures of some of the work that I have done for them. Thank you Dr. J.B. Caron. In the coming weeks I will share some pictures of other pieces I did for them. In total I prepared about 12 pieces for them out of their collection and I donated 7 pieces for the new gallery. In case you are not already aware they will be opening a major new fossil gallery "The Dawn of Life" later this year. Here is a major piece that I did for them last year. The piece is quite stunning in person , my photography does it no justice. You will be able to see it in person in the new gallery. There are over 60 Leviceraurus mammilloides on the plate. As well as a few other species of crinoid and trilobite. To spare you all the waiting here is the finished piece The piece was prepared over a 12 month period and required around 200 hours to prepare. It was prepared under a Olympus zoom microscope using the following air scribes (CP9361, ARO, Pferd MST-31, Paleotools Microjac 2) The air abrasion was performed with a Comco MB1000 using baking soda and dolomite in the 40 micron range and mostly 20 to 30 PSI. Since this was a piece of scientific importance (there may be a new species on here and it potentially shows some sexual dimorphism ) all associations were left on the plate. If a brachiopod was covering a trilobite it was not removed. Partial trilos were not removed to exposed complete ones below it. Dr. Caron was quite specific in what he wanted in the way the specimen was prepared. There are probably more trilos that have not been exposed and these may be discovered in the future by Xray. At 200 hours I quit searching for more as the plate had nice aesthetics and the museum needed it to do professional photography and measuring for the display. This picture is as it was found in the field back in 2019 by David A. who is a member here on the fossil forum. The fossil was found in an Ordovician quarry (St. Mary's Cement) that allows a very limited number of qualified collectors in a few times per year. The slab as found required 4 people to bring it down the side of a very large blast pile using a blanket. It was estimated that the slab weighed about 300 pounds. Here I am u The 2nd and 3rd pictures are me cutting and thinning the slab using a checkerboard technique done with a diamond rock saw. This got the piece to a transport weight of about 60 pounds. The rest of the pictures are a sequence leading up to the finished piece which weighs about 50 pounds and was the first picture shown in this post. If you have any questions please feel free to ask or send me a private message if you prefer. The piece in my basement before any preparation. Not so pretty at this point in its life.... The piece at 1 hour The final shot here was with about 20 hours to go

Hiya everyone some help with this trilobite would be great

Two days ago some workmen laid some stone by the side of a road near a pond in Sharon CT and I found two fossils one that appears to be the back of a Trilobite or a Chiton and another that looks to me like scallops or some other bivalve (I know that scallops and trilobites never existed at the same time). Does anyone have any ideas as to what these could be. Also I know this rock is not from where I found it, it was probably sourced from a local quarry so I would have to check with the highway department of Sharon to figure out where these come from.

I've been looking at some Russian bugs, but all of them have anywhere from 2-8% restoration. I'm still new to collecting, so I'm not sure how much restoration is too much.

This weekend I had the opportunity to spend a couple hours hunting in the Galena Group (Upper Ordovician) in northern Illinois. The Galena around here is mostly massive dolomite, so most fossils are preserved as molds. Mollusks dominate the fauna, especially gastropods, although other interesting specimens crop up from time to time. Burrows A large orthoconic nautiloid Fisherites are fairly common in some beds, although extracting complete specimens is challenging. Thaleops sp. Some better gastropod examples Interesting minerals can be found, such as these pyrite crystals. Fisherites On occasion, fossils with remnants of their original shells do show up. The most common seems to be Pseudolingula. The best find of the day was this conulariid. I have never found a conulariid in the Galena before, so it was quite a surprise. And that's all. Hope you enjoyed!

We found this near Eureka Kansas in association with Americus Limestone. It is my first time finding more than a fragment. We were wondering if a genus could be narrowed down. I don't have any items for scale yet to put in the picture but it is approx 3/8" across. At its widest.

Hello everyone, I was reorganizing my trilobites and found this Acadoparadoxides briareus trilobite that I received from friend as a gift awhile ago. I was wondering if its even real or had anything major done to it, I was told the edge of it may have been touched up to make it more aesthetically pleasing but that's all I know. I would appreciate any opinions you have. Name: Acadoparadoxides briareus Location found: Atlas, Morocco Size: approximately 8 inch's long Age: Cambrian Period 515MYO

While heading to visit family in southern Indiana, I decided to leave a day early to do a bit of collecting in the Cincinnatian. The first stop was, as usual, St. Leon, to look for the famous Flexicalymene rollers. In the past, I've usually found 2-4 per visit, but was quite lucky this time, walking away with 10 rollers and my first prone. Here are a couple in situ shots. After a couple hours at St. Leon, I headed towards my hotel. As it turned out, it was just down the road from Trammel Fossil Park. I had not been here before. It exposes several formations (which are helpfully marked). I only spent about 20 minutes here but did find a beat up edrioasteroid (my first!) in the Miamitown. I would imagine it is very picked over, but it's a neat place to visit nonetheless. The following day I woke up quite early and drove down into Kentucky to check out a couple spots in the Kope along the AA Highway. Not much success was had, so I decided to head back towards Cinci to visit a popular site where the crinoid Ectenocrinus is often found. Again, little success. That was until I decided to flip over one last rock sitting right next to my car. And as luck would have it, the rock was covered in crinoids. At least half a dozen individuals were visible, but I suspect that many more are buried.

I bought this trilobite from a small rock shop many years ago, and completely forgot about it until i opened up some old boxes in my house. No idea what kind of trilo it is, or if its even real or not. Can anyone ID this little guy?

I've been thinking of buying this Cambropallas trilo, but it seems fake to me. The price seemed a bit too low as well. Is it fake, or just a really good deal?

I bought this trilobite not too long ago, and I'm not sure if it is real or not. It wasn't cheap, so I want to make sure I got my money's worth. Some pictures from the seller:

This sample is more damaged than the trilobites I usually find, but I would still like to ID it. I realize that this is likely the thorax of an Isotelus, since that is what I have been finding at this site, but this thorax looks a bit different than the others I have been finding - it looks a bit more concave to me, as opposed the more flat / convex thorax of the other trilobites I have. Also, there seems to be a piece down the center that looks to be from somewhere else, and not from this trilobite. Thoughts? I included both a dry and a wet pic, to try to show more detail, as well as a closer-up pic from one side.

Hi everybody. This year i decided to try new sites to find trilobites. I firstly decided to try a site in the Pyrénées, maybe those who love cyclism and the Tour de France will have heard about the Col d'Aspin and Col du Tourmalet. At the Col d'Aspin, altitude 1489 meters, the landscape is fantastic, green with great trees. The landscape is fantastic, but the trilos didn't show up. Maybe the next time will i be more successful. The only fossil i found is that tiny item, less than a centimeter at the widest. So we decided to head up here, at the observatory of the Pic du Midi de Bigorre : At the foot of that Pic lies the ski station of La Mongie and, above the station, the Col du Tourmalet. There was no fossil to find here, only little cristallizations And an unexpected herd of Llamas The point of view is great

I had posted pics of my latest (May 23) find earlier - as it looked when I found it - but here are the updated pics now that it has been prepped (thanks Malcolm). It is just under 3 1/2 inches long, and is fully inflated. There is some damage to the pygidium that I saw when I found it, but the remainder of the trilobite is very well preserved. I especially like that both genal spines are fully intact, one eye is undamaged, and it also looks like this trilobite was struck between the eyes with something while it was still alive...

Hello again guys! This specimen is more special. Initially I took it because I saw a nautiloid in it. Totay I found there is also a trilobite inside it. Then I started to suspect if the Nautiloid part is not also the same trilobite. It is the same layer as yesterday, same place. Probably middle - late Ordovician. Found near boul. DesSources, on the shore of the river between Laval and Montreal. #1 #2 #3

Hello guys! So far I don't find many trilobites. What I find usually is some peace of the trilobite. Today I was lucky to find a piece that has 2 heads/ cephalon/ of trilobites. These are small The rock speciment was not on its original place, it was near the shore, but still it match to what else we have on that place. #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6

Hi, new here I recently acquired this trilobite fossil, which I can identify as Coronocephalus, but I'm not sure about the species. It's not immediately apparent from the first picture, but this is only the negative. The trilobite itself is around 4 centimetres long. I suspect it is a molt. A friend got it for me as a souvenir on his trip to Yunnan, China. I'd be tempted to say C. gaoluoensis based on how frequently they occur, but the glabella makes me suspect C. rex. Edit: upper end of glabella tuberculate so probably not gaoluoensis pygidium does not taper therefore cannot be rex stab in the dark: changningensis?

I split this trilo from a rock, Some shell got stuck on the negative. How do I fix this? Is the Trilobite destroyed? Should I glue the Trilobite back on the rock? How do i get the shell back on the trilo? Is it normal that shell can come off Trilobites? Trilobite head Negatives with shell stuck

Maybe a dumb question, do the legs of the trilobite preserve often along with the rest of the animal? When I look it up I see ones with legs that are flat, but I'm thinking 3d. If not, why?

I have had this trilobite since I was a small child, I’m now nearly 35. I don’t know anything about it or it’s value. I am looking for help on identifying what kind, how old, and anything else helpful. Anything helps. Thank you!!

Thoughts on this Harpes trilobite? looks good to me. matrix colour is different, split through a crack on the specimen. prep looks ok and eyes are nice and beady. Anything anyone else notices/wants to comment on?

Making replicas of my fossils has always been something very interesting to me, but for the longest time I wasn't sure about how it should be done, casting although it could preserve a lot of detail can be pricy if you want to make replicas of multiple different fossils and it is something that I am just very unfamiliar with. From that point my attention turned to 3d printing as this technology can allow us to replicate objects fairly inexpensively, but when I started to looking at 3d scanning for actually making the models I found that scanners were not all too cheap either ranging from about 500 dollars into the thousands. This is when I discovered photogrammetry, which allows you to make 3d models of objects with just a number of regular photographs taken from different angles, no need for expensive tools to scan the object. I found a free program called 3DF Zephyr that allows me to upload up to 50 pictures of a certain item and construct a 3d model from them. Yesterday I installed the program and immediately went to find one of my fossils that would be good to start off with, I wanted something where I wouldn't need to scan it from the bottom and something with good surface that would work well with the software. I thought that my Flexicalymene ouzergui from Morocco should be perfect for this. I read that you should take pictures so that every desired point of the object is seen from at least 3 different angles and so I took the bug and started doing that, I used 3 different elevations for the camera and rotated the bug taken pictures from many different angles, I ended up with a total of 45 photos. I then uploaded all of these directly into the software and it used all but 1 photo. It took a few hours to construct point clouds of a bunch of different points on the bug and some time after to reconstruct a mesh from that. What I ended up with looked pretty good and I was really happy with it for my first attempt, especially since I have heard that it may take several for you to get the model looking correct but nonetheless there were some issues with weird floating geometry around the bug. To address that I first selected everything disconnected from the model and removed that, then I took a lasso tool to select and remove all of the blobs attached to the bug that I didn't need. Here is what the model looked like before and after this: Now I saved the mesh as an OBJ and brought it into a different program to fix all the holes in it, make it solid instead of just the hollow shell I got from the scan and smooth over certain parts. This step was very successful and the model looked great, now it was time to print it. I took it into the next program to scale it properly and slice it for printing, I scales it roughly to the same size of the original bug and added all the needed parts to print it. The first print got disconnected and failed but then I made some slight changes to the model and leveled out the print bed, after that it was very late and I went to sleep but woke up today to a perfect copy of my Trilobite, it had some supports holding it up which were a bit reluctant to disconnect but after a bit of cleanup it looked great. Here is the finished print alongside the original: This has been a really fun thing to try out and now I want to do it with some more fossils, I think the next one I am going to try will be a small crinoid and then a more challenging model like a brachiopod where I will need to do some processing with photos as I will be taking pictures from all sides of the object. I encourage anyone interested to try it for themselves, if you want any help or additional information as to how I did certain things here I would be happy to discuss that with you. Thank you for looking, Misha