Search the Community

Hi, first time fossil hunting hoping someone can help me ID some of these! I thought the first pic might be a turtle shell fragment, but have no clue about the others. The last photo,Found at Flag Pond Nature Park in Southern MD. Thanks!

Bone? Just found this over the weekend. About 5 to 6 inches. Solid rock. I've found a Mosasaur vert and another mystery bone in the same spot, previously. Would love to hear thoughts.

While sorting out shark teeth finds from Stump Pass Beach, near Englewood, FL on Manasota Key, I found some pieces that I have no idea what it is. One of them looks like it could be a piece of small turtle shell? I am just curious what they are, they look very interesting to me. My phone's camera is horrible, so I hope the pictures are not too bad for ID.... It is about 10mm thick, 25mm wide and 20mm long. The short edge angles up about 45 degrees. This piece is 30mm long x 15mm wide x 10mm thick. When wet the colors of the little "squares" are a golden brown. I found a couple of these, this being the largest. No clue if this is a fossil or just a interesting pebble... Thanks, John

Any idea if this is a batch of eggs? Turtle eggs? This one is from Hezheng, Gansu.

https://gbtimes.com/jurassic-period-snake-necked-turtle-fossil-found-in-sw-china

I found this cool specimen quite a while back in the Paleocene of Maryland and never finished prepping it. I still have a ways to go, especially to reduce the size of the matrix because it is super heavy. This came from a much larger size boulder of matrix. I only saw a tiny piece exposed and kept digging to expose more and break it away from the large boulder. I believe this is a section of plastron from a turtle shell (bottom) from possibly a leatherback turtle.

This is said to be a pyritized Anosteira maomingensis from Guangdong of China. Is it genuine?

Last season was a great season at the quarry. For those who dont know, our quarry is in the Fossil Butte member of the Green River Formation in southern Wyoming. We ended up with three turtles coming out. Two of them were large turtles, 48" (Apalone heteroglypta) and 52" (Chisternon undatum), and they were found stacked above one another, separated by only 7 inches, and a tiny little guy that is a new species. I will post pictures of these amazing fossils as they are finished up. We have Brock @ebrocklds doing the preparation work for us on these three amazing fossils. Here are pictures of the Apalone. You can see it took us a bit of time to excavate and collect all of the tiny pieces. It was in a large fracture zone in the rock. Enjoy.

Nice Spring outing, very green, nice balance of frogs, salamanders, nesting birds (in the creek bank?), with poison ivy growing well and more background construction/ farming noise than usual. Not much has changed in the creek bed, could use a good rain to wash out more. The tooth hunting was slow (probably because I wasn't working at it hard enough). Still, came out with a nice intact(?) ecphora, two broken cow shark teeth, four angel shark teeth and a bunch of drum teeth (or facsimiles thereof; don't usually pick them up unless pretty, but it was a slow day). Some stuff in matrix, unusual for the creek but nothing clearly exciting. The sand shark teeth were small and many broken (guess the kids in the area have been picking these). Picked up a lot of bits and pieces (a few of the smaller ones are in the photo; guessing many are turtle= my default for flat pieces that look like but are not seashells). More to sort through. Small stuff to puzzle over.

Science has been wrong for over 100 years. Here we have the proof that birds stem from turtles. Look at those long front legs. These extended front legs are an unmistakable indication that birds (and perhaps even the giraffes?) are descended from turtles. Have fun Thomas

A small claw ( roughly 14,8mm big ) i found in the hell creek formation in South Dakota, the first two pictures show both lateral sides of the claw and the last picture shows the ventral side of the claw. I hope that any of you might have an idea of what species this claw is from. regards!

I've been trying to work out what this bone is - can anyone offer any suggestions please? Nearest match I could find would be a pectoral or pelvic girdle of a turtle, but my bone guesses tend to be wrong.

I was wondering , if the thickness of fossil turtle shell is relative to the size of the turtle, is there a generic formula for estimating how large the turtle would be based on shell thickness of a fragment ?

I'm preparing a presentation on turtles to be used with elementary age kids. I need information on fossils, common ancestors, earliest turtle fossils. I'm also interested in fossil sites I can visit in the Southern Appalachians. I live in Hendersonville, NC. The Only one I know of is the Gray Fossil Site near Johnson City, Tenn. I'd especially like to know where I can find fossils to collect.

This is a Manchurochelys from Liaoning. Do you think it’s genuine?

My friend has acquired a turtle fossil from Ganzhou. It is quite big. Is it a Jiangxichelys ganzhouensis?

My first post, so hopefully I can figure out how to post some photos of this find. I have been going out to the NSR some and have found the usual bone fragments, vertebrae, etc. but this was something unique for me. Thought I would post it to see if I am correct on the identification. From what I have learned this is probably a large piece of turtle plastron. It is about 1 inch thick, so I assume this was a big turtle? Has a unique pattern to the surface and the other side has what appears to be large scrape marks? Now that I have got started posting on the forum, I hope to continue sharing some of my finds. Thanks for any input. Tommy

I'm running a paleontology camp this summer in Delaware. We can' actually do much digging because there are no fossils at the camp site. We do, however, have living fossils around that the kids can meet. I'd like to introduce the kids to the living fossils and show them the evidence of their ancient ancestors. We have snapping turtles (common and alligator), an alligator, horseshoe crabs, access to ginkgo leaves and magnolia, pileated woodpeckers aplenty, and triops kits are easy to come by online. Anybody have any fossils of these that they could part with? I have mostly marine fossils I can trade from all over the east coast, though mostly common stuff. From Delaware I have silicified pleistocene cyprus wood from Odessa, DE, belemnites, cretaceous gastropods, brachiopods (lamp shells), pelyceopods, and button corals from the C and D Canal (Mt Laurel Formation), plus various paleozoic tabulate and rugose corals that wash down the river from the Appalachians. I have oodles of shells, stingray plates, coprolites, and a piece of palmate coral from Calvert Cliffs (Miocene, Choptank formation). I have FLUORESCENT pleistocene shells from the Tamiami Formation in Florida. Plus, I have calamities and lycopods from the Lewellyn Formation in Carbondale, PA. The pictures here may not be the exact specimens and only represent a sample. If there is something specific from these locales that interests you, ask me. I might have something. Anyone willing to help me out? It doesn't have to be museum grade, so long as we can match it up to the modern version.

Found this guy today and wanted your imput. Is it turtle? If not, then what? Let me know!

This bone appears to be stretching? I believe it's turtle, but help is always appreciated.

Is this a turtle shell? It has some rib, so it seems pretty convincing.

I've written trip reports before about volunteering with the Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH) at their various dig sites in Florida. The currently (very) active site is called Montbrook for a small town that used to be in the area (but is no more). Here are a few links from FLMNH which provide some contextual information about the site: https://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/museum-voices/montbrook/ https://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/florida-vertebrate-fossils/sites/mont/ https://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/museum-voices/montbrook/2016/09/07/why-montbrook/ The site has yielded an impressive number of specimens and is very important scientifically as it provides the best view of Florida fauna from the late Hemphillian (Hh4) North American Land Mammal Age (NALMA) from approximately 5.5-5.0 mya. The other significant locality for this age is the Palmetto Fauna a couple hundred miles south of the Montbrook site. More info here for those interested in the stratigraphy: https://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/florida-vertebrate-fossils/land-mammal-ages/hemphillian/ https://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/florida-vertebrate-fossils/sites/palmetto-fauna/ Here is a link to my Montbrook posting from 2016 showing the couple of times I managed to get out there--the last time with TFF members Daniel @calhounensis and John-Michael @Brown Bear: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/63056-volunteer-dig-with-the-flmnh/ Now, enough of the links and time for a few pictures! The Montbrook site has changed quite a bit over the last year since I've been able to get out there. We had plans to return to Montbrook last October but Hurricane Matthew was an uninvited guest to Florida that week and the dig site was tarped down and the dig cancelled. Thankfully, the hurricane left my house untouched (didn't really even get rain or wind of note) and didn't mess-up the Montbrook site but we did miss an opportunity for one last trip to Montbrook in 2016. When we returned in February 2017 it took some time to get my bearings. The deeper pit to the east where several gomphothere skulls, tusks and long bones had been removed did not weather the rainy season well. This section has been backfilled with about 5 feet of sand and clay from the higher levels during the summer rain storms. For now they will concentrate digging on the main pit to the west and hope to get back to the lower "elephant" layer some time in the future--though the prep work to remove the overburden and get back to the original level will be significant. So much material has been moved from the upper western dig area that it was hard to picture exactly where we had dug nearly a year ago. I'm still not quite sure where we were in 2016 as the site has evolved greatly since our last visit. On Thursday and Friday there were mostly just a few volunteers who could make it to the site on weekdays--mainly retired folks or those with flexible schedules like us who could volunteer during the week. On Saturday there were a lot more volunteers and the dig site became a bit more crowded so you had to be aware of others digging sometimes in the grid square adjacent to yours. Here are some overall site photos I took on Saturday and you can see the line-up of cars that brought a full capacity of volunteers.

Weather was beautiful so I took a long 7 mile hike with my buddy at The North Sulphur River Texas. We mainly found footprints but we had a good time. Here's my finds of the day. The large piece of Protostega carapace was my favorite find. 7 mile hike in hip boots and sticky mud probably equals 10 mile hike. lol

So I was wondering if these are fake or real. Opinions from the experts? I am sure we have all seen these before on the auction site. Number one. Number two,