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‘My jaw hit the floor’: Rare skeleton discovered in Utah’s Canyonlands overjoys paleontologists The nearly intact specimen could be from a previously unknown species. By Connor Sanders, The Salt Lake Tribune, November 5, 2021 300 million-year-old fossil skeleton in Utah could be the first of its kind By Sherry Liang, CNN News, November 5, 2021 Petrified Forest Paleontologists likely found a new species in Canyonlands National Park By Joe Giddens, Williams-Grand Canyon News, November 5, 2021 Yours, Paul H.

Utah man discovers fossilized ‘fish-lizard’ at Flaming Gorge Reservoir By Jordan Miller, Salt Lake Tribune, October 7, 2021, Paleontologists recover rare “Fish-lizard” fossil in Utah By Eliza Craig, KSL News Radio, October 6, 2021 Utah boater finds fossilized 'fish-lizard' at Flaming Gorge By Matthew Sampson, KUTV, October 5, 2021 Some papers: Sprinkel, D.A., Chidsey Jr, T.C. and Anderson, P.B., 2010. Geology of Flaming Gorge National Recreational Area, Utah, Wyoming. Geology of Utah's Parks and Monuments: Utah Geological Association Publication, 28, pp.277-299. More papers, Douglas A Sprinkel, Utah Geological Survey Yours, Paul H.

So, I had planned a long trip for this year and built a vehicle for it. However due to some health issues I had to cancel. However I still had the time off from work and the weather here in Omaha was not good for recovery. so I got some help packing up the new to me fossil hunting Jeep and headed west to San Diego. Plenty of time to burn and a vehicle with AC helped, so I took a long and inefficient route to SD where the VA has a better cardiovascular clinic. As I could only drive for a few hours a day and due to heat and wildfire smoke, I took stopped frequently and mostly stayed in hotel. However, it was cooler in the higher altitudes with much lower humidity so… Stopped at Fossil Mountain to camp. Couldn’t do much on the mountain itself where the good stuff is at, but enjoyed a cooler evening and morning. Didn’t get any fossils worth reporting, but was nice spot to relax. From there I stopped at Crystal Peak and scored a few pygs in a wash near the road.

I had a bit of spare time today so I thought I'd prep a trilobite or two from my trip around the Confusion and House Ranges of Utah. (See trip report here) I had found this guy in someone else's throwaway pile probably after it came out chipped and subsequently scraped. I didn't think it was worth leaving out in the elements so I brought it home. Here's a before picture. After 4 hours of swapping between dental picks, wire brushes, toothpicks, and various Dremel attachments here is my final product. It's not perfect at all but I think it deserves to be admired for a time because it has not been on this earth for over 490 million years just to be chucked aside when it finally reached the surface. I even gave it a polish using a piece of newspaper. I don't think it came out too badly. The scrape is still visible on the thoracic segments but there's not much more I can do for that. What do you guys think?

Rare Cambrian fossils from Utah reveal unexpected anatomical complexity in early comb jellies by Harvard University, PhysOrg Prehistoric Comb jelly fossil found in Utah at least 500M years old, researchers say By Carter Williams, KSL.com, Aug. 24, 2021 The open access paper is: Parry, L.A., Lerosey-Aubril, R., Weaver, J.C. and Ortega- Hernández, J., 2021. Cambrian comb jellies from Utah Iilluminate the early evolution of nervous and sensory systems in ctenophores. iScience, no. 102943. Yours Paul H.

So, there’s a very bright, yellow-white exposure of a very soft sediment in the Dugway Geode Beds near Site B. I cannot find anything about any fossils from the beds proper. Im guessing these are in the Lake Bonneville Pleistocene era. Have been unable to find any details on these guys and sadly have no clear data on the various members exposed in the area due to the famed geodes. All suggestions welcome!

I would like to show you all some items I have termed "elongates", so as not to hint as to what they may be. They could be a number of things, but they all form elongated strips. I have grouped them into several different types, based on structure. Interestingly, some of these combine different structures or all of the above, so these may all be the same kind of thing. Some of them extend short, and some of them are very long, taking all kinds of twists and turns. They all show the same structural features whether they are almost microscopic (taken at 250x) or quite visible to the naked eye (taken at 40 or 50x). Each square shown in the scales is 5mm x 5mm. The difference in structural types could be due to weathering down from complex to simple. They could be tracks, feeding tracks or parts of burrows. They could be cruziana, though I have never found anything resembling the "cruziana" I have seen described in numerous illustrations and photos labeled as such. One would think there would be such things in the Wheeler Formation, what with all the trilobites and other fauna there. In the renderings I have seen, cruziana look like TWO of the circular elongates, directly side-by-side, not single strips that I see. First, we have the circular elongates. They look as if something had been feeding in a circular pattern, but all along moving in one direction while doing so. Check out rhizocorallium.

I saw this potential fossil in the Jurassic age Navajo Sandstone in Zion National Park in Utah. I'm sorry that there is only one picture with no scale. I was hurrying down the precarious Angel's Landing trail with a long line of people behind me, so I only had time for a quick picture. The feature is probably about ~12 inches long, and I believe that it is situated on the plane of a cross-bed in a dune structure (example of the cross-bedded sandstone is also pictured). This feature might just be some sort of iron precipitation, but it looked so similar to an invertebrate trace fossil that I am not sure. Any thoughts on what it could be?

I picked this little nugget up quite a few years ago, during my early infatuation with coprolites. All I know about it is that it was found near Price, Utah. I have siderite "formations" from around the world. This is the only one I've seen that looks like it has an inclusion (or should I say the cast of an inclusion). There has long been a debate as to whether siderite rocks such as these are coprolites, casts of voids (fecal and otherwise, or iron-rich mud extrusions (what I like to call "Earth poop"). My questions are: 1. Does anyone happen to recognize what formation this might have come from? 2. Does anyone recognize the tubular structures? The only thing that comes to mind for me are worm tubes, but I don't know if there are any marine environments represented near Price, UT. As always, thanks for your help! @Carl

So I sorta impulse purchased these 4 little vertebrae from a rock shop (they were cheap, and looked like nice teaching specimens). They are from Utah, but have no further provenance than that. I am fully aware that complete identification of them is impossible without locality, but it would be great to even just get them down to a family. And heck if someone might have an idea on what formation they could have come from I'm all ears.

I have a decent collection of petrified wood I've found here in Utah mainly Triassic Chinle, Jurassic Morrison, and Cretaceous Cedar Mountain Formations. This one has me a little stumped though and I am mainly looking to see if anyone has seen something similar to this. I'm about 80% sure it's jasperized petrified wood. Possibly an old rotting log. This was found near Park City, Utah in Keetley volcanic strata. The locality is not from the ash deposits that produced the nice Silver Creek Junction petrified wood (now extinct under commercial developments) but more likely from the violent lahar deposits that came later. No scraps of petrified wood were found. Just this. More info here. ANCIENT VOLCANOES OF THE CENTRAL WASATCH RANGE

Here are images of the 6 honeycomb pattern patches found in my Wheeler Formation collection. First image: 1 mm long Second image: 1mm long Third image: 1.5 mm long One image missing - couldn't get to focus. Fourth and Fifth images: 2.5 mm long. These are facing images of each other - original fossilized and impression - same specimen. I tried my very best, but images are still a little fuzzy, despite higher magnification.

Block sliding, Heart Mountain Detachment, Wyoming High-temperature faulting, Heart Mountain Detachment, Wyoming Steven Losh, Faculty at Minnesota State University, Mankato "3400-square kilometer by 1.5-kilometer thick block of rock slides 45km..." Utah’s Ancient Mega-Landslides by Robert F. Biek, Peter D. Rowley, and David B. Hacker Utah Geological Survey Yours, Paul H

Eldonia sp. Part and counterpart from the House Range in Utah, the pride and joy of my collection. Just look at that beautiful circular gut!

Hello all, I was raised in Vernal Utah (dinasaur land) and have been collecting fossils my entire life. My siblings and I would find dinosaur bones across the street from our house and thought everyone had dinosaurs in their yard. Lol. I went to BYU Idaho and majored in Geology. I transferred to Casper College and was studying extractive resource technology and mud logging, but didn't finish due to a realization that fossils are my hobby, not a career choice....and I'm terrible at mathematics. Hahaha I love fossils, gems and minerals and am excited to learn from this group and see some neat finds.

Hello All! Found a pocket of dino in the Moab area of Utah. I'm confident one is a raptor, but I may be wrong. The other I am not sure about. For reference, they were right around the corner from each other in the same pocket. Just a note - these are WAY off the beaten path in an area very few people would be able to get to. Quite frankly I was surprised to find them in this material as opposed to conglomerate like most of my other finds. Thanks in advance for your help! Raptor (?) - The whole thing was there down to the tail, but I am still working on pulling those pics of my other device. ' Mystery-O-Saurs

I keep finding partially fossilized or mineralized bones in our yard. We're about two miles from the mouth of Weber canyon Davis County Utah. Found some mineralized snail shells in the same area as the bones. We know that before highway 84 was built, our house would have been on the edge of the river. Any help identifying would be greatly appreciated.

Hello, I'm from Evergreen Colorado. I found my first triceratops bones when I was 8 years old near Boulder and i've been looking ever since. Now that I have a young son, i'm getting back into the hunt. I'm having harder time finding fossil sites now days compared to when I was younger, seems like everything is private property these days. I'm looking for new places to check out and exciting journeys to take my son on and ways to educate him on our ancient world. I look forward to getting to know everyone here. Thank you!

Hello, I'm taking my son (9 years) on a 6 day road trip from Evergreen, Colorado to anywhere in Utah. We're avid fossil hunters and spend a lot of time looking in Colorado. We're going to do a trip to Utah and i'm building out the itinerary now. At this point, we're entirely flexible. That said, since it's just a few days, I was thinking about focusing on the Moab area and then heading back home through Telluride. Would love your ideas for places we should go or stop along the way. Thank you in advance, we really appreciate it!! Dan

A new super cool ootaxon of eggs and very different that what we are familiar with is presented in this paper : Stillatuberoolithus storrsi from the Kaiparowits Fm of Utah. Eggs are tiny at around 18mm and " the exact identity of the egg producer is unknown, the eggshell microstructure and small size is consistent with a small-bodied avian or non-avian theropod" Paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-89472-1#disqus_thread @-Andy- @HamptonsDoc

This is probably going to be a long post, so I hope you're bored! This is an area I have wanted to visit since I was a little kid and first wanted to be a Paleontologist. Unfortunately, this area was a long way from my family's normal vacationing route so I never made it. One of my other past-times is running. I got into running half marathons and then decided I wanted to run one in every state. I was supposed to come last year, but, well, covid sucked the fun out of everything. Anyway, Vernal Utah (known as dinosaurland and home to the Dinosaur National Monument) hosts an annual dino-themed half-marathon. I mean, come on, how can I NOT run this race??! So, my shift at the fire dept ended at 7am this morning, and at 7:01 I was on the road in Oklahoma. I have to say, being a fossil hunter sucks as you drive! Driving up the Kansas 281, just shy of I-70 there is a very nice uplift with lots of cuts and looks to be a lot of shale. I wanted to stop and inspect some interesting road cuts, but I had zero time to waste. So I drove past fossil lake, onto I -70 towards Colorado. I waved hello as I passed by the Sternberg in Hays, and I spotted a sign for another museum (the Fick or Frick, I cant remember) so I will have to go back and visit when I have more time. Of course lots nice chalky outcrops visible driving through that part of Kansas, an so many wonderful fossils buried. The bad part about driving through this part of the country is that every mile looks pretty much the same. Hour after hour of the same flat plains and wind turbines. I made my only stop for fuel in Limon. 500 miles and only about halfway there. I finally caught sight of the Rockies about 100 miles east of Denver. I always love mountains, and catching the first glimpse on a trip is always special for me. Dont know why, just always love it. But then I had to drive through Denver. I hate Denver. North/south or east/west it doesnt matter. Driving there is always horrible. Then You have I-70 through the mountains. Lovely. Beautiful. Majestic. Hair raising. You have 200 miles of road that twists and turns, sometimes very sharply, packed with drivers. Some want to drive 80, some want to drive 50, and then the semi trucks which can barely drive 30. Then mix in construction every 10 miles. I'm just glad I wasnt pulling my camper this trip! On a side note, dont go to Vail. I pulled off into that town to try to stop for a pee break. WRONG! Never driving through there again. The interesting thing about this road, is that most of the middle is the volcanic/granite/iron/gold/etc mountains. Then as you drive, you come around a bend and suddenly you are surrounded by massive sedimentary cliffs. Without consulting a geological map, I think it was probably Morrison formation, at least part of it. Then things flatten out and get boring until I reached Rifle. As soon as I got north of Rifle on hwy 13, its just dino hunting drool inspiring formations. All the way up to Dinosaur Colorado and of course continuing on to Vernal. Just mile after mile of hills, cuts, valleys, washes, and mountains of sedimentary layer I want to climb and explore. Finally though, after just short of 14 hours of non-stop driving I arrived. Dog tired but too wired to sleep at the moment. Race isnt for a couple days, so tomorrow will be prospecting for sea-life and seeing some local sights. After Saturday's race, I'll go hunt some more before heading back home for another 14 hours marathon drive. I'll post pics and report on some hopefully productive digging!

Any ideas what this could be? I found it by a dried up river bed outside of St.George Utah. There was a lot small pieces of petrified wood close by.

Hi everyone, I have some trilobites I need help with identification on. I acquired these several years ago, so I am not entirely sure where these trilobites were found and can only suspect. The first is a trilobite that I believe is from Morocco. It is around 6 cm in length and 3 cm in width. The other two are Agnostid trilobites that I believe are from Utah. I was wondering if it was possible to limit each down to a genus. The darker one is 6 mm in length with a thorax around 3 mm wide. The lighter one is 7 mm in length with a thorax around 3.5 mm wide. Any help is appreciated. Thanks! IMG_5098.HEIC IMG_5100.HEIC IMG_5102.HEIC IMG_5104.HEIC IMG_5108.HEIC IMG_5109 2.HEIC IMG_5111.HEIC Whoops! I just realized I attached the first trilobite's images as files instead. I'll try to upload them as images instead in a reply.

Hi all... I would like to invite everyone to the third in a series of paleo lectures on Cretaceous dinosaurs sponsored by the Tate Geological Museum (Casper, Wyoming). Tuesday evening at 7PM, Mountain time. Jim is a charismatic speaker and will share some great discoveries being made in Utah these days. The Tate Museum's last lecture for the season is next week. Feel free to spread the word. May 4th 7PM Mountain Time James I. Kirkland Ph. D., P.G., State Paleontologist with the Utah Geological Survey. The Cedar Mountain Formation, Utah: North America’s Most Complete Early Cretaceous Record Link: https://caspercollege.zoom.us/j/99958974301?pwd=SFJranNySGdBZjNFdGhBMEZYRFJNUT09 Hope to see some of you there... virtually, of course.