Search the Community

Just a quick post because this is somewhat of a rarity. About three weeks ago I was hunting fossils in my favorite Ordovician location up here in Ontario Canada with a few friends including Northern Sharks and I found my first ever cyclocystoid. I cannot tell you how many 1000s of crinoid stems I have thought for a split second might be a cyclocystoid or edrioastroid. Finally picked up the real thing...... not an imposter. The segmentation in the ring is the giveaway. This one is in quite a good state of preservation and has had an initial prep under the scope with air abrasion. (40 micron dolomite 22 PSI and .018 nozzle). I may still clean up the center a bit more at a lower PSI and use finer abrasive (22 micron and a smaller nozzle .010) . The fossil is 14mm across. I have not seen one of these found at that locality in person but am aware of two other specimens. One of the other specimens was slightly smaller than this one. A very experienced collector at that site indicated that this was one of the rarest fossils to come out of that location. I am quite pleased with it and it will become part of my personal collection as this is a new species for me at that location.

I must admit that ceraurus is one of my very favorite trilobites. I have been hunting diligently to try to find a prone museum quality specimen for my personal collection. This is the best that I have been able to find so far (I have about 5 others that are all in the neighborhood of 80% complete). Although this is not shown in the pictures there is a perfect hypostome that I have exposed on the bottom of the specimen. On the plus side it is very inflated and 3 dimensional with no squashing.The area that I am hunting for these is very fragile shale that has only been recently exposed and it is not standing up to rain very well. I found this one about four weeks ago. Not quite there yet for my perfect specimen but still not too shabby. What was particularly interesting about this one was that only 3 pleural arches were visible on the matrix and the rest was buried. I actually thought that I had found a flexicalymene which is the most common fossil at that location. The shale that it is in has been exposed to rain and is quite fragile. before starting the prep I soaked it in a very dilute solution of PVA (poly vinyl acetate) and acetone). This acted to consolidate the matrix. As I prepped I used a hypodermic needle to infuse more PVA solution as the exoskeleton had cracks in it and was prone to want to flake off. The prepping was done under a zoom scope using 44 micron dolomite air abrasion at a low PSI (18) and small nozzle size (.018 inches) There is still about 20 to 30 minutes of prepping to go before it is finished. I'll wait for my perfect specimen before entering one in fossil of the month..... lol...... I think I have the species correct but if you disagree with my identification please jump in... Ceraurus globulobatus Veralum formation Brechin , Ontario, Canada 1.8 inches long (47 mm) 1.4 inches wide (37 mm) I had the pleasure of meeting up with Crinus and Northern Sharks from the forum this weekend at the site where this was found. Turned out to be an absolute miserable cold rainy day. I arrived at the site about 8:00 AM and stayed till about 2:30 and it rained constantly the whole time I was there. I did however manage to find a crinoid calyx with arms (no stem), 4 enrolled flexicalymene and 4 enrolled isotelus , all complete. This season I seem to be finding mostly enrolled isotelus. I have only found 3 complete prone isotelus this summer. I had not posted anything in a while so I hope you enjoyed, I think you were all getting tired of my eurypterid posts.... I have found some amazing isotelus this summer, I really need to get my act together and prep them and take some pictures....... stay tuned..........

My friend QuarrymanDave here on the forum asked me to prep what looked to be an unusual trilobite from the veralum formation of Ontario. This is Ordovician . The prep is not finished, I still need to do the fine detail . Even though this is just a cephalon , I think it is an amazing little fossil. It is 31.3 mm at its longest and 22.0 mm at its widest. I have certainly never seen this species in all the times I have been to the location he found it in. It could very well be a rare paraharpes ottawaensis or equally rare dolichoharpes dentoni Please jump in with your identification...... I am currently leaning towards it being dolichoharpes dentoni