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As of 5/5/16, this large specimen of Late Cretaceous Amber Resin has received a new home in the McClung Museum at the University Of Tennessee (Knoxville). It is from my collection of West Tennessee Amber and is Campanian. This was my 4th-5th largest specimen from my collection.

I'm extremely excited to announce that two days ago at 3:30 a newly discovered dinosaur vertebra was recovered from a Late Cretaceous Campanian formation in West Tennessee. This is only the 4th. dinosaurian vertebra to ever be found in Tennessee! It's also the first dinosaur vertebra I've ever found in my life. The specimen is from the tail section on the vertebrae column of a Hadrosaur. The neural canal and neural arch are still plainly visible. Specimen is missing the neural spine and also possible Chevron bone. This is a historic achievement for paleontology in Tennessee and here is the first look. As I'm sure by now, everyone on the Forum knows, my cell takes terrible pics, I hope to prep the specimen soon and show better shots of it. These photos were taken the day it was recovered and I have no others presently available. I will post more pics on this thread when the specimen is cleaned.

Anyone who has searched the internet for pictures of the 5 dinosaur bones that were recovered from the Cretaceous of West Tennessee knows what I'm talking about: there simply isn't ANY photos available to view the all the specimens, with the exception of a PDF file wrote in 1991 by Mr. Bryan from UT Knoxville. That said, the bones aren't to scale in the PDF and some PDF files of the paper don't even retain the pictures. An exhaustive internet search for the material only pulls up a few pictures of a bone or two plus one photo of a few associated fragments. Here I present to you as many photos of the material as I can. In this thread I also present the first photos of every single frag that is associated with the specimens, which isn't on public display. For at least 3 years now, I've tried hard to get photos of these specimens, I finally had to just go to Knoxville and do it myself. Now you all may have access to view photos of this online. A little background history about these bones; they were obtained by the University of Tennessee (Knoxville) from the Tennessee Division of Geology. The tag on the bones simply read "Cretaceous, West Tennessee." That is all! It is thought they were recovered sometime between the 40's-50's by the Division, and that the Geologist whom they came from didn't record the locality information on purpose because he had intent on returning to work the site. Until 2015 these were the only dinosaur bones to ever be found in Tennessee and publicly acknowledged. The find site is still an enduring mystery which I'm working on. My cell takes terrible photos, so I'm sorry about the picture quality, still I wanted to share these photos with you all.

The reality of this is just now sinking in, or I would have posted it sooner. On feb 11th-14th 2016 at the National Wild Turkey Federation Convention in Nashville, myself and some of my material will be in the Tennessee Division of Geology's exhibit section. My cretaceous bones (dinosaurian and marine reptile) are the primary specimens that have been requested to be displayed, other material of mine there may consist of cretaceous teeth, paleobotanicals, amber, cretaceous insects, minerals, ect. After a recent meeting with the State Geologist, he informed me that every year the Tn. Div. of Geology showcases an exhibit at the NWTF Convention, and I was welcome to be there and show material he had inspected. Man, I don't even remember how many milliseconds it took to respond to the proposition, but wasn't too long at any rate. Now, the thing is, this is a Turkey Hunter's convention, so obviously there won't be a ton of straight-up fossil lover's present, but I'm sure most will be the outdoorish-type, and will also enjoy minerals, fossils, ect. As I previously stated, this is just now sinking in good.... Best I remember through quick conversation, he said it would be attended by 40,000 people and would be a great chance to get publicity for my collection. Now, that passed through my mind the other day and I thought to myself, "That number can't be right." So I googled it, the NWTF site that talks about the convention say over 48,000 attend it!!! It also said exhibition space is sold out. Now I'm setting hear thinking, where in the heck am I gonna sleep Feb 11th-14th???? Really, cause if 50 thousand people are gonna be there, I couldn't afford a motel room if one was even available, and one won't be. All of Nashville together has nothing like that kind of accommodations. At any rate, it is a true honor to be asked to do this by the state, as far as I'm aware, I'm the only amateur in the state the offer has been given too. Other offers were passed my way that day, even hour presentations where I would do the same as that day...bring the material and talk about it, palaeoecology,lithology, stratigraphy, ect. This will be directed toward gov. employees and officials in the Tennessee Tower. Oh, I certainly agreed to that too. A date hasn't been set for that yet, but if your close to Nashville in February, come on down and meet Tennessee's Pride! I just know some of you fellow TFF members will be in the mix, and I look forward to personally meeting you.