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Hi everyone! I found this claw while anthill hunting on the White River formation of northeastern Colorado. It's about 6 mm in length and 4 mm tall. Honestly I'm not certain that it's a fossil, but if it is I'm really excited to have found it. My first guess is that it's a small bird, but it could very well be mammalian or reptilian. Any input is appreciated.

Hey everybody! I wanted to make a thread sharing with you some of the smaller fossils in my collection, many of which I've photographed using my digital microscope. Some of these I've found in the field at microsites or channel deposits, while others I've found at home searching through matrix. I hope you enjoy! Our journey begins in Wyoming's Lance formation: A Pectinodon tooth my dad found in 2017. A tooth that was identified by other forum members as potentially Avisaurus, also found in 2017. A tooth I initially called Paronychodon, although the small & worn denticles may suggest otherwise. Found in 2020. A tooth which was once the smallest in my collection at around 3 mm., potentially Acheroraptor but currently is indeterminate. Found in 2020. Probably my smallest crocodilian osteoderm in good shape, found in 2019. A tiny dermal denticle, potentially from Myledaphus. Found in 2020. The smallest mammal tooth in my collection, an itty bitty multituberculate I found at home working on conglomerate matrix in 2019. A nodosaur tooth (Denversaurus) found in 2020. A collection of small fish mouth plates (cf. Cyclurus) from 2020. A salamander premaxilla (cf. Scapherpeton) found in 2020. A Thescelosaurus premax tooth from 2020. A view of some of the Lance fm. anthill matrix I brought home to search, with a piece of fish mouth plate in the center

I've been in the lab this fall/winter but preparation has taken a back seat to the plastics/replicas operations. As things start to wind down with plastics around this time of year, I'm embarking on my next prep project. This specimen is from the same Wyoming locality as the Herpetotherium I posted about recently but was found many years ago(~15?). It appears to just be an upper skull of a small rodent but there is some hope for lowers. I pulled this piece out of its field packaging in April but just now starting preparation in earnest. So far, all I've done is rough prep around the boundary to remove the bulk matrix surrounding it. It was attached to a larger block but there is no evidence of any additional bone fragments in the other block. The bulk removal was done with my trusty ARO but all prep going forward will be done under magnification with a Paleotool's Microjack-3 or pin vices. Identification will take a while but we'll talk about the process as I get the specimen uncovered. If I had to guess at this point, I suspect it to be Paradjidaumo. Time will tell if I'm correct.

Serious, experienced replies, please! This 0.5 cm long object is attached to a broken coprolite from the Eocene/Oligocene of NW Nebraska. Trying hard to figure it out. Wrong twexture for a tooth and it doesn't look like a seed, either. I have a guess, but right now a guess is all I have. Any coprolite specialists out there? I know the pictures could be better, but I don't have a microscope out here in the field.

Today I got this mostly complete Subhyracodon skull from the White River formation, South Dakota. Right now it still looks a bit rough since it's been crushed a bit and there's a bunch of sediment stuck all over the place. The specimen has been pretty well stabilised. So it's not very fragile thankfully enough. Almost all the teeth are present. Only one maxillary tooth is gone and the very tip of the premaxilla is gone. The 2 posterior premax teeth are still there, but the anterior ones are gone. Roughly half of the braincase is also missing on the back of the skull. Otherwise the skull is quite complete. Initial unpacking. Starting prep outside After some exploratory prep using dental picks. I will likely start removing much of the bulk of the matrix in areas such as the orbit and nares with powered tools. The different isn't very visible right now since I was mostly working on small areas and further cleaning up areas where bone was already mostly exposed. Stay tuned for more!

Hey guys, First, sorry I've been absent from the forums. After the death of @caldigger I just kinda fell off from the social aspect of it all. It's been a weird year and some change. Covid has effected us all in some form or other, the planet is basically on fire, and politics is eating us from the inside out. I've literally lost friend, figuratively and metaphorically from all of the above. In the time of my absence from the forums, I have been fossil hunting. I've only shared my experience with people that are personally close to me, mostly @Bone Daddy. But, I figured it was time to re-enter the paleontological world. I've just recently secured a new job and before it begins a week off for just myself. Of course, I'm currently spending that time fossil hunting. I've only gone once, which was Monday the 16th of August. But, It was very successful from the word 'go'. I arrived at my white river site fairly early at 9 am. I underestimated the heat of the day, and this particular site has no shade. I was only able to hunt for about 3 hours before my old age surrendered to the heat. In this three hours I found what I think to be a brontothere jaw. These are notoriously brittle, and this site makes no exception. In fact, my horse and kingdom for any of my fossil sites to produce a stable fossil! Anyway, as I arrived I noticed there was a section that I had somehow overlooked in my previous excursions. I immediately headed out that way, and found several chunkasaurus bits and bones...a few big verts, which I always love to find. I began to find scraps of a brontothere tooth, which is fairly common in the area. As I gave a closer look, I found a whole tooth. This is a blessing and a curse considering i've found 5 of these teeth in the area and only managed to obtain 1 of them in salvageable condition. I began the painstaking process of extracting this brittle tooth, while looking around for other pieces that may have been scattered through the ages. I noticed that there were more and more pieces of tooth uphill from the initial discovery. This was odd to me, because usually downhill from the major discovery is where you will find bits and pieces of it. I followed the trail which lead me to the beautiful jaw section. I managed to extract the jaw in 4 or 5 major pieces, but as you can tell from the photos, there is a lot of work to do. Although it is in several hundred pieces, I'm very pleased with the condition of it all. Anyway, here are the photos. Cheers Just replying to follow.

Hi folks- I have had a good time this past month after work, prepping some White River specimens. This first one is the smallest turtle I have ever found... it so cute! This one took me 8 hours to prep. This next one is now officialy one of the prides of my colletcion. Whe I collected it only the top of the skull and a few leg bones were visible. No field shot, but here it is before prep began. You can see the skull at the bottom of the block, and some leg bones just above my thumb and a few more to the left of the green and black marks. I took this to the CT scanner in my local hospital and had a look inside. Here is one slice out of many that the machine took. (Each slice is 3mm thick, so any bone smaller than that might not show up) You can see the skull and teeth. The white oval at the bottom of the skull is the ear opening. Onthe CT scan, you can clearly see the leg that is visible above my thumb in the above photo. To the right of the skull the slice goes through the front leg. These were really exciting to find at the hospital. My friend the CT technician gives me a CD when I leave with three files of slices, one in each of the x,y and z planes. It is often easy enough to read and figure out what is in there. At the hospital and on the CD, we can scroll through all the slices and make a movie out of it. I could not figure out how to export that. (It is likely not possible as these CT programs are all proprietary). After I left, my buddy created a 3d rendering of this fellow. This also comes on a CD and I can flow through it like a movie. I can also take screen shots and make stereophotos from them by taking two consecutive frames and glueing them together. That's what this next photo is. The vertical is a bit exaggerated because each frame is a bit too far apart from its neighbors to make a perfect stereo image. If you know how to see stereophotos, enjoy. This photo is an excellent guide to prepping. You can see that some areas have excessive red stuff. These are areas where the rock has more calcite in it and does not CT scan as well, so the machine can't tell me exactly what is going on there. And here are a few pix of the final product. Hypisodus is a small (really small) artiodactyl; a distant relative to modern deer. Not an ancestor, but an offshoot on the family tree. It had a big eye and huge ear bones suggesting that it was nocturnal. Unlike any modern artiodactyl, it has five toes on the front leg and four on the rear. The back leg is condiserably longer than the front. The font leg on this one is to the left of the lower jaw. You can only see three toes; the other two are too deep in the rock to expose. The second front leg is actually exposed on the other side, under the skull. The back legs are the one folded up by the snout and the other one at the bottom of the rock. Below is a closer view of that back leg. At the tip, you can clearly see two large-ish hoofs. They are the ends of two functional toes. Each functional toe includes that hoof, then two toe bones, then a much much longer metatarsal (the second functional toe is hidden more or less parallel to the one you can clearly see). Then there are two non-functional toes that probably had dew claws. You can see the long very thin metetarsal of one of thoes toes here as well as the first toe bone attached to it. This metatarsal is too thin to show up on the CT scan. Hospital CT scanners have their limits. This thing took me 35 hours to prep. It was all done under the microscope with a number three MicroJack, and dolomite in the air abrasive machine used at 5 to 20 psi, for those taking notes.

I was recently out vacationing in Wyoming and spent Saturday morning (7/24/21) hunting in the badlands. As I sat down to rest for a moment, I looked down and saw what I thought were a radius/ulna pair from a small mammal. Upon closer inspection, it was a pair of lower jaws freshly exposed on the edge of a nodule and on the backside, a small skull. Needless to say, I was ecstatic. I spent a bit of time making sure the specimen was consolidated (Paleobond Penetrant, wish I had brought some 4417) and packed it up for the trip home. I was thinking it would make a great Vertebrate Fossil of the Month but as I am unsure of my identification and being a skilled preparator, I thought it would be more interesting to show the process. I do suspect the specimen to be the marsupial, Herpetotherium fugax. However, without seeing the teeth, this is mostly a guess. I do have another specimen with a similar endocast which is what I am using as my basis for an identification at the moment. Though I am quite unsure if the endocasts of the Insectivores have the same character. Pardon my anatomy if I get this wrong but there is a fold between the parietal lobes and the occipital lobe that you can see in the above photo and that is what I'm guessing my ID on. Once we get the teeth exposed, we will know for sure. Here are the pieces on my desk with some better lighting and measurements. A bit of cranium on the negative. The top of the skull. And the lower jaw that was seen exposed. The plan is as follows: 1. Clean the blocks of any mud/loose chips 2. Glue the blocks solidly back together 3. Bulk matrix removal with pneumatic tools (ARO/Paleotool Microjack-3) 4. Fine matrix removal under a scope/micro abrasion I'll write up each step as I progress. Enjoy! And @jpc I apologize for not visiting you, but it was a whirlwind trip. I'll catch you next time!

Now that hockey season has ended and the lab is warm again, and perhaps due to my new found extra time in isolation, I am embarking on documenting my prep projects. I thought I would start the prep season off with something easy that should turn out fairly nice. Please welcome my new little friendly Oreodont, Miniochoerus gracilis. It came into my collection in the summer of 2013 and has sat jacketed in a box until today. This evening I concentrated primarily on consolidation and bulk matrix removal with an ARO, and still have a ways to go. The plan is to prepare the "down" side in the hopes of a beautiful orbit and zygomatic arch. I did notice a cross section of vertebrae on the rear of the block so there is probably some neck attached as well. I'm hoping there is enough matrix below the jaws to make a nice pedestal to sit on as well.

Forum member Ray Eklund recently offered several pieces of White River mammal material at auction to benefit the Forum. I was pleased to win one of these and received it a little over two weeks ago. I now hope to post a series attempting to show the progress in preparation. This fossil is the skull and lower jaw of Merycoidodon gracilis. This is one of the smaller Oreodonts, about the size of a modern red fox. Ray provided the following collection information: Brule Member of the White River Formation, Sioux County, Nebraska. Here are photos provided by Ray, posted for the auction. The remainder of the photos in this series were shot with a Nikon D600 with a 50mm, 1.8 lens mounted. These photos were processed in Photoshop Elements 11 and are greatly reduced in size/resolution for posting.

Need some help identifying a fossil. This was found in Pennington co. South Dakota near the Indian creek basin. It was found in an area with many titanotherium fossils. I believe it is embedded in bone as well. Not sure what other info would be helpful so please ask.

I'll be honest, I've put off writing this trip report for far too long. Between work, school and general procrastination I have delayed this post for over 7 months. Perhaps there's a silver lining to me writing this in the middle of winter, it could act as a nice break from the grey & cold conditions many of us are facing this season. Hopefully you all enjoy a dose of warmth from a trip which I enjoyed greatly. Ok ready? Let's go. My morning started around 4:30, ungodly hours for me generally, but I woke up excited for what lay ahead. Less than a half hour later we were on our way headed south to Boston. While we always leave much earlier than I would like. there's something peaceful about being able to drive through the streets of the greater Boston area without having to deal with its notoriously bad drivers. We made it to Logan and I gave my parents a goodbye hug after we pulled my bags from the car. The flight was smooth and with only 1 layover, I had made it to Rapid City by early afternoon. Soon after I landed in SD, I caught a ride to Newcastle with PaleoProspectors Founder and Director, Dr. Steve Nicklas. When we reached our destination across the border in Wyoming, I quickly began to acclimate to the motel room which would be my home for the next three weeks. This week I would meet and befriend several new people including Quincy @Opabinia Blues, another paleo enthusiast my age, and several of Steve's archaeology students who came to help him dig on a titanothere bonebed. This week would be spent mostly on the Lance formation, with one day spent on the White River. Week 1, Day 1: We started the morning at some hillside exposures overlooking a plain along the Little Cheyenne River. This is one of my favorite areas on the ranch. I started the day off hot with a nice sized turtle claw, unfortunately missing the tip. Brachychampsa alligatoroid tooth. A view of the slope I was hunting. A nice ceratopsid spit tooth. A tiny crocodilian tooth. Myledaphus (guitarfish) tooth. As the morning turned into afternoon, I made my way to the base of the exposures.

This tooth is from the White River formation. I am sorting my collection and want to confirm my best guess. If possible, I would like to know the species.

All from Nebraska. I thought the last astragalus was Mesohippus at first, but it seems much flatter than the other Mesohippus ones I have. Any and all help is much appreciated.

Well, went out hunting today in one of my white river spots. I picked up this bad boy, and I have to say, I’m fairly happy with this find. It’s quite obviously coprolite. So, what’s it from? Anyone familiar with white river coprolites? I was thinking oreodont, but it looks a little too big and I can’t find examples online. If this isn’t coprolite, please enlighten me.

Good morning folks. I have a fossil Stylemys nebrascensis(?) turtle from the White River Badlands of South Dakota. I noticed what "appears" to be bite marks on both the top and bottom of the shell after I removed a layer of matrix. I carefully washed it with a medium bristle, plastic brush and Dawn Dishwashing liquid. What are your thoughts on the "marks"?

I haven’t been getting out and about much now a days. The heat and Covid has been keeping me indoors for the most part. The weather is slowly changing to fall and I decided to hit up my white river spot. It’s been a couple months since I’ve been, but boy, the spot just keeps on giving. Right out the gate, I was harassed by a rattlesnake...apparently they do exist. After giving that little bugger plenty of breathing room, I began a several hour hike around my super secret, private property, land owner permission having spot! it wasn’t long before I found a large ancient alluvial deposit. Bones were strewn about, and here I found numerous oreodont jaw pieces of varying sizes. After scooping up all the low hanging fruit, I made my way up the hills that would have deposited said fruit. Here I found a tortoise that I left there in situ because those things are impossible to put back together. After dismissing the idea of another jigsaw puzzle turtle, I crossed a valley and made my way back to a spot that had produced some nice large bones in recent hunts. It wasn’t long before the find of the day caught my eye. An oreodont upper jaw(in pieces but good condition and all there) laying upon the scry. As I carefully dusted away the bits of sand and collected the jaw, I noticed that the whole lower jaw was buried just beneath it! Two for the price of one! And the lower jaw was fairly solid only being broken in half! Lucky me! I did also find three large bones that will have to be reassembled-but they aren’t as cool as my jaw. Sorry the pics are out of order, but you guys get the idea. Sorry if this reads like a 2 year old wrote it, I’m exhausted and it’s late. Happy Hunting y’all!

I’m thinking about adding this little guy to the vert fossil of the month(even though it probably won’t win this month with the competition). I would like to get a positive id and as much info as possible. I’m still learning my way around the white river formation. So far I freakin love it! Anyway, here’s my little guy-I still have more to put together, but the pieces are a little small and complicated.

Hello, everyone, Lately this summer I’ve been doing a bit of casual fossil collecting (with explicit permission!) on some land that a very close family friend owns in Weld County, Colorado that has a lot of exposure of the White River Formation, and I’ve collected a sizable amount of material including some pretty awesome finds. Being an amateur, I need some help identifying some of the fossils I’ve collected. Since the forum has a photo upload limit per post, I’ll be making a few threads for different finds, I hope that is ok. These are two small bones that look very similar, from Weld County Colorado. To me they look a lot like the toe bones of ruminants like deer, but I’m wondering if anyone has any better or specific guesses. #1: #2: Thanks!

What are the characteristics of a White River turtle shell that can differentiate between Stylemys and Gopherus (Testudo)?

Hello everyone! know I've been slacking on updates on my three week trip to Wyoming with PaleoProspectors, but I promise I will post some more of my finds and do a full recap of last week's adventure as soon as I can. As for tonight, I'll share my experience hunting in the white river formation today, A view of where I began my day hunting. My first find: A section of Paleolagus (rabbit) jaw. Next I found a native american artifact After entering a larger area of exposures I came across this Mesohippus (horse) jaw.

Today the wife and I hit my white river spot. It was a very successful hunt-my wife has a keen eye for fossils, much better than me! Anyway, this tooth was found. I immediately thought some kind of rhino or hippo. I’m thinking hyracodons? We also found this oval piece of enamel in the same area. I’m thinking mastodon for this one. These are total guesses on my part and I’m more familiar with the verts of Florida. Any thoughts are welcome and appreciated.

Finally getting around to working on a jigsaw puzzle I found in the White River Fm of Nebraska a couple of years ago. Pretty sure it’s a soft shelled turtle, but I’m not having luck finding anything like it online. The shell is eggshell thin and seems like it was leathery in life. There are a few bones included. Suggestions?