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Skull growth of the mosasaur Tylosaurus is presented in this paper https://peerj.com/articles/10145/

I bought this tyrannosaur tooth a while back and it says it’s a albertosaurus, gorgosaurus, or daspletosaurus. Is there anyway to narrow it down any further? It says it was found in the Judith river formation of eastern Montana and it measures just over an inch. Any and all help is appreciated.

I've been slowly working my way thru some specimens I collected this summer. I often sort stuff out and tackle one group/order at a time. So I am sorting out some of the rudists that are found at one of my favorite Glen Rose Formation locations. The site is rich with a seriously diverse fauna that includes at least 4 species of rudists. Rudists were rather weirdly shaped bivalves that went extinct at the end of the Mesozoic. They are also, most often, only found locked into hard rock and difficult to collect. But this local produces at least two that you can pick up complete and two that give good internal molds. I started with the requienids Toucasia texana (Roemer) which look more like big gastropods than bivalves. As I sorted them by size and quality I found there was one I kept picking up and turning to match with the others. But it wouldn't... Take a look and let me know when you see the one that is different. I'll follow up with pics of the other species later today. EDIT: I guess I still did didn't turn it around enough times...It's just upside down....feeling kinda foolish about now...still nice fossils I think...

Over the Columbus Day weekend, I planned to make a trip up from Virginia to New Jersey to visit my mother and other family. The trip offered the opportunity to check out one of the cretaceous sites in NJ that I have read about so much here--and that my son has been begging to visit for, like, a year. Never having collected there, I reached out to forum members @Trevor and @The Jersey Devil for any suggestions they could offer to a couple of cretaceous creek newbies and they really came through! (Thanks, again guys!) With tips in hand we arrived at our collecting location early on Sunday, hoping to stay ahead of the rain that was forecast from the remnants of Hurricane Delta. Water conditions were very good, with low and clear water and plenty of dry bank to move around, and the air temps were in the 60's, so it ended up being a perfect day for collecting. My son wanted a mosasaur tooth, of course, but my goal was just to find a nice crow shark tooth, as I think they are super cool and unlike any shark teeth we have down here. We kind of knew a couple of areas to try, so we set out to the farthest one, figuring to get the longer hike out of the way first. We had our screens and shovels, but we didn't really know exactly the best places in the creek to try in terms of the current / gravel / silt / mud mix that would hold the best fossils. We set out to learn by trial-and-error. The first hour or so was a bit discouraging. Despite knowing we were generally in the right place, all we had come up with was a couple of very small, broken tooth fragments. But we kept at it, moving around a bit and changing the material we were working. It wasn't too much longer until we saw the sight every collector wants to see.

Found this in a river canyon in Northeastern B.C. that cuts through Cretaceaous sediments. It is out of a large broken ironstone nodule (120lbs) polished by the river gravels. Actually, the river gravels are dominated by ironstone weathering out of the soft sediments. Appears to be folded in on itself but the other side is hidden by the ironstone matrix. It looks to be a Palm frond of some type but I am not sure. What puzzles me is that it looks like a single crenulated leaf. There are a fair number of fossil plant bits around at this location and I did find another piece of one of these upriver. Any help would be appreciated. Best Regards Rob

Hi! I see this strange fossil from Erfoud, Morocco. Any idea? Dinosaur bone? Thank you so much.

From BBC News : https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54547987

Took me a little while to post this trip report, I'm always a busy person. This trip is from October 3rd, 2020 in Ellsworth County, Kansas at a reservoir. The predominant formation at the site I visited is Kiowa formation; which is known for marsh and delta environments in the early Cretaceous (Albian). I found some interesting things and I'll show below. Possibly some carbonized wood materials. Lignite or coal? It was flaky and would crumble if touched. It left some black powders on my hands after handling it. I found several large pieces of them together and partly encased in concretions. Putting them together would make them about a meter and half long. Piece #1: Piece #2: Backside of #2. Notice the clutches of concretions. ...continued on the next post.

Found this thick bone piece in a new jersey cretaceous creek and wonder if its possible to maybe id since one side has a distinct rough texture while the other is flatter and striated, I would guess either large turtle, mosasaur, or dinosaur. My friend joked its a theropod maxilary skull fragment, but we all know around here that material seems close to impossible to come across haha. Interested to hear any other thoughts.

Awhile back we had the great fortune to do a trade with our friend @Captcrunch227. Beau has been a friend since we joined and among the shark goodies he sent us was a bag of micro matrix from Eagle Ford, Post Oak Creek if memory serves. I found 4 teeth that appeared to be Orectolobiformes. Cretaceous Texas seems to have been environment well suited to Carpet Sharks. Cantioscyllium, Plicatoscyllium, Nebrius, and Ginglymostoma are all listed on Elasmo though those examples are from the Kemp Clay. I found two distinct tooth types but I am not 100% sure my ID’s are accurate. I had the chance to get pictures of the tiny teeth so hopefully I can get some help with these. I think the first two are Cantioscyllium teeth. They are larger than the other two. These are both around 4mm or so. I researched this quite a bit and that was the best fit but I could definitely be wrong.

*Just a note that this is a follow-up post to the VFOTM post that I wanted to share.* After reading a few posts here on the forum I decided I’d go to the NSR when I got the chance. I’d read it was good for beginners and the opportunity presented itself in April, 2020. I decided I’d make the trip and see what I could find. The first trip I hunted I found very little and walked a great deal until the very end of the day when I finally found two small mosasaur teeth. One of which was a Globidens sp. I was instantly hooked. Two weeks later, on my second ever fossil hunting trip I spotted the exposed section of the tip of the dentary which was only an inch above the marl, and kept walking thinking that it was just wood sticking out of the riverbed. Keep in mind it was after a two hour drive and seven hour hike, I hadn’t read much about fossils, and had no idea about how to properly collect a more complete vertebrate. I continued walking and my exhausted heat addled brain finally processed that the chances of there being an old black piece of wood stuck in the bottom of the riverbed wasn’t that likely. So I walked a few yards back and was lucky enough to find it. Beginners luck! I didn’t take a picture of it until I exposed the first tooth. First picture though is just the anatomy of my find as I understand it. This was the first picture I did take of the right dentary. The NSR can rise pretty fast, especially when it’s raining out west and it was slowly rising so my find started going under water. I was stuck between trying to get it exposed and out of the ground in as best shape as possible and risking it going under which I didn’t know how would effect it. To top it all off the only tool I had was a screwdriver. Here is the dentary nearly exposed. And exposed. I dug a little channel that diverted some of the water away, but it was only effective for a few minutes. And here’s the shape it left in the river bottom. By the time I had the find out of the ground the water level was well over the site and the sun was going down. I decided I'd go back as soon as possible to see if I could find any more.

Found a nice tooth that need help to ID. It’s 1.49 long. Crazy colors for the teeth I find here Also found my first “nibbling” tooth of a Sclerodermind Fish Both found in a spot I haven’t hit in awhile!

So out hunting in some sedimentary rock from the nanaimo group on vancouver island here and found this. Sticking out of a rather large chunk of rock. Any idea what this might be? (If anything?) I've looked through my "westcoast fossils" book but does not look (to me) like anything from that.

I’ve had this little find for a few weeks now. It’s about 2cm long. Was thinking some kind of fish tooth, or possibly even plesiosaur. You can see the pronounced striations in the pics. Definitely river worn, though. Thanks in advance!

Hi everyone I just ordered some more microfossil matrix samples, most of which are rich in shark teeth. But I would like to know what to expect from the matrix, which means I am looking for websites of pdf's which describe the species from those locations. The first is from Lee Creek Mine, Yorktown Formation, Aurora, North Carolina (Miocene), I did find an ID section of Lee Creek teeth on elasmo.com but it wasn't extremely extensive. The second sample is a shark tooth rich Limestone Block (which still needs to be disolved) from the Mesaverde Formation, Rollings Member, Colorado (Cretaceous). If anyone has some pdf's of info sheets that could help with ID'ing the finds, I would be more than grateful! Thank you in advance!

Hi everybody! Today i wanna show you one of my dearest ammonites...Choffaticeras segne! Making a search by keywords in TFF, i found only three results for this species...so i decided to enlarge the number! Now i present you my Choffaticeras segne: it comes from Goulmima in Morocco, belongs to Turonian (Upper/Late Cretaceous), it is 19cm in height and 1.461kg in weight. This specimen has been polished in both sides, obviously. It's very decorative and it makes its good looking part in my living room. I love its external sutures, how do you call this kind of suture in english? Please, let me know! For who loves taxonomy and scientific classification (like me), i leave you a little pattern that i made. Thanks for "watching" Choffaticeras segne Dominio: Eukaryota Regno: Animalia Phylum: Mollusca Classe: Cephalopoda Sottoclasse: Ammonoidea Ordine: Ammonitida Sottordine: Ammonitina Superfamiglia: Acanthoceratoidea Famiglia: Pseudotissotiidae Sottofamiglia: Pseudotissotiinae Genere: Choffaticeras Sottogenere: Choffaticeras (Choffaticeras) Specie: Choffaticeras (Choffaticeras) segne

From BBC News : https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-54448253

Dr. Barry Albright, University of North Florida - Discovering Nothronychus Graffami, Northeast Public Radio UNF professor involved in new dinosaur discovery in Utah, University of North Florida L. Barry Albright, University of North Florida, Researchgate Papers Yours, Paul H.

Dear Fellow Forum Members, On this day, the 4th of October in the year 2020, @itsronni @Masp @Trevor and @Jeffrey P ventured to a frequented late cretaceous stream in New Jersey. I first met up with Jeff and did some sifting before later locating itsronni and Masp further downstream. Finds came somewhat slowly after we first stopped to sift but after some time we gradually found more fossils. We stayed in one area for the majority of the day up until Jeff had to leave. After some deliberation, the remaining members and I walked a quarter mile upstream and then left shortly afterwards. It was a nice day to meet fellow forum members and also a nice day to collect fossils. Here are my finds, the others will post theirs when they can:

So I had a few hours off the other day and decided to hit a favorite spot in the Glen Rose Formation. The Glen Rose is Lower Cretaceous (Albian) and can be very fossiliferous. For those familiar with this formation the particular layer I was hunting is near the top of the Lower Member in what is known as the "Salenia texana" zone. As the name implies it is abundant with the echinoid Leptosalenia texana. But it also produces another handful of echinoids, some common and some rare. I was hunting(hoping) for the rare ones... Now let me tell you it has been a long hard summer and this week was the topper with my wiener dog Bacon getting snake bit in the back yard and things at work being extra hectic and, well just life in general in this time of plague... So I was DUE BIG TIME for a good hunt. Within the first five minutes I knew it was going to be good. We recently had some good rain and there were no footprints in sight. And it was bright and clear and perfect "urchin" light. Some of you know just what I mean by that. Sharp clear sunlight at the right angle makes those tubercules pop, even when half buried in the marl. My first good find was a fossil I had been looking for for a while and one that I got skunked on at the last PSA field trip. Jamie Lynn and a few other club members found them and I was teasing them about it. It was a comatulid crinoid cup. Not an echinoid, but another weird echinoderm. Comatulids are stemless crinoids, aka feather stars. From there I started finding those Leptosalenias of which I only brought home the best ones. Lots of other good specimens of bivalves, gastropods, serpulids, etc started filling the bag and then I looked up and there it was, bucket list, holy grail of the GR, a CIDARID! Now I have several "pieces" from there but this one was obviously complete. It was still tucked into the marly layer and hadn't been fully washed out and broken up yet. As I removed it I found it was a bit squooshed, but otherwise intact. The species is Paracidaris? texanus (Whitney & Kellum). Smith & Rader(2009) placed it tentatively in Paracidaris, but it is probably a good ID. Spines and loose plates are common but articulated specimens are few and far between. That was it, I could have gone home right then and there, but I kept going. I was rewarded with a medium sized Tetragramma (semi rare) that will need lots of cleaning and a few more Leptosalenias. Eventually my alarm went off and it was time to head home. A great afternoon in Central Texas.

Fossil snails of the genus Trochactaeon from Kainach near Voitsberg, Styria, Austria (Gosau-Group of Kainach, upper Cretaceous) - Summary of this years prospection Introduction Snails of the extinct genus Trochactaeon (formerly part of the genus Actaeonella) are among the most familiar fossils of the upper Cretaceous Gosau-Group of the Austrian Alps. The rather large size of some species (>10 cm), their intriguing spiral pattern in transverse sections and plenty supply, based on many mass occurrence, make them particularly popular. Some well known occurrences in Austria, distributed over several 100 km, are Brandenberg in Tyrol, “Schneckenwand”/Rußbach in Salzburg, Waaggraben near Hieflau in Styria and “Schneckengartl”/Dreistetten in Lower Austria; all of these are located within the Northern Calcareous Alps, mainly composed of Mesozoic rocks, especially Triassic platform carbonates. The most extensive occurrence of Gosau-Group sediments in Austria, the Kainach Gosau, however, is resting on sediments of the Palaeozoic of Graz. The Gosau-Group of Kainach consists mainly of coarse- to fine-grained clastic sediments (conglomerates to siltstones, Geistthal-formation, Afling-formation), some bituminous marls (St. Pankrazen-formation) and some hydraulic marls (St. Bartholomä-formation). The age of the whole group is considered to be mostly Campanian, but stretches into the Santonian and possibly into the Maastrichtian (Ebner & Rantitsch, 2000). In contrast to many other Gosau-Group occurrences, the Kainach Gosau is considered to be rather poor in fossils. Noticeable fossil occurrences are rudists of the St. Bartholomä-formation, some plant fossils and accumulations of small gastropods within the St. Pankrazen-formation and a few scattered ammonite concentrations within the Afling-formation. All of these fossils are already known since the 1850ies. This is also the case for the Trochactaeon snails. Transverse section of Trochactaeon giganteus from the Kainach Gosau. Generalized geological map of Styria with Trochactaeon occurrences in the northern part of the Kainach Gosau. Location of the Waaggraben site is also indicated. Brief history of Trochactaeon in the Kainach Gosau Trochactaeon snails were first mentioned in a footnote by Morlot (1850), thereby proofing the Cretaceous age of these sediments. Only two years later, their existence was already doubted (Peters, 1852). However, in 1871, Stur was able to prove the occurrence of Trochactaeon in the Kainach Gosau with museum specimens already submitted by Morlot (Locality “Am Sengsenwerk `in der Eben´, Kainach, Nord”). Indicative was the host rock of the snails, which is different to the host rocks of Trochactaeon snails within the Gosau sediments of the Northern Calcareous Alps. It took about 100 years, before several occurrences of this snail within actual outcrops were discovered by systematic investigations of a local teacher and collector in the 1960ies. But the in-situ occurrences where never described, only briefly mentioned in mapping reports and summaries of the regional geology (Gräf, 1975). The only exception is a large outcrop at the main road in Gallmannsegg north of Kainach, where some of these snails are very firmly embedded in a very hard, conglomeratic sandstone and can therefore be observed “permanently”. This site is featured in a recent excursion guide (Hubmann & Gross, 2015) and very interestingly, this is also the discovery locality of Morlot (1850), though highly modified during later road construction. Discovery site of Morlot (1850), highly modified during road construction (red X). Römaskogel Mt. (1006 m) to the upper right. Field work and results Already since several years on my wish list, it took two events in March 2020 which allowed me to prospect efficiently for this snails: First was a hint from Hans Eck (Voitsberg), who pointed out some occurrences to me, some very detailed hints, some quite general. Their distribution enabled me to restrict the prospecting area to a rather small stretch of land in the northwestern part of the Kainach Gosau, namely from Gschmurgraben/Anesbach to the east to Eckwirt to the west. The second incident was the C-thing, which allowed me to make for several day trips in this area, walking along forest roads and other paths some whole days long... Excerpts of the geological maps 1:50.000 Köflach (left) and Voits-berg (right) with the investigated area. All Trochactaeon occurrences are located within the red rectangle. Anesbach to the upper right, Eckwirt to the lower left, size of squares is 2x2 km. This prospection resulted in more than 10 “new” occurrences of Trochactaeon snails. They range from a few snails stuck within the driveways of forest roads to up to a 0.5 m thick bed tightly packed with snails. They are situated in the uppermost Geistthal-formation or the lowermost Afling formation; the literature gives ambiguous attribution of the snail-bearing zone. The especially good exposures along a forest road in the area of Breitenbach allowed the recognition of at least 6 Trochactaeon-bearing beds within a sediment thickness of about 20 m. About 100-200 higher in the sedimentary column, another Trochactaeon bed occurs. The host rock of the snails is a rather hard, dark grey to dark brown, mostly slightly conglomeratic sandstone, firmly enclosing the snails. Adjoining rocks of the snail beds are grey to greenish grey siltstones and sandstones, sometimes containing plant debris. Coarse-grained conglomerates are also abundant. Bedding planes dip generally with 20°-60° toward southeast to south. Rather surprising was the discovery of nearly black, up to 1 m thick limestone lenses with abundant fragments of radiolitid rudists near the snail beds in several spots. Continued...