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Hi All, I took a trip (I live just outside of Philly) down to Calvert Cliffs on the MD side to spend a couple days hunting. I was able to visit the VA side of the Calvert Formation back on Labor day, and was excited to see the MD cliffs. First day I spent all of my time at Matoaka Beach hunting solo. Tried to access another section of beach later that day, however it required hiking through some thick vegetation, and I was losing light, so I gave up. Second day I met up with the Delaware Valley Paleontology Society to visit a few sites with CHAPTours. Wound up visiting 3 different beaches, and finished off back at Matoaka (I didn't know we'd be going here otherwise I'd have picked a different beach the first day). Overall, I had pretty good outings both days. Surprisingly I didn't find a single shark tooth, but lots of amazingly preserved bivalves and gastropods. Some photos from the beach/cliffs from both days. From the top of the cliffs: Bivalve fossils were everywhere. Group shot with a sampling of finds.

All of these were found in Southeast Florida. Likely from the Pleistocene Miami Limestone (West Bryozoan Facies). Thank you.

Do these get much larger than this one at around 6.7 cm. Found in Tarrant Co. Texas 20-30 years ago.

Location: where fossiliferous exposures are found in streambanks and in cuts on highways, logging roads, and railways. The type area of the formation is along the Nehalem River near Pittsburg, Oreg., where a highway cut affords a good exposure of its lower part. Exposures of the Pittsburg Bluff Formation are relatively scarce; they are interrupted by broad areas of thick soil cover and dense vegetation. The formation is cut by minor visible faults, and there may be others that are not visible, so the mapping is uncertain in some places. The Pittsburg Bluff Formation conformably overlies the Keasey Formation (late Eocene and early Oligocene) and is conformably overlain by the Scappoose Formation (late Oligocene and early Miocene). Because parts of all these formations are lithologically similar, the stratigraphic position of a nonfossiliferous exposure is sometimes uncertain. New stratigraphic studies indicate, however, that contrary to the opinion of some previous investigators, the Pittsburg BluffFormation is conformable with the underlying Keasey Formation. In Oregon you can hunt the roadside ditches and talus piles for fossils if you are brave enough to face the traffic:) Last time out I was lucky and found a very large piece of the sea floor (about 38" long, 14" wide, 8" deep) as well as about 10 smaller pieces. Today I was working on a 3' by 8' piece using paint brushes to get some of the lose matrix off (to be scanned for various microfossils). Here is what the piece looked like: The Red "T" marks a small piece of matrix that I removed with dental tools. Lots of shell fragments and casts of Mollusks. Not sure what that brown stain. Under the red "T" was something I have not seen before in this matrix. Here is the item (6.7mm x 6.5mm), do you know what it is?: Here is some more information of what has been found in this formation: The Pittsburg Bluff molluscan fauna contains none of the rock dwellers of the littoral zone with the possible exception of Mytilus, and no snails that are known to be herbivorous. None of the mollusks found in the formation, except the turrids, are considered indicative of deep water. No remains of echinoderms or crabs have been found, and foraminifers are represented by two poorly preserved globigerinids. Some fish remains have been found; the teeth identified are of sharks and rays. Welton (1972, p. 168) makes the following statement concerning the shark teeth: ***the lower sections of the Pittsburg Bluff Formation yield numerous teeth of a small squalid shark Centroscymnus and not uncommonly teeth of Raja, Squatina, Odontaspis, Squalus, Pristiophorus, and Notorhynchus. These genera, plus several additional forms, collectively constitute the most diverse assemblage yet known from the middle Oligocene of Oregon. Otoliths from USGS 15310, in the middle part of the Pittsburg Bluff Formation, were identified by John E. Fitch, California Department of Fish and Game, as belonging to the families Congridae (conger eels) and Macrouridae (rat tails), both bottom-dwelling families that typically inhabit moderate (200 m) to great depths (500 m), and, although found in all oceans of the world, are least common in tropical seas (John E. Fitch, written communs., May 23, 1973, and June 18, 1973). From the preserved molluscan fauna, a picture emerges of an infaunal community of filter feeders, detritus feeders, and carnivores living on or within the sediment of the sea floor.

Any help identifying this rock fossil found at construction site near Dallas texas by a friend would be appreciated. My husband gave his friend $50 for it. I am a novice rock collector . Thank you for your assistance !

On a recent trip in Perú, near the coastal town San Juan de Marcona, I saw several middle to late Pleistocene marine terraces. In this one, fossil fragile clams and stout scallops are well-preserved, separately packed in thin strata. I think they are Anomia peruviana and Argopecten purpuratus. clamsscallops Also found one unidentified gastropod Photo shows clam stratum just below scallop stratum.

Earlier this year I was fortunate enough to meet up with @digit in Gainesville Florida where he very graciously provided my wife and I the opportunity to do some matrix fossil hunting in a local stream. We sieved for a good long time collecting many nice shark and ray teeth as well as other items out of the large portion. At the end we nearly filled a five gallon bucket with gravel that we ran through essentially window screen in the creek to get out the silt and clay. My original trip report can be found here: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/114209-north-florida-fun/&tab=comments#comment-1264293 Back at Ken's house, he was nice enough to sort the bucket of matrix into sizes for ease of picking. We then ran the matrix through 3 stacked sifters since we had already picked out anything caught by the 1/4" screen in the stream. The coarsest material from the sifters would have been caught by the 1/8" screen so (1/4" - 1/8" range). The next finer size range would have been (1/8" - 1/12") and the finest would have been (1/12" - 1/20"). We bagged it up into 3 gallon ziplock bags of coarse matrix, 1 gallon bag of the medium and about 2/3 gallon of the fine matrix. Once home, I dried it out and began the picking and identifying process See some links below for my ID questions and some answers. Thanks to all those that helped. http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/119245-florida-mysteries/&tab=comments#comment-1309402 http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/119097-gainesville-shark-teeth-question/&tab=comments#comment-1305867 http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/119485-small-florida-sharkrayfish-teeth-help/&tab=comments#comment-1310743 So far, all this you have heard or seen before as numerous folks, including Ken, have made many nice posts about sorting and picking matrix for micro-fossils. Some of them are pinned under this Micro topic. What I wanted to impart with this post were the results of my picking efforts, or at least the start of it since I have not gone through all of the matrix by a long shot. But I think I have gone through enough to give a reasonable summary of what can be found in this material. After I have gone through more of it, I can always update the info. You can also search on the forum and find many other excellent posts from members that have looked at this material, but I don't think I have seen a complete summary of what can be found (if I missed it somewhere, sorry). I am not going to post a bunch of pictures of what I found in this thread because I have placed many pictures in an album. Feel free to check it out if interested: My procedure was to pick though the matrix and remove anything that was a fossil, whether I knew what it specifically was or not. After that, the first thing I did was a volume calculation to see what percentage of the matrix is fossil material. Out of the coarsest matrix, the fossils made up 3.2% of the volume, they were a bit less in the medium material (1.9%) and even less in the fine material at 1.1% When you put it all together (remember there is a lot more of the coarse stuff) it comes out to 2.6% of the bucket was fossil material. To me it seems like a small number when I think that in nearly every small scoop I put under the scope I would find numerous fossils. It of course is really only all that interesting if one can compare it to other matrixes, but it gives one an idea of what to expect from this material. My next step was to sort and identify everything. Easy to say, but that was the hardest part since this matrix was new to me. I should be able to do future batches of this stuff much more quickly. Once that was done, I counted the number of specimens of each fossil type and just made a simple spreadsheet of each matrix size. So what did I find? Here is a sample from the coarsest matrix: Keep in mind, most of these fossils are not complete specimens. So for example, while there are 608 Mylobatidae ray teeth, only a small percentage are whole teeth, but if they are in that category there was enough present to be able to ID it. You can see there are over 16% that I know are fossils, but not good enough to be part of one of the listed types or even good enough for me to figure out yet what they are. With more time (and knowledge??) I can probably ID many of those, but that is for another time. Were there differences between the three sizes of matrix? Yes, and I lumped the list of types shown above into broader categories so you can see how the four classes of material (I included the hand collected stuff) compare: And lastly, if you put everything together, you can see what type of fossils you are likely to find in the 2.6% of matrix from the creek: lots of rays, lots of sharks and a smattering of other marine material. That's all. Not sure if anyone else will find this interesting, but I'm sort of a data guy, so it was fun for me to look at it this way. Thanks for looking.

Last summer I became interested in collecting mollusks from the Chicago area rather by accident. I happened to find some shells in a dug up wastepile. I contacted the Prairie Research Institute and it turned out a geologist there was interested in C14 dating them for a surficial geologic mapping project he was working on. I then became obsessed with finding more from different points around the city. I was able to find 5 other localities and these samples were also donated. These are are freshwater aquatic mollusks from the Tolleston shoreline of ancestral Lake Michigan. Overall it was fascinating to compare the "Ice Age" mollusks with modern shells on the beach, the effect of invasive species and contributing to science. Radiocarbon data from one sample. After calibration: 4700, 6200BP

I recently came across a cool-looking piece with three different shells close together in a matrix, but despite my attempt to Google some pointers while I was pondering if I wanted it or not, I'm simply not trained up enough to determine if fossils are real. There's some parts that some articles were talking about that make me think it could be real, and others that make me think not so much... I have a feeling the matrix maybe isn't the original, but I'm hoping perhaps the shells themselves are still fossilized? But I'm really not sure -- anyways, the pictures I took are below. I hope they give you enough information/context to help me out, and that there aren't a whole bunch of superfluous details that I chose to focus on! Sorry for how big and in the way of the post they are, I'm still trying to figure out how to make posts look nicer ^^;

I have 6 weeks of sabbatical starting in Jan. I booked pre-Covid and was due to explore SE Asia. Rather than rebooking, I decided to go fossil hunting instead, and now I am having a great time planning how to explore the fossils of Florida. I live on Amelia Island, and will dedicate some time to really scouting the local area for some sites that look like they have fossil potential (based upon Google Earth and old PDFs) because it'd be really awesome to have some more local spots to hunt. In addition, I am planning a loop around Florida, from Amelia Island to: Gainesville - teeth, UF Yankeetown - echinoids! Gardner/Peace River - megs! and maybe some mollusks Venice/Caspersen Beach - teeth, and hopefully some other fossils Caloosahatchee River - mollusks Sanibel - fossils in the causeway and Wentletrap shells on the beach (and is it possible to find wentletraps anywhere in Florida or the South? that would be the best prize of all!) I am still researching the Panhandle, the entire East Coast, and maybe Georgia/S Carolina. I am interested in all fossils but am especially interested in mollusks and echinoids. And contemporaneous shells. I would appreciate feedback on whether these places are worth visiting, and/or other suggestions of some good places to find fossils -- not specific spots (that would spoil the fun of the hunt!), but just some pointers to general areas to make this a fun and productive time. I feel incredibly fortunate to be given a sabbatical and want to make the most of it. Finally, I'd appreciate recommendations for fossil hunting tour guides who focus upon shells, echinoids, invertebrates, and plants. I was hoping to book something with Paleo Chris and Wild Kyle because of the eclectic nature of their trips, but it looks like they aren't doing guided tours any longer. Thanks in advance! Cheryl PS Hope that maybe @Shellseeker and @MikeR see this. I'm hoping you as Floridians might have pointers to some general areas since you both appear to appreciate mollusks, esp bivalves. Thank you!

Corals Fossil found in a base camo when I climbed mountain at an elevation of 3200 metres, to ID~ The corals looks like Liangshanophyllum or waagenophyllum but not quick match the character of Tetracoralla~ Also some Mollusks, maybe Amphineura?

The fall hunting season has arrived in Alaska and I had an epic trip last week through the 40 Mile River country and on to the north slope of the Brooks Range. This will be a multiple post picture essay as the pictures show better than words what Alaska has to offer when the weather is nice. The first picture shows where I ended up for several days between the Saddlerochit Mountains to the north and the pictured Shublik Mountains to the south. This was a hunting trip that turned more into a camping trip with a rifle and then paleo adventure as I started to recognize the unique geologic features which are very evident from the air with little cover vegetation. Upon returning home researched where I was and this location has one of the best exposures of Middle Jurassic rocks in northern Alaska. I was camped 7 miles from the Ignek Mesa and hiked in the area several days without seeing a single person. This is the Katakturuk River that cuts through the Saddleochit Mountains and demonstrates that there must have been a slow uplift of the mountain as the mountains are over 5,000' in elevation on either side of the river cut. To the north is the Arctic Ocean about 30 miles from the picture. First advice for going with a pack dog is don't put anything you want to keep dry in the dog pack. The weather was really warm for the arctic and Kobuk was in every creek to his belly even if it meant he had to lay down. This exposure is Early Bajocian and assigned Kignak Shale. I want to be abundantly clear this was a catch and release trip as NO collecting is allowed without a permit in all the areas I travel this trip. ALL pictured fossils were left laying where they were sighted with these being on the top of this shale. Heading back to camp after the first day of hiking. The following day we got up early and went over to the head of the valley by a mesa and saw beautiful scenery and a few more fossils as well as the first sheep tracks of the trip. We came a cross several caribou each day and they all still had velvet on their antlers. This was the first evidence of a fossil I saw on this hike and stopped looking for sheep and more at the geology. Within 20 feet saw an amazing sight and it was a wonder I saw it at all due to how small it was. The ammonite is .8 centimetres in diameter and my eye caught the mold with ammonite right beside it. These belemnite pieces were farther up the hill. These tracks are from Dall sheep which had been in the area recently which was interesting as this hill was just that not steep at all. Unfortunately here is one of the two sheep I saw on that hill. Both were winter kill and likely due to the warm winters we have been having with deep snow and thaw/freeze cycles. The sheep starve as not able to paw through more than 30 cm of accumulated snow. If the snow crusts from melting and then freezes the wind does not clear the snow and the sheep starve. The fossils were all within arms reach of these sheep bones. Kobuk in a recently occupied sheep bed. This was seen on the hike back down the hill. Interesting concretions of this formation. Similar fossils from farther down the valley from the previous days hike. I saw this fossil and suspect it may be crinoids but are new to me so not sure. Shows where the Jurassic age ammonite was seen.

Just thought I'd share some finds from a first time trip to the Venice area. First, some beach fossils collected over two days. Miocene- Pliocene-Pleistocene Epochs Equus sp. tooth , stingray teeth, assorted shark teeth, some corals and Dugong bone fragment. I checked out a construction site pile that was spilling over into a parking lot and found some amazingly preserved Pleistocene mollusks. It's pretty incredible to be able to find modern shells at the beach and then compare to fossils found a few miles inland. For comparisons, in the pics below, the top row are modern cockles and bottom are Pleistocene. Thanks for reading and happy new year!

I had posted a poster of Florida shells of mine earlier but could not zoom in enough so I am posting individual fossil shells in hopes of getting correct identifications or adding to photo database. I am new to this so please gently guide me if I am not following a proper procedure or posting in an incorrect place. I have many high quality photos but am not sure where to put them. I can't seem to create a gallery for myself. Help Please? Thanks, Scott

So I've been collecting fossils for a few years now, i have a bunch of ammonites, sea urchins, mollusks and plants but I have no idea where can i learn what exact species they are. I'm wandering if there is any books or sites to which you can point me so I can gather some knowledge . I know there is an ID section in this site but I want to be able to tell what species I have found, myself. By the way I'm from Europe.

I tend to think of Rock and Minerals as a magazine as opposed to a journal, but since I can't get through its paid firewall, I am curious if anyone has a PDF of the following: Donovan, Stephen K. & D. T. L. Littlewood (1993) Late Cenozoic Reef Mollusk Faunas from Jamaica. Rocks & Minerals Vol. 68(4): 226-231. Thanks Mike

I visited a small Paleozoic (Silurian) coral reef in Indiana the other day. No earth-shattering, jaw-dropping discoveries, but it's an interesting spot with dolomitized fossils. Here's a google earth view of the center of the reef. A nice mollusk, if anyone knows what species, let me know. It shattered when I tried to extract it, but I was able to glue it back together as you can see here. Sphaerexochus romingeri cephalon After extraction.. I believe this is a Platyceras: To be continued..

Here are two coiled marine mollusks from an Upper Pennsylvanian site near Brownwood, Texas I collected in September. Not sure if these are gastropods, goniatites, or nautiloids. Two views of the first one and three views of the second. Thanks for any help with the IDs.

Please ID species. Found it in Algarve, Portugal (miocene, I guess). I would also ask you to please advise me how to preserve it. Shall I varnish it? Thank you.

Please ID species. Found it in Algarve, Portugal (miocene, I guess). I would also ask you to please advise me how to preserve it. Shall I varnish it? Thank you.

Hi all, A handful of days ago there was a sand pile right in my neighborhood. Not sure why it was there, probably someone was making constructions to their house, but in any case I was happy. That's because that kind of sand comes straight from the North Sea, which is full of Eemian fossil sediments! So I took a little plastic bag and spent an hour or two looking in that pile of sand for fossils. The very common Eemian bivalves came up abundantly (so species like Mactra plistoneerlandica, Cerastoderma edule, C. glaucum, Macoma balthica, etc), but that is not what I was too excited about. Seeing that the sand pile was rather small, it forced me to focus on just that little pile. Which is great, because therefore I actually started looking much more closely, and hereby also collecting tiny micro-fossils! Lots of gastropods, which is awesome because these are not as common as bivalves in these sediments. I namely found a complete yet puny Anomia ephippium, some very small Cerastoderma's, and also the ones attached. I would love to be able to bring these down to species level. So I am asking for your help! The Hague, Netherlands (from North Sea sediments) Eem Formation Eemian, Pleistocene; 120'000 y Thanks in advance, Max #1: Looks a little bit like Macoma balthica, but still a bit different... Very likely from the Tellinidae

I am currently providing fossils for a project involving an advanced earth science class. In talking with the instructors, a few questions came up that I could not answer. 1. What caused brachiopods to crash and then pelecypods to flourish? 2. Are present day scallops pelecypods even though they look more like brachiopods?

Mrs. SA2, @MikeR & I guided a trip for 12 along the lower James River in Virginia this weekend. Started out with very iffy weather Saturday morning with 2 foot swells and white caps from an unfriendly westerly wind. She and I were both quite busy tending our boats even when on the beach so we didn't get many photos. Mike was busy helping the folks with IDs and stratigraphy, so he didn't get many either. There were some taken though. Later in the day we did find a very nice, large Eastover Formation slough (upper Miocene). @Fossil-Hound Mrs. SA2 said she "had the feeling" as we approached in the boats. Not to disappoint, the slough produced at least 10 Ecphora between the different members of the group, most were whole or almost whole. @Daleksec still has hold of the lucky horseshoe and found about 6 foot of whale jaw. (After initial inspections last night it appears to be 3 foot of both sides of the lower jaw / mandible. Lots of further work is required.) I will post more photos of Saturday in next couple days. Today was much nicer on the river and we hunted a section of beach with the Rushmere Member of the Yorktown Formation (Upper Pliocene) in the bottom 2 - 3 feet of the cliff. It's very shelly and it too produced large #s of Ecphora. @Fossil-Hound, I'm not exaggerating when I say the group got over 20 on the day, cause I found Mrs. SA2 7 by myself, she found a couple, @Daleksec had 4 or 5 and other members of the group had some too. Here is a photo of my 1st of today, lying there waiting to pose with 2 of @aerogrower's custom scale cube. We were testing out the metric one to make sure Ray put some magic in it. Here is a photo showing the Rushmere Member exposure at the base of the cliff. We had about 600 yards of exposure today. Paleo pick for scale. Here is a photo of my last Ecphora of the day. @Fossil-Hound, calm down. YES, it really is "that big!" @MikeR can vouch for it, he saw it and photographed it, with his brand new metric scale from @aerogrower. Obviously, I have some prep work ahead of me. Speaking of the world famous @MikeR, ladies and gentlemen - here he is coming back to the boat with his bucket of trophies after a few hours in the sun! One of the nicest, most knowledgeable guys you would ever want to meet. I'll post photos of all of Mrs. SA2'S Ecphora from the weekend, @Daleksec's jaw and his gorgeous ~2 inch hastalis with red hues in the next few days. Gorgeous tooth! Cheers, SA2

Thought I would share a few things that I collected during a short trip into the Waccamaw Formation in south eastern North Carolina on Saturday. We only spent about 2 and a half hours at the site but some really nice items were found. First a Melitta cf.M. aclinensis. Usually the sand dollars are found only as isolated pieces at this location, occasionally a whole one is found on matrix that is crushed and broken. However I found this complete unbroken one on matrix and another person found a complete unbroken one without matrix. I have started prepping this one out since the pic, it is coming along nicely. Another Melitta sp. I found. Cannot ID for sure as to species as it is broke, but complete and covered with matrix. Will also prep this one out as much as possible to try to ID to species. Next a block of matrix containing a rare Rhyncholampas sabistonensis echinoid. This is an irregular echinoid from the Pliocene / Pleistocene. I have found pieces of these before(and one today) but this is my first complete one. Even crushed and in poor shape I am happy with the find. Top of the matrix the echinoid itself and the bottom I am going to try and expose as much of this echinoid also. Without making it come apart. Double valve bivalves for the day .......

This past weekend Dozer Operator and I made a trip to a favorite locality near Lake Okeechobee which exposes both the Lower Pleistocene Caloosahatchee and the Middle Pleistocene Bermont Formations. Hurricane Mathew had grazed the Florida Peninsula the previous week so we were optimistic that the prodigious rains would have washed the sediments revealing marine goodies as well as some terrestrial vertebrate material. Jonathan came away with some nice horse teeth and I picked more Siphocypraea than I can ever use. My finds of the day included a pair of rare Morum oniscus from the Bermont and maximum sized Turbinella scolymoides from the Caloosahatchee.