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Boy! I could really have some fun with this but I'll be nice for now as I'm new, new, & more new to the world of fossils. Once again, my name's Tracy & as I mentioned in previous post, I joined so as to research a recent project I've taken on. A friend of mine recently expressed that he was going to "get rid of" his Mastodon fossils. He didn't want them in his house anymore so he was going to throw them out! Shocked, to say the least, I asked him if he'd hang on to them long enough to give me a chance to do something with them. At this point I started looking for the best ways to go about getting them ready to auction, which auction & how best to make sure they made it to their destination intact. Now, there's the first group of questions I'm seeking advice on. 1.What auction house has the clientele that would appreciate this type of fossils. 2. What preparation should be done to them to solidify the outer portions which seem very fragile at this point? 3. How should they be shipped & in what? Below are a few pictures. #1 & 2 are of one tooth. #3 & 4 another. I'm over my limit in file size so I'll be posting somewhere with more pictures, more questions, etc. Any input would be highly appreciated. In next entry I'll tell you a little more about them. They've got a good story. Think I'll pop on over to i.d. list to post part 3 of my adventure. See me, Tracy

Hello again! Surprsingly, there's a part 2 to our fossil hunting! This is just as much a surprises for us than for you. Yesterday we went to visit some beaches recommended by the reception. The first one we went to was Benagil. This beach is famous for its huge cliffs, and especially for a special cave only accessible by boat. Unfortunately there was no boat to take us, so we just rested on the beach. That's when I noticed that the cliffs were exactly like those that we saw at Oura (see previous post on the Formação dos Olhos de Ãgua), so I started to look for fossils. And of course, there were plenty! Unfortunately I still didn't have a hammer, as I didn't know we would go fossil hunting again, but I found another way to carve out the fossils from the cliffs. I took a piece of a big (modern) Pectens (scallop), which was shaped like a knife, and scratched around the fossils I saw to carve them out. I was surprised by the softness of the matrix around them: it easily went away with the "knife". As you can see in this picture, there were some recent landslides that occurred. No wonder there's a "Warning: Rock Falling!" sign!

Back in February I promised to have a few pictures from Tucson and I have very few pictures from Tucson, but decided to post them anyway. For those of you that are unaware: Tucson hosts the largest rock, fossil, gem and mineral show in the world. There are roughly 37 shows and around 4,000 vendors for roughly three weeks in February every year. As posted by many other members, it is probably impossible to see everything (wife tried to see all the bead shows once), and stopping to take pictures sometimes is forgotten. These are just a few of the sights. These Photos are all from Inn Suites I'm sure others can give additional information, I just took pictures. Jim Old Dead Things