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Hi everyone! Past summer I visited London for a comic con, but I always try to visit the NHM as well when I am in London. Luckily this time I had an entire day stretched since I also wanted to make some photo's of the collection and I thought, why no share it here. A bit overdue but let's start with my most recent visit to my favorite place on earth: The amazing thing about the NHM is that the entrance is free, but since I like to support the museum and don't like to wait for hours in line I always book a ticket for the current special exhibition which was the Patagotitan skeleton currently on display. I entered from the side entrance were I was greeted by Sophie the Stegosaurus stenops which is the most complete skeleton ever found. Before we headed to the Titanosaur exhibition I came across this cool new Jurassic World Shop with everything JP & JW merchandise. I got myself a 30 year anniversary gilded ticket from Jurassic Park as a souvenir After our quick detour we entered the new temporary exhibition: Titanosaur: Life as the Biggest Dinosaur The actual Patagotitan mayorum femur found in the La Fletcha Ranch, Patagonia, Argentina - Cretaceous, Albian, 101.62 mya Patagotitan scapula, humerus, ulna & radius found in the La Flecha Ranch, Patagonia, Argentina Haestasaurus becklesii skin impression found in Hastings, East Sussex, UK - Cretaceous, Valanginian, 140 - 133 mya Titanosaur coprolite found in Maharashtra, India - Cretaceous, Maastrichtian, 72 - 66 mya Patagotitan mayorum tooth replica

Hi Everyone! A couple of days ago I returned from a fieldtrip to the Solnhofen region in Germany. The trip was organized by my fossilclub the BVP as well as my friend and professional paleontologist Jonathan Wallaard who led the trip. During our 4 day stay we visited 3 different quarries and the Burgermeister-Müller-Museum in Solnhofen. The Solnhofen Limestone is probably one of the most famous Konservat-Lagerstätte in the World. Dating back to the late Jurassic, Tithonian around 152 - 150 million years ago. During this time this area was a tropical archipelago in the Tethys Sea with many small islands and shallow lagoons. Due to its exceptional preservation we have an extensive record of the marine fauna as well a some knowledge of terrestrial species which inhabited the islands (which should have been located around 30 km from the mainland if I heard correctly from one of the quarry owners.) These seas were home to multiple species of ammonites, belemnites and squids; crinoïds like the free-floating Saccocoma; Echinoïds and Starfish; Horseshoe crabs, lobsters, crabs and schrimps; as well as sponges, corals, jellyfish, bivalves, gastropods and brachiopods (which are relatively rare finds.) But also a large diversity of bony fish (some of which could reach multiple meters in length), Hybodont sharks, Chimaera's as well as marine reptiles like the Ichthyosaur "Aegirosaurus", marine crocodiles, turtles and Pleurosaurus. The islands were home to Cycads and Araucariaceae trees, but also by many insects like dragonflies and beetles, reptiles like Sphenodonts and Squamates. Though the most famous of its inhabitants must have been the pterosaurs like Pterodactylus and Rhamphorhynchus as well as some dinosaurs like Compsognathus, Juravenator, Sciurumimus, Archaeopteryx and Alcmonavis. Our first day of digging was on friday (may 19th) at the BGM hobbysteinbruch in Solnhofen which is part of the Mörnsheim Formation (150,8 - 150 mya). https://www.solnhofen-fossilienatlas.de/siteinfo.php?section=sites&siteid=75&sitename=Solnhofen Hobbybruch The main fossils that could be found in this quarry were ammonites, aptychi, coprolites as well as fish. Our group of around 30 people assembled at the quarry at 10 o'clock and after a few words from the quarry owner and Jonathan we set of to dig. An overview of the quarry before we started digging. A couple of minutes later... Jonathan pointed me and my good friend Tom to a good place to dig and so we started cleaning debri so we could start digging. Since the Plattenkalk is layered it is always a good stategy to find some plateaus where so can hack away chunks which you can later split (which I suppose most of you already know). Pic of my hole in which I was working Unfortunately it turns out that the spot I picked must have been a public toilet as pretty much everything I found the first half of the day where coprolites, which turned into a running joke that day I was lucky enough to find a fish early one, though still entirely entombed in the rock but Jonathan warned us to look for bones into the cracked stones and that's how I managed to find it. Will require quite some prep work though. Later that day I started finding multiple Aptychi, Ammonites as well as a rare Bivalve. A plate with 3 ammonites (probably Neochetoceras steraspis) An ammonite with the Aptychus still in place which was found by one of the other members. Our club founder Luc, found this large piece of decorative slab which almost looked like it is petrified wooden dining table. Not a fossil but still cool as heck. And Tinneke managed to find a lovely fish jaw which was excavated by the help of Jonathan. While I didn't take pictures of the following, quite some members found fossil fish (some around 40 cm in lenght) and crustaceans like schrimp.

Hi, after almost 2 years I have reworked my Archaeopteryx skeleton model also shown on this board: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/110891-archaeopteryx-skeleton-model/ On the first version, I wasn't happy with the stability and the external metal support. Also, the dynamic pose made it large and difficult to find space for. So I decided to give the new version a more relaxed, upright posture and to run an iron rod through the spine instead of below it. I also reworked some details and found that the skull was scaled a bit too large compared to most specimens. Thanks to Scott Hartman the rib orientation was modified a bit, too. Here are a few pictures: The new version of the skeleton is much easier to print and to assemble. The files are now available for personal use at https://cults3d.com/de/modell-3d/verschiedene/full-size-archaeopteryx-skeleton though I recommend this only for printing on resin printers with a resolution of at least 50µm for the fine details. Best regards, Thorsten

Hey everyone, my brother obtained this fossil from my grandma who got it from my great grandpa after he passed away. I have no reason to believe my great grandpa would fake this because he kept it to himself. However if it’s an archaeopteryx it’s pretty hard to believe. Let me know what you guys think, thanks in advance.

The Famous Fossils Scientists Got Incredibly Wrong Michelle Starr, Science Alert, December 28, 2021 Also there is Ten coolest non-dinosaur fossils unearthed in 2021 By Harry Baker, Live Science, December 28, 2021 Yours, Paul H.

To mark the occasion of this new sub forum for museums. I would like you show you some wonderful stuff in Teylers Museum in Haarlem, Netherlands. This is actually the oldest museum in the Netherlands and thus also has some really cool history attached to it and it's specimens. http://www.teylersmuseum.nl/en Besides fossils this museum also holds an art and science collection. The museum is just as beautiful as the specimens in it and a true time capsule. While it is quite a small museum, it's charm is worth the trip alone. Even the cabinets are pretty. It even has a few world firsts, such as Archaeopteryx and Mosasaurus. Now on to fossils! One of the most important specimens on display here is one of the Archaeopteryx specimens. This is actually the first Archaeopteryx as it was found before the feather and the London specimen were found. But for a long time it was labeled as a Pterodactylus. Only later was it found that it was in fact an Archaeopteryx. While very incomplete it is one of the larger animals of the genus (the third largest I think). the specimen consists of slab and counter slab. If you look close you can still see the vague impression of the flight feathers on the wings. It also very nicely shows the keratinous sheaths of the claws. Archaeopteryx lithographica Along with Archaeopteryx Teylers also has a very nice collection of the Jurassic of Solnhofen in Bavaria. They have a number of Rhamphorhynchus skeletons, lizards, fish, crustaceans and squids complete with tentacles and inksacs. Rhamphorhynchus Various fish Homocosaurus maximiliani Various critters

Hi, as my first post here, I'd like to show you my newly-finished 1:1 Archaeopteryx skeleton model. It was modelled in Blender after Wellnhofer (2008) and Rauhut (2013), and printed on an Anycubic Photon Mono X printer at 50µm resolution. The overall length is about 50cm. I hope you like it! Cheers, Thorsten

Dinosaur feather study debunked: Overwhelming evidence supports Jurassic fossil does belong to Archaeopteryx by University of South Florida https://phys.org/news/2020-09-dinosaur-feather-debunked-overwhelming-evidence.html The open access paper is: Carney, R.M., Tischlinger, H. & Shawkey, M.D. Evidence corroborates identity of isolated fossil feather as a wing covert of Archaeopteryx. Sci Rep 10, 15593 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-65336-y The original article is: First discovered fossil feather did not belong to iconic bird Archaeopteryx by The University of Hong Kong https://phys.org/news/2019-02-fossil-feather-iconic-bird-archaeopteryx.html The open access paper is: Kaye, T.G., Pittman, M., Mayr, G. et al. Detection of lost calamus challenges identity of isolated Archaeopteryx feather. Sci Rep 9, 1182 (2019). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-37343-7?sf207999490=1 Yours, Paul H.

How did the the division of Germany into capitalist West Germany and communist East Germany during the Cold War affect paleontological studies of fossils preserved at the Museum fur Naturkunde in Berlin by American, British, and French paleontologists? Did the Cold War division of Germany made it difficult for scientists in East Germany (and specifically East Berlin) to travel to either London, West Germany, or the US to study specimens of Archaeopteryx not residing in fossil collections in Berlin or compare newly described dinosaurs or other archosaurs from North America, Africa, UK, southern Africa, France, Spain, or Portugal with fossils of Plateosaurus, Dicraeosaurus, Elaphrosaurus, Dysalotosaurus, and other terrestrial tetrapods preserved at the Museum fur Naturkunde? I was reading Greg Paul's 1988 book Predatory Dinosaurs of the World and Paul mentions that in the late 1980s he went to the Museum fur Naturkunde to examine the Archaeopteryx siemensii holotype (the so-called Berlin specimen of Archaeopteryx), not too long before the Berlin Wall was torn down, but the question is if scientists in East Germany had to rely on copies of the original descriptions of tetrapod fossils from Bavaria, Baden-Wuerttemberg, and northwestern Germany to compare them to tetrapod fossils in the Museum fur Naturkunde because they had to ask the communist authorities for permission to visit paleontological museums outside East Germany.

A non-archaeopterygid avialan theropod from the Late Jurassic of southern Germany Exciting news from Munich and the famous Solnhofen area Everybody is familiar with Archaeopteryx, but according to a new paper published by the University in Munich, it had a brother who lived at the same time in the same area: Alcmonavis poeschli The Late Jurassic ‘Solnhofen Limestones’ are famous for their exceptionally preserved fossils, including the urvogel Archaeopteryx, which has played a pivotal role in the discussion of bird origins. Here we describe a new, non-archaeopterygid avialan from the Lower Tithonian Mörnsheim Formation of the Solnhofen Archipelago, Alcmonavis poeschli gen. et sp. nov. Represented by a right wing, Alcmonavis shows several derived characters, including a pronounced attachment for the pectoralis muscle, a pronounced tuberculum bicipitale radii, and a robust second manual digit, indicating that it is a more derived avialan than Archaeopteryx. Several modifications, especially in muscle attachments of muscles that in modern birds are related to the downstroke of the wing, indicate an increased adaptation of the forelimb for active flapping flight in the early evolution of birds. This discovery indicates higher avialan diversity in the Late Jurassic than previously recognized. Scientific paper (in English, no paywall) CLICK News from the LMU University in Munich (in German) CLICK

Hi all ! A little more than a year ago, I had the opportunity to finally travel to Solnhofen (Germany). Thanks to my brother, who works in Germany, and gave me the opportunity to dedicate a small part of the Christmas holidays to enjoy the magnificent Upper Jurassic of Solnhofen. I have to admit, all types of the "konservat lagerstätte" have always made me fall in love. I am always fascinated with some exceptional preservation! For many years, I had been waiting for the opportunity to meet, FINALLY! to the Sciurumimus and Archaeopteryx Now, I can sleep much calmer, now that I have looked at them face-to-face! Apart from these two jewels, I was able to enjoy the magnificent collection that they possess in the Museum of Solnhofen. Which I recommend visiting ("Förderverein Bürgermeister Müller Museum Solnhofen") I remember that day, the German cold was tremendous! Still I tried to visit the outcrops, and below 20 cm of snow, I enjoyed opening some frozen lithographic limestones. Although without much success more than a mold of ammonites and half pneumonia! How cold it was! But it was a Great Trip !. Here I share it with you!

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27502354

http://boingboing.net/2012/07/20/archaeopteryx-photo.html Really cool photo!! It also has an interesting story behind it too.