Search the Community

When I am about to make a post about finds, I am always conflicted on choosing "Hunting Trips", where I share lots of known fossils or "Fossil ID"... where I really want identification assistance. Usually works out If I put them together. It feels like I have been struggling to get out. With the Holidays , I managed to get out 4 times in December , 5 times in January , and yesterday was my 1st day in February. I used to be able to get out 10 times a month... those are my really happy days... I went yesterday and will go to the Peace river tomorrow.. YES !!! Started slow, but yesterday was a very successful hunt... Here are the ones I think I know. The Highlight of the day are 3 fossils from Hemiauchenia macrocephala. Two carpals in the same sieve and in fantastic shape. This was a favorite location and thus I had hunted frequently. Usually that depletes an area. In my 1st 8 sieves, I had found small shark, ray teeth plus lots of turtle and many broken bones. In the 9th sieve , BOTH of these carpals showed up and I put away any thoughts of moving on. Very rare, This is my 2nd or 3rd of these. A camel_llama lower premolar in great shape, with a little damage on the chewing surface. In the screen with the Llama tooth, a good sized Hemipistis upper tooth In previous threads, I have been discussing half fossilized vines, I found 2 fully fossilized Liana vines. Learn about liana vines, thick, woody vines that grow in the rainforest and compete with other plant forms for light and space. I found a number of Horse teeth, but I really worked on photos and trying to Identify this fragment of a tooth I thought might be cat... it is not. Staring at the broken enamel, I realized that I had Hunter _ Schreger bands... and cats do not have HSBs Found a nice Equus Lower tooth. Horses have one sets of teeth that they chew down over a lifetime. The length would say this was a young adult at death. Not everything is perfect and I do love Tridactyl horse teeth.. Almost there, chipped a little on the right side. Now for a few unknowns...Alligator ??? I did not realize that these "holes" existed any where else than as part of an Alligator osteoderm and thought that's the strangest osteoderm I have ever seen.. Additional pictures... Jaw ?? Please confirm what part of the Alligator this bone comes from.... Here is another find that kept me from filling the sieve... My first thought was Bone, but it was fossilized and heavy like rock, so I started rolling it in my hand to form an opinion. Saw some shiny stuff on 2nd view This 3rd view stopped me. Straight lines in Bones are unusual... It usually implies petrified wood ( go see the vine above) Let me look at the 2nd view more closely.. It looks like layers... maybe tusk... Enhance that a little, layers that get into compacted layers, and I can almost see the Schreger bands going horizontally and then crossing with bands going upwards at a 45 degree angle. Can this be ivory??? You can see the delusions that may happen when my focus should be to fill the sieve and find more fossils... I did find more, but you have seen the good ones.... Enjoy...

“Tiny Bones Project” So these little perissodactal and artiodactal carpals and tarsals are a tricky bunch to navigate. I'm only dealing with 5-6 species so far and it’s already bonkers. As such making a thread dedicated to the ID’s of some more common fossil finds seemed worth making. Especially since this project involves making a “touch Catalog” and photo library of them for me to use in future ID’s. Why not share the information? Lord knows I’m getting plenty from y’all! When the results of a group are completed, and have been reviewed by the forum, I’ll post the final revised report and photos here. My idea for this thread is to compile the various existing photo examples of these bones from TFF and the new photos of these bones from my collection. Once my stash is exhausted I’ll hunt for others to study and if TFF members have examples I don’t they can post what they want to add and share too. Finding “exploded” joint images to study these bones individually online proved unsuccessful. Most studies are interested in the articulated version of these groups. So searching for individual bone examples leads you right back to our own Harry and his incredible image galleries. Hopefully I can merge new stock photos with Harry’s confirmed gallery images and also include the bone images often presented for ID that Harry’s galleries are used to authenticate. Harry's post show up in Google because his galleries are used to ID so many things. We search specific things so we just end up back at Harry after a few clicks. If TFF is the end location for identification of carpals and tarsals let’s collaborate the efforts into one powerhouse of an ID catalog. This project got its start because I have been looking for random carpal and tarsal fossils for an Equus sp lower limb articulation project. I quickly learned getting positive ID’s when trying to purchase these types of fossil are not common. Most are listed generically or even incorrectly. So I figured I’d document the hunt to look back on later. The Equus project needed a single bone from a large auction lot of mixed fossils. After a good bit of rationalization I realized buying 50 bones to get 1 was a little silly. However, I had roughly ID’d several “shapes” of scaphoid bones which got me interested. Then I realized I had multiple versions of the same bones in various stages of erosion and that’s when the idea light came on. “Buy them all and learn from it!” So the main goal is identifying, labeling and photographing. With attention added to photos that can show multiple erosion level examples together. Gonna take a bit but that’s why I have lots of projects. Little here. Little there. And every now and then I’ll upload a new group for review. Im learning so be patient! If I use a word incorrectly or need revision it’s ok! Just tell me and I will happily increase my brain mass and correct the thread. It does need to be cohesive and I will need assistance with. Keep the faith and try to do good! Jp Disclaimer: Do not watch this video with and kind of beverage in your mouth as my pronunciation of these words is most likely laughable 😊. I also called the camel unciforms, pisiforms and had already cleaned up before I realized it. Pisi about that blunder to say the least. 😉 FullSizeRender.MOV

There is quite of bit Kem Kem dinosaur material coming on the market and some of it quite good. Will try address the identification issue on some items so at least you will know what your bidding on. This appears to match quite well with a Spinosaurid ilium, seller calls it a pelvic bone. Looks quite nice, complete with a concern are the areas circled in white. Not sure it's bone or matrix. Seller does comment on filled fractures and some are visible but that should not detract from the piece. What the seller is offering here is a Spinosaurus phalanx and claw toe bones. What I believe you have here is a Spinosaurid foot claw and a carpal (hand bone). So think about this listing as two separate bones not associated in any way. This is a listing of a Spinosaurus complete finger with claw. What I believe you have are 3 carpals from a Spinosaurid that are completely unassociated and are not a good match as a composite. Hard to say much about the claw other that it appears to be a foot claw of what cannot determine with photos provided. Again like the one above if you're interested in this bid it as 4 separate items. Seller has this as a Spinosaurus phalanx toe bone. I find it difficult to call this one since its a partial but looks more like a carpal. I dont think you can ID this to any specific critter, not much diagnostic and we know so little. Seller is offering these as 4 Spinosaurus phalanx toe bones. The two on the left look like carpals, probably from a Spinosaurid. The one on the far right is a phalanx but it's hard to determine from what dinosaur. The second from the right to fragmented to say. Seller here has 4 Spinosaurus phalanx toe bone for sale. They are toe bones and may be from Spinosaurid but who knows there are lots of other theropods in this region and identifying isolated bones is very difficult. If interested they should be identified as theropod indeterminate. Being offered as a Spinosaurus phalanx toe bone. It might be from a Spinosaurid but have same comments as above