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Hello! I'm traveling to Colorado Springs this summer. And I'm hoping to do some fossil hunting within an hours drive of Colorado Springs. I'm a geology graduate from James Madison University in Virginia and I love to collect invertebrate fossils to share with the kids I teach. Anything from ammonites to crinoids to leaves. Any advice on where to look? Thanks!

Hi everyone! I recently found a trace fossil near my house. I live in Southeast Colorado Springs and there's a lot of marine fossils near where I live. I found what I believe is an ammonite trace fossil. I'm having some trouble identifying it though. I'm not exactly sure what ammonite it's from as well as what formation it's from and what type of stone it's in. I brought it in to the museum I volunteer at and it was determined by the curator that it is not sandstone and it's most likely from the Late Cretaceous. I think it might be from a Hoploscaphites cheyennensis in silt-stone from maybe the Pierre Shale formation(?) but I don't know! The rock is slightly porous, if that helps. Help would be appreciated! Thanks!

Greetings, I am an amateur fossil collector and rock hound and I don’t know too much about fossil species or how to identify them... My dad recently gave me some of his shark teeth he found in the 90s at his coworkers ranch. He never bothered to identify them so I’m hoping to get some help with that, thank you! He showed me the area on a map and told me about the rock types and I’ve come to the conclusion that they were found somewhere in between the Carlisle shale and the Niobrara Formation, though I could be mistaken. The area he found them at is southeast of Colorado Springs on private land. I will post pictures below, help of any kind is appreciated!

Colorado Fossils Show How Mammals Raced to Fill Dinosaurs’ Void An unusually rich trove found in Colorado reveals the world in which our mammalian forebears evolved into larger creatures. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/24/science/fossils-mammals-dinosaurs-colorado.html Fossil trove shows life's fast recovery after big extinction by Malcolm Ritter, PhysOrg. October 24, 2019 https://phys.org/news/2019-10-fossil-trove-life-fast-recovery.html Yours, Paul H.

This summer, I am going on a trip to Colorado Springs. I am well aware that the state is filled with fossil sites but it seems like a lot of them prohibit collecting. I am wondering if anyone knows any sites in the area that allow public collecting. Preferably a site with lots of vertebrate material like Sharks or Dinosaurs. Thank You! (PS: I am still looking for some more information on fossils in St Georges Delaware. If you have any, please post it in my previous post.)

took a recent trip to an old honey hole in the springs with reserved thoughts that it may...no longer exist. I was pleasantly surprised. When I was a kid it was essentially a mud hole and fairly exposed to the average passerby so I tried hard not to get my hopes up, plus it had been a while since I had attempted any type of fossil hunting. Following a creek bed, I pushed my way through surprisingly thick brush, thick with sticks and severely overgrown trees and bushes. Even the small game trails along the bank of the creek were difficult to discern. As I walked, my hopes began to climb and I started noticing strange wet, muddy, shale-like geology creeping up higher and higher along the river bank until a significant outcropping presented itself dead ahead of my line of sight. I immediately recognized several red-brown concretions sticking out of the wall of the muddy shale-like embankment. I pulled them loose, others unnoticed dropped to the ground and when I went to inspect I saw the dry creek bed below my feet littered with red-brown clam-like fossils. Many of the were poorly preserved in my newbie opinion but I began to hoard several on the side of the creekbed as I went back to dig out more and more. I began to notice that by following the small pockets of calcerous deposit in the muddy wall, soon to follow were more clams, some nicely preserved and covered in a brittle iridescent layer. Soon after I grew tired of pulling clams from the muddy wall, I looked up on the short, grassy cliff edge to notice a piece of some yet-to-be-identified ammonite. I picked it up and began digging carefully around it. My digging dislodged additional pieces of the ammonite and I began to speculate that it had fractured--its pieces scattered along a path nearby. I climbed up the short cliff face and walked up the grassy hill above, scanning the ground. I found a few more pieces of the same ammonite and was able to pull the largest piece from a nearby loose dirt wall. tine was running short so I carefully wrapped what I found interesting and brought it back to the car. Most of the specimens appear to be poorly preserved clams or maybe bubbles of mud? My research thus far has me suspecting the clams to be either inoceramus or ctenodonta. The ammonite, when assembled, appears to spiral up and away...difficult to describe, easier to see. I have a book that would suggest it to be turriltes but it lists the usual specimen size around 1 1/4". The partial specimen I have, when assembled is approx 4". A complete, similarly sized specimen would probably be around 6-10". Correct me here if I'm wrong and please, any advice, input, or insight would be greatly apprecoated. Thanks for reading More photos

Hello, I found this lot while working on a jobsite in Colorado Springs, CO. They were all in a layer of claystone at an elevation of approx. 5,600'. In addition to these there were lots of flat long fossils pieces that were approx 1.5" wide and 3/4" tall and varied in length. Unfortunately I did not photograph any of those. Any information would be appreicated. Thanks in advance and happy hunting!