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While 2021 was an extremely difficult year with coivd and the loss of my mother we were able to make it out to Richmond in NW Queensland for 2 fossil digs. The conditions out here can very harsh 40c plus days so we did a bit of night time digging under lanterns to avoid the heat. The material here is marine cretaceous sediments from the Toolebuc formation. Our goals this year was to finally find a large ichthyosaur bone (I have found 2x isolated teeth in the past) and find a NW Queensland ammonite. Below are some of best finds from the two digs. While the ichthyosaur bone eluded us for another year while going through our material we brought home we found what has been ID as a Pterosaur digit bone which we were very excited about as these are rare in Australia as is by far my most exciting find to date the fossil is approx 8cm long. Another rare fossil from the site is Johnlongia shark tooth we have found average condition teeth in the past but this year we found a very well preserved one. While turtle fossils are very common on this site we did find our first almost complete one however it was very fragile so decided the best option was to leave it in the location we found it . (Sorry these pictures were taken at night so are not very good) Another very common fossil is fish remains however we found our best fish jaw to date this took quite a few hours to prep. Lastly I was determined to find at least one Ammonite these are not found in our usual site so after been given some guidance and contacting land owners we were given permission to hunt on a station which was well known for ammonites and it didn't disappoint we made some nice finds. The best part of the fossil hunting this year was spending quality time with my son who loves doing it too, thanks for reading my run down of this year collecting I hope everyone has a great 2022. Cheers

Been a while since I subbed the Fossil Forum . Thought I would share some photos of the teeth I collected last Saturday . We screened for about 4 hours using 18 inch screens . Hope you like what you see . The first photo is of ptychodus shark teeth a small fish vertebra and a couple of drum fish teeth . The second is an example of the finds for the day , I have a third photo of just as many squalicorax teeth but didn't have room to upload . Will do another message .

I'm extremely excited to announce that two days ago at 3:30 a newly discovered dinosaur vertebra was recovered from a Late Cretaceous Campanian formation in West Tennessee. This is only the 4th. dinosaurian vertebra to ever be found in Tennessee! It's also the first dinosaur vertebra I've ever found in my life. The specimen is from the tail section on the vertebrae column of a Hadrosaur. The neural canal and neural arch are still plainly visible. Specimen is missing the neural spine and also possible Chevron bone. This is a historic achievement for paleontology in Tennessee and here is the first look. As I'm sure by now, everyone on the Forum knows, my cell takes terrible pics, I hope to prep the specimen soon and show better shots of it. These photos were taken the day it was recovered and I have no others presently available. I will post more pics on this thread when the specimen is cleaned.

Anyone who has searched the internet for pictures of the 5 dinosaur bones that were recovered from the Cretaceous of West Tennessee knows what I'm talking about: there simply isn't ANY photos available to view the all the specimens, with the exception of a PDF file wrote in 1991 by Mr. Bryan from UT Knoxville. That said, the bones aren't to scale in the PDF and some PDF files of the paper don't even retain the pictures. An exhaustive internet search for the material only pulls up a few pictures of a bone or two plus one photo of a few associated fragments. Here I present to you as many photos of the material as I can. In this thread I also present the first photos of every single frag that is associated with the specimens, which isn't on public display. For at least 3 years now, I've tried hard to get photos of these specimens, I finally had to just go to Knoxville and do it myself. Now you all may have access to view photos of this online. A little background history about these bones; they were obtained by the University of Tennessee (Knoxville) from the Tennessee Division of Geology. The tag on the bones simply read "Cretaceous, West Tennessee." That is all! It is thought they were recovered sometime between the 40's-50's by the Division, and that the Geologist whom they came from didn't record the locality information on purpose because he had intent on returning to work the site. Until 2015 these were the only dinosaur bones to ever be found in Tennessee and publicly acknowledged. The find site is still an enduring mystery which I'm working on. My cell takes terrible photos, so I'm sorry about the picture quality, still I wanted to share these photos with you all.

The reality of this is just now sinking in, or I would have posted it sooner. On feb 11th-14th 2016 at the National Wild Turkey Federation Convention in Nashville, myself and some of my material will be in the Tennessee Division of Geology's exhibit section. My cretaceous bones (dinosaurian and marine reptile) are the primary specimens that have been requested to be displayed, other material of mine there may consist of cretaceous teeth, paleobotanicals, amber, cretaceous insects, minerals, ect. After a recent meeting with the State Geologist, he informed me that every year the Tn. Div. of Geology showcases an exhibit at the NWTF Convention, and I was welcome to be there and show material he had inspected. Man, I don't even remember how many milliseconds it took to respond to the proposition, but wasn't too long at any rate. Now, the thing is, this is a Turkey Hunter's convention, so obviously there won't be a ton of straight-up fossil lover's present, but I'm sure most will be the outdoorish-type, and will also enjoy minerals, fossils, ect. As I previously stated, this is just now sinking in good.... Best I remember through quick conversation, he said it would be attended by 40,000 people and would be a great chance to get publicity for my collection. Now, that passed through my mind the other day and I thought to myself, "That number can't be right." So I googled it, the NWTF site that talks about the convention say over 48,000 attend it!!! It also said exhibition space is sold out. Now I'm setting hear thinking, where in the heck am I gonna sleep Feb 11th-14th???? Really, cause if 50 thousand people are gonna be there, I couldn't afford a motel room if one was even available, and one won't be. All of Nashville together has nothing like that kind of accommodations. At any rate, it is a true honor to be asked to do this by the state, as far as I'm aware, I'm the only amateur in the state the offer has been given too. Other offers were passed my way that day, even hour presentations where I would do the same as that day...bring the material and talk about it, palaeoecology,lithology, stratigraphy, ect. This will be directed toward gov. employees and officials in the Tennessee Tower. Oh, I certainly agreed to that too. A date hasn't been set for that yet, but if your close to Nashville in February, come on down and meet Tennessee's Pride! I just know some of you fellow TFF members will be in the mix, and I look forward to personally meeting you.

This is a topic I've been meaning to create in the I.D. section for some time now. Hopefully it will be an easier way for interested members to access information regarding my paleobotanical materials. I likewise encourage anyone with Cretaceous Tennessee specimens to post in this topic, to create a better understanding of botanical fossils/palaeoecology/palaeoclimatology, ect. from the cretaceous of Tennessee. I intend to add new materials to this topic for years to come,to ensure a way for researchers to view specimens easily, a benifical concept considering my materials are scattered throughout the TFF in numerous posts in such a way as to be impossible to track for most members and guests of the Forum. Of course a section compiled of all my unknowns will beneficial to myself also. Unless specifically listed with the botanical, all material I post will be Campanian or later. These specimens are recovered material from many diverse sites I collect from. Thank you for viewing my materials and helping with identifications...an untrained person like myself certainly needs all the help I can get!

We collect these tiny teeth at night . We lay on our stomachs with flash lights to find them . The first time I found them was by accident . We were laying out on the chalk gullies looking at the stars . I rolled over and looked at the chalk with my flash light . Tiny fossils appeared everywhere . Until that night only 2 pseudocorax teeth were in the museum collection . I found 14 that night . I donated all of them to the museum . I recently found these the same way . "NOTE" Collected in the Cretaceous Mooresville Chalk Formation .