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I just finished a new display of self collected Kansas predators. I was inspired my fellow member Terrance Skinners similar display. I love it.

Yesterday I made a visit to the Natural History Museum of Maastricht (The Netherlands) for my Birthday The museum is only a 40 minute drive from where I live and it showcases the entire natural history of the region, the cool thing about this museum is that the fossils which are showcased here are all regional fossils from The Netherlands, Germany & Belgium. I am starting the topic off with 2 pictures of the special exhibit called Microsculptures, which shows giant detailed photographs of insects to show how magnifecent they are. Then I went on to the "Mosaleum" which holds "Bér" the holotype specimen of Prognathodon saturator

We completed our first trade on the fossil forum recently and it was awesome. We got a great fossil and a cool new friend. I am putting up one of my Stethacanthus altonensis teeth because I want to bulk up our shark education program just a bit. It is really the only tooth we could trade that has much appeal. Here are the details on the teeth we have to offer. I actually think this one of our anvil shark teeth. This one is smaller but has the tip intact. The details Stethacanthus altonesis Delaware Creek Member-Caney Shale Formation Mississippian-Meremacian Pontotoc County, Oklahoma We can also offer some trade filler too but none of it rare or anything. PM if you want pictures of these teeth. 2 Isurus planus teeth from Sharktooth Hill Miocene 1 Ptychodus whippeli from Texas. i have no other information about the tooth. 1 Cretaceous Shark indet tooth from New Jersey ( I think). Scapnorhynchus was the leading opinion when it put it on the TFF for ID. It was not a unanimous opinion though. We are looking for specific things to fill in our education presentation about sharks. Astercanthus teeth and spine. Any Hybodont shark would work but in a perfect world we find an Astercanthus sp. Caseodus tooth Campodus tooth Cardabiodon tooth Feel free to say hello if you are interested. In pic 3, the trade tooth is on the right.

A gastropod from the Lower Campanian of southern Poland. Any ideas on what group may it belong to, based on the ornamentation?

I have this evening and tomorrow to get up a bit more of the dinosaur collection before it is back to sharks. We have programs starting soon so my focus will be well away from dinos for a few months probably. Prepare to be underwhelmed lol I thought we would be heavy on the Moroccan dinosaurs because they are so abundant. Surprisingly, we are pretty light on African dinosaurs. I found a path to getting us deeper into North American animals. It is a bonus that an area we will need to fill is the most abundant and affordable. The dinosaur program will have a different scientific concept behind than sharks. The best state science standard we can hit for 1st-3rd graders is geology so some of the dinosaur program will focus on the formations in goelogical terms. I am looking forward to learning more about the paleoecology of this region and talking about how we can get clues about the habitats from the rocks. It is an interesting collection of animals to learn about. We have a "raptor" tooth from Kem Kem. You know, one of those "raptors". Is it Deltradromodeus or is it an abelisaur? The question can not be answered so we are presenting it as it is, a Theropd indet from North Africa. No need to go much further. It presents a great opportunity to discuss with the kids how difficult it is to describe dinosaur species. We know it is a Theropd tooth and it was carnivorous. We know there are several different dinosaurs it could be but we can not say for sure. I can not tell if my sauropod tooth is a Rebbachisaurus or not but i know you can ID them. I also know there is another sauropod in Kem Kem. If we were presenting tomorrow, it would be Rebbachisaurus. They are one cool looking dinosaur. With some more education, i will be able to tell. Either way, this tooth is the only sauropod fossil we have so this becomes the first dinosaur we really can really expand on. These teeth are inexpensive and this is the only sauropod we are likely to have fossils for. The long-neck dinosaurs are the biggest land animals ever and kids know them so we will be adding more teeth to bulk up the presentation. I have yet to pick up Spinosaur teeth but they are next on the list. I am still learning about Spinosaur teeth and have been cautious. We want to make sure we get some of the inexpensive teeth for the kids to handle and a nice example for the presentation. Carcharodontosaurus is one we will add but not until I have studied them better. There is a wide range of prices and quality. Pic 1- Theropod indet, Kem Kem. Pic 2- Sauropod indet, Kem Kem.

Howdy y'all. Its been a while since I have reported on any fossil outings. Been busy. Two weekends ago I took my German friend, Finn, out to one of my ammonite sites. It was a brisk 40 degrees F (5 C) and windy. So, yeah, pretty chilly. (We did not get the deep freeze they got in the upper midwest). I call this site JPC355. I have been here at least 25 times and I have almost stopped picking up baculites here, but I always get a few. The site has a lot of baculites and a few much less common non-baculite ammonites. All of these are often preserved in calcite and can show great suture lines. This is in the Campanian Cody Shale (late Cret., about 80 million years old). Here is Finn off in the distance. In my early days of bird photography, (way before digital made it easy) we used to call this an ecosystem shot. See if you can find Finn. And here he is collecting a baggie full of baculites. These were his first baculites so he collected about three sandwich bags full. Here is Finn's best ammonite that he found himself. It is an incomplete Scaphites hippocrepis. Nice yellow calcite. This is my small herd of baculites. Speaking of herds,we saw a herd of about 40 elk on the way home. My picture of them is even more of an ecosystem shot than the photo of Finn above. I usually get one or two S. hippocrepis. Here is mine for the day (I also gave two to Finn). This one is complete (left). The ammonite on the right is a much less common Haresiceras. I only have five or six of these from this site, so always good to find one. And I don't know why the picture is sideways. H on top, S on the bottom. And lastly the most exciting, find... a piece of a Glyptoxoceras. In 25 or so visits, I have never found this thing here; nor have I seen any of my guests find one. And I have taken a lot of people out here, including a few of you folks. This is only my second one, so yeah, an uncommon ammonite in my world. I am thrilled when I find something new. Hope you enjoyed this midwinter vicarious fossil outing. I did, and I know Finn did. (Last weekend he went out hiking with another friend and they saw a herd of 500-600 pronghorn. That is a lot).

Had a doctors appointment a couple of weeks ago and as I was driving home I drove over a bridge that sparked my attention. I saw the access was fairly easy to the first couple and sand bars, and being dressed business casual I needed easy. I always keep my rubber boots in the back of the FJ and made my way down for a quick look. The area is Texas Cretaceous Eagle Ford so I knew the odds were good, but I have hunted other creeks in the area and been skunked. I was there for about 15 minutes and about to head back when I spotted a familiar sight. There was a large Ptychodus waiting to be picked up. i headed home and looked at google maps to see if I could find any other access. I found another spot that also looked promising and a couple of days later on the way home from work, I again threw on the boots and hit the couple of accessible piles and was surprised to fine several more Ptychodus teeth and a beautiful large Cretodus. This is weekend though it was cold and rainy, my son and I hit the area again this time spending a little over an hour or so and found a few more broken teeth as well as a large X-Fish vert and a small mosasaur vert. I am certain this creek is going to turn up some great material after the next rains. I am attaching ictures of the finds from the couple of hours I have had to hunt this spot.

This tooth is the right price for us and from the exact formation we want an ankylosaur fossil from. Species and tooth condition is not important. Is this tooth from an ankylosaurine dinosaur ? I was not expecting to find an affordable tooth from the formation I want as soon as I started searching but I did. I was not really supposed to buy anything else right now but this is in my price range and one of the Judith River ankylosaurines is named after Zuul from Ghostbusters. That is a dino I want to talk about and that is why the species does not matter at all. No matter what Judith River Anky fossil we get, Zuul will be the presentation species lol My 45th B-day is a month away. My kids can get it for me

I'll post a full story in trips when I get time, but I was searching around a new spot, being unsure of the formation (Austin I assume now) I was picking up everything I found including oysters which I would normally leave, I assume they're exogyra or ilymatogyra but the Mark on the back is strange to me, 2 of the three I picked up had them and I haven't seen anything like it in pictures. Species and out formation ID would be nice

Our last post ended with goblin sharks and the next era up in the presentation is one of my favorites. We get to the large sharks of the Cretaceous. This is also where the adaptations get more specific and where the science gets more heavy duty for the kids such as discussing regional endothermy. I am a firm believer than you do not "dumb down" complicated science to elementary students. You simplify and explain, you do not dumb it down. First up are the giant crushing sharks, Ptychodus. We present both P. mortoni and p. whipplei though most of the discussion is about mortoni. The kids will learn that there were at least 22 species of Ptychodus sharks, they are Hybodontid sharks and they were found in many locations around the world. They were plentiful in the Western Interior Seaway. They were large, probably very slow swimming bottom dwelling invertebrate eating specialists. We imagine them as looking similar to giant nurse sharks with features of the hybodonts. The focus is on those teeth and we have quite a few to show the kids. We explain how the separate teeth formed a plate like dentition for crushing shells. Next up is one of my favorite sharks, Cretoxyrhina mantelli. The Ginsu Shark gives us the rare chance to really described a prehistoric shark without theorizing much. The fossil record has been generous and this is a very well studied shark. We will explain to the kids that these were large sharks, up to 26 feet, and they looked very similar to modern Great Whites in general appearance. Despite being smaller than some of the monster marine reptiles, they were an apex predator. The key adaptation is the regional endothermy. For kids this goes like this... They had red muscles closer to the body axis and specialized blood vessels that allow for heat exchange. This means they were in a sense warm-blooded and this is a trait seen in modern sharks like Threshers, Makos and White Sharks. They could tolerate colder water than other species and were probably extremely fast sharks. I think the kids will get this concept and they will think this was one cool, though also kinda warm, shark lol At some point, I would love to add Cardabiodon to the program but have not seen around for sale so I assume they are rare and likely expensive. Anyway, the fossils for the program. Pic 1 One of the Ptychodus mortoni teeth we have from the Niobrara Chalk in Kansas. We have six and several are partial but put them all together in a Riker mount and they look pretty good. Pic 2 Ptychodus whipplei teeth from Kamp Ranch formation. We have a small assortment of these teeth and use them in the lab and as giveaways too. Pic 3 Cretoxyrhina mantelli from the Niobrara Chalk. Not the biggest tooth out there but one that I am very thankful to have. I will add more of these as we go along mostly because I love this species !!

I found this odd shaped fossil in a gravel bar of the Cretaceous North Sulphur River in Ladonia, Texas. I have recently found fossil turtle, and I was wondering if it might be that. Any input would be appreciated. Thank you!!

I found this bone today in a stream bed known to be cretaceous. At first I thought it was modern, but it felt too heavy to just be bone, so I took it home. I bleached it for a couple of hours to make it safe to touch because I couldn't imagine it wasn't modern. Then I cleaned it with dish soap and a toothbrush. It rings when tapped against a counter or when tapped with a rock. No dull thud. We held a butane lighter to it for several seconds. It made a black scorch mark, but there was no odor, so I think the collagen is gone. Does it look old to you? Any ideas about what it might be? Sorry about the picture quality. I might be able to do better in daylight tomorrow.

After the Hybodontids, our program starts to transition toward the modern sharks. We introduce lamniform sharks and the cow sharks. We will not be able to spend much time at all on the Cow and Crow Sharks. They only get a brief introduction and a look at the teeth. Squalicorax is an important species for us even though we do not spend a lot of time on it. The students in first few classes we do presentations for will be going home with Squalicorax teeth from Morocco. We would like to spend more time on the Cow sharks eventually but we only have one tooth to show them and we will have to edit content to free up space for them but I will work on that down the road. The primary focus in this section is Scapanorhynchus. The first shark art Carter did was a Goblin and we do give them a lot of time in the presentaton. They look cool and have been around for a long time. We present the kids with a nice assortment of teeth and some cool science. The teeth were important adaptations for catching fish and the snout had the ampullae of Lorenzini for sensing changes in the electro magnetic fields around them. We compare this to the modern hammerhead which we do not cover in the program but gives the kids a sense of how the adaptations of hammerheads work. We also talk about fin structure and being able to tell they were slow swimmers. The extend-o-matic jaw is another adaptation we cover with this species. I am happy with the fossil representations for now though I really want to add more Cow Shark fossils at some point and Anomotodon would also be a good addition. The fossils for the presentation.. Pic 1 Hexanchus andersoni from STH. I know H. andersoni should chronologically fit later but Cow Sharks fit here and this is the only one we have for now. Pic 2- Squalicorax pristodontus from Morocco. This is our largest Squalicorax tooth. The kids will get these teeth to take home so while we do not spend a lot of time on them, the teeth are very important to the program. Pic 3- Scapnorhynchus texanus and Scapanorhynchus puercoensis. Our nice little Goblin Shark display with some of our best teeth. Two of the texanus teeth are over 1.5 inches and the puercoenisis teeth are uncommon I believe and pretty super cool.

https://www.france24.com/en/20190204-dinosaur-defended-itself-with-spiny-backbone-found-patagonia https://paleonerdish.wordpress.com/2019/02/04/introducing-bajadasaurus-pronuspinax/ http://novataxa.blogspot.com/2019/02/bajadasaurus.html

I need an ID for this clam. I found this clam in a concretion. it was taken from the Kevin member of the Marias formation. Th Kevin member is listed as Santonian Cretaceous. The location is 5 miles west of Loma Montana.

Hi all! I found this in the North Sulphur River this weekend in a large gravel bar. My first thought was that it was a Globidens Mosasaur tooth, but I’m just not sure. It’s approximately a half an inch diameter, has striations on the underside, and a hole in the center. The top side has been flattened, which if a tooth I am assuming is the chewing surface? Completely fossilized. No enamel. I would appreciate any input! Thank you so much!

Back in November of last year, my son and I decided to start our own education non-profit. We wanted to combine his artwork, my teaching skills, and real fossils to create a museum on wheels that takes fun field trips to the classrooms. We had shark teeth and marine mammal fossils so we started building education programs around those. I am very satisfied where those two programs are at though I would love to expand the number of shark species we can present but that is a story for a different day. We knew we would need to get a dinosaur program going at some point but I know nothing about dinosaur fossils so I did not want to start collecting yet. My plan was to wait until late spring or early summer to start building our collection. A friend gave us two hadrosaur teeth and a Hypselosaurus egg shell piece in December so our program got started earlier than planned. As we do with every decision, my son and I talked about picking up a few bargain dinosaur fossils while we tightened up the other programs which are debuting in March. One of the first things I did was join TFF. I was very intimidated by dinosaur fossils and I hoped this place would help me educate myself. I have been a quiet observer so far and have not engaged very much with the dinosaur experts here. I have read a lot of posts and this has been so incredibly helpful. Utilizing the expertise of the members here has also saved me money and stopped me from making one unwise purchase. I have only picked up a few dinosaur items up to this point but without being on this site, I doubt I would have made any attempt at starting this particular collection so soon. I am very grateful for the forum and its members because a lot of people really want to help. I quickly learned that our presentation will be centered on the Hell Creek fauna and we can augment it with some African dinosaurs. After a bit of window shopping, it became apparent right away that Jurassic period dinosaurs were simply too expensive for us. There is no way we will be able to purchase any and trades are unlikely as we just do not have much material that would have much trade value. I can live with this though. If we focus on the T-rex/Ceratopsian fauna of Hell Creek we are giving kids species they know plus introducing them to new species which I am totally cool with. We also decided we could talk Triassic dinosaurs with kids using Bull Canyon fossils. Now I am an avid reader here so I am aware that there is some debate about the species that are found in Bull Canyon and how things are labeled by dealers but I did pick some up because we want to teach kids about the evolution of dinosaurs and to give them a few species that have never heard of. I can not be sure if the teeth I have are Coelophysis teeth but we are still going to present them as such to the students because it is an opportunity to get to early dinosaurs. Same goes for a "prosauropod" tooth we purchased. We are not going to sell the fossils so the correct ID is less important to us than being able to at least have a representation of early dinosaurs for the kiddos. Our early efforts were given a huge boost when a member here helped broker a transaction between another member which resulted in us having a very nice partial T-rex and a Nano. This was huge for us. We got the centerpiece species and it was super affordable. I am still in a bit of shock to be honest and incredibly grateful. We also picked up some inexpensive Hell Creek Triceratops teeth. I found a nice Saurornitholestes from Judith River which gives us a "raptor" fossil for the kids. I got an inexpensive Moroccan sauropod tooth which gives us a "long neck" that we can use. It is really not a bad start in my eyes. We picked some species that we really wanted to include. We also have begun to find some teeth that kids can handle in the form of partial or shed Ceratopsian teeth and inexpensive Spinosaurus teeth from Morocco. I only made one questionable decision. I did not use TFF and ended up misidentifying a tooth. This led us to having two Richardoesstesia gilmorei teeth. We really did not need two fossils from this species but it was a learning experience. I learned that I need keep studying, learning and using the forum. Had I put it here first, instead of testing my own skills, I would not have picked it up . I would have filled another need in the program. Lesson learned and the upside is that I do have a dinosaur fossil I can possibly trade. It is not much for trade I am sure, but maybe I can use it to get a fossil that fills a hole in the program. The most important thing I have learned so far is that I really enjoy collecting dinosaur fossils. I am hooked. I was never a dinosaur kid myself. I preferred sharks and whales but I am really captivated by dinosaurs now. I have been cramming my brain with scientific information about dinosaurs and my son is really enjoying getting a start on his dino artwork. We have a long way to go before we are ready to unleash our budding dino education program. I have a long way to go with my own knowledge too. I do know it will be a lot of fun to learn and I am looking forward to getting more interactive with the dinosaur collectors here. We have settled on the next round of dinosaurs to add (Acheroraptor, Ankylosaur, Pachycephalosaurus, a Troodontid, plus more Ceratopsian material) and they seem attainable so I am excited to get to work on those in the near future. I also learned there are species from the Hell Creek formation that are awesome but we will never have due to price or rarity lol Dakotaraptor is #1 on that list but the avian dinosaurs are not far behind. All things considered, I am super happy with our tiny dinosaur collection and I am really enjoying the hunt for more !!

I purchased some Ptychodus teeth and I can not determine the exact ID on my own. They are smaller than P. whippeli or P. mortoni teeth I have and bigger than the single P. anonymous tooth I have though that is the species I originally though, and still think these are. They are from the Kamp Ranch section of Eagle Ford in Texas. I consulted a very well put together ID guide here but am still just not sure what I have, other than nice Ptychodus teeth lol Any help would be appreciated.

Two fossils found at separate sites in Central Texas that look similar enough to me to think they are the same? Any thoughts on what this might be an impression of? Doesn't seem to correspond to any shell or urchin I know of. Thank you for any information!

Found on the Trinity River near Trinity TX. Very large, odd conglomerate. Looks like Exogyria Ponderosa, but then has this odd side growth? Any help would be appreciated! (that's a quarter next to it for scale)

Often on The Fossil Forum you strike up an online friendship based on common interest, then build on it over time through field experiences enjoyed vicariously online, but it is a rare treat to finally cement that friendship in person through a collaborative field problem. After a couple years of threatening to do so, I finally saw a break in the clouds that afforded me the opportunity to burn rubber westward and follow in the footsteps of the Pied Piper of the Puerco, the Chancellor of the Cretaceous, our own PFooley. As a generalist filled with wanderlust, it is hard for me to find a venue these days I haven’t yet sampled, so if you’ll forgive my verboseness and loquaciousness, I think this adventure warrants the long cut of yarn I’m about to spin, complemented by a montage of photos to capture the spirit of our high desert excursion. I had set aside 4 days for this adventure; 2 for driving and 2 for collecting. ‘Twas a long haul from San Antonio to Albuquerque, probably 14 hours with stops, but satellite radio helps knock the edge off the monotony of the yellow line, as did a quick stop at the Lubbock Lake Paleoindian site to stretch my legs. If you are interested in evidence of interaction between the ancients and late Pleistocene beasts, as most of us are, this was a worthwhile side track when in the area. While flat as a tortilla in places, the West Texas experience brings with it its own brand of sensory overload. High winds blew a huge red dust storm and innumerable tumbleweeds in my path, while driving gritty dust into my teeth. The building adventure was palpable. New Mexico terrain along my route also begged to be clipped off at 100 MPH, so in places, I indulged. Then dust storms gave way to sleet squalls just as I got to I-40 near dusk. With higher elevation I began to see lingering snow on the north facing slopes, and feelings of trepidation ensued with regard to what the previous night’s rain and snow had set up for us at the hunting grounds both in terms of road access and perhaps snow covering the exposure. I calmed my nerves by realizing that conditions in Texas weren’t particularly favorable for the same weekend, so I had made a good decision to hedge on New Mexico for the new experience. At long last, on Friday night I arrived at Casa Fooley. And quite a fun bee hive of activity it was. After some handshakes and back slapping with Mike, I met his lovely wife and beautiful daughter. But the fun didn’t stop there. Los Fooley are animal lovers, so I was greeted by quite a procession of curious pets. Rabbits, dogs, a cat, chickens, a tortoise and a turkey all took turns checking out the new guy. All lived in happy community, for the most part. While one Chihuahua quickly took up residence across my legs, another troublemaker puppy started a fight with my new little friend, and they nipped and yapped at each other on the battleground of my lap as the other critters looked on in nonchalance. Shifting alliances rose and fell between animals, a 3 year old ran through the big middle at will, and I found all of this activity to be rather entertaining. But perhaps the most enduring encounter was with the huge pet turkey following me around in the front yard, stomping its feet and strumming its feathers. Finally I turned around and it let me pet its head, which reminded me of a melted red and blue candle. I was a changed man, having pet a turkey for the first time. Having raised it from a chick, Mike showed me that he could pick up and hold his full grown, feathered friend. To boot, it roosted on a fence by the window where I slept that night, literally 3 feet away from the bed I slept in, silhouetted and standing sentinel.

I am not sure what species this Cretaceous shark tooth belonged to. It comes from Kansas but I really do not have much more information. It is 2 cm on the slant. It is really a nice tooth and it was a bargain. My best guess is Archeolamna which I believe is found in the chalk in Kansas. I do not think it is robust enough to be Cardabiodon and I do not know what other species it would match from the area. Any help would be appreciated.