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Back in January I bought a new 15 drawer cabinet and have slowly been transferring my collection to it. Going through my old finds, some of which have been boxed and/or bagged away I haven't seen for years has been a pleasure and some new gems have turned up that I had overlooked the first time around. There was this Actinodesma erectum, a pteriomorph bivalve which had broken when it was excavated last summer at Cole Hill.

Hunter, A.W., Mitchell, E.G., Casenove, D. and Mayers, C., 2019. Reconstructing the ecology of a Jurassic pseudoplanktonic megaraft colony. bioRxiv, p.566844. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/566844v1.abstract https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2019/03/04/566844.full.pdf Hess, H. 2011, Treatise Online, no. 16, Part T, Revised, Volume 1, Chapter 19: Paleoecology of pelagic crinoids https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272640982_Treatise_Online_no_16_Part_T_Revised_Volume_1_Chapter_19_Paleoecology_of_pelagic_crinoids Other papers are: Röhl, H.J., Schmid-Röhl, A., Oschmann, W., Frimmel, A. and Schwark, L., 2001. The Posidonia Shale (Lower Toarcian) of SW-Germany: an oxygen-depleted ecosystem controlled by sea level and palaeoclimate. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 165(1-2), pp.27-52. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229329097_Erratum_to_The_Posidonia_Shale_Lower_Toarcian_of_SW-Germany_an_oxygen-depleted_ecosystem_controlled_by_sea_level_and_palaeoclimate https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Annette_Schmid-Roehl Schmid-Röhl, A., Röhl, H.J., Oschmann, W., Frimmel, A. and Schwark, L., 2002. Palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of Lower Toarcian epicontinental black shales (Posidonia Shale, SW Germany): global versus regional control. Geobios, 35(1), pp.13-20. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/251729450_Palaeoenvironmental_reconstruction_of_Lower_Toarcian_epicontinental_black_shales_Posidonia_Shale_SW_Germany_Global_versus_regional_control https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Annette_Schmid-Roehl Yours, Paul H.

Sorry I haven’t been around the forum as much for a couple months now but I’m starting to get some more free time recently. Here’s a quick trip @Earth Chemistry and I did a little bit ago. Let’s start out with what stratigraphy we’re looking at here. I’ve been visiting multiple locations of what is locally known as the Gardison Limestone. Source: http://utahgeology.com/utah-stratigraphic-columns/?var=strat_27 It is from the early Mississippian or Early Carboniferous for our international members.

I am back from my trip to morocco. It is a 14 days trip and I got 4 days for fossil hunting. It was so imagine, fossils are everywhere and even though I won't be able to dig, I still get plenty to bring home. Since my guide doesn't speak good English, I am not be able to ask him must so I need help to identify the fossil. On the first day, my guide took me to a place near Erfoud to search for dinosaur teeth. It is very close to the highway. We found a well that the local people dig to get Spinosaur teeth and bone. My husband went down to one but couldn't find anything because the well is new and it is not deep enough. We didn't want to try the deeper one so we decide to bought some spinosaur teeth from the local people there. This tooth is a little over 4.5 inches and I think there are some prepare but I can't tell how much. I also bought 3 smaller teeth and was giving the broken one which I don't know what it is.

Hey everyone! I have a great selection of fossils at home but I still lack a great knowledge of my most local fossils. I rarely find more than Devil toenails here in the UK but have come across quite a few on my travels today. Initially they caught my eye because they look like my orthoceras but I also have crinoids that have similar markings. There are thousands on the beach with fresh finds every day. If anyone could confirm what I've found it'd be much appreciated. I assume I have a collection of various plant fossils?

Hi! Previous weekend me and my friend (paleozoic echinoderms researcher) spent in the quarry near Kasimov (Ryazan region, Russia) where upper carboniferous (pennsylvanian) deposits are exposed. This was an opening of the new fossil hunting season. The main target were echinoderms and especially crinoids. The weather was not very comfortable (+6 C and some rain) but perfect for echinoderm hunting. They become contrast and much more visible when wet. Here is some pictures.

according to the geology, the location is a cross of carbiniferous and devonian period. the location (Crookstown, Co Cork Ireland) is at a meeting point of deep marine shelf environment, marine shelf environment and an alluvial plain environment. The later being void of fossils. if someone could confirm or define what these fossils are, I would appreciate it. also can something be done to clean them up? or a way to safely remove the matrices? the first rock contain what I think are crinoids fragments, there are actually a lot of them here. this is a bit bigger, is it a crinoid as well? Finally the last one, I am actually not sure if it is a fossil or just geological. Thank you for your Help Regards

first item first three photos second item next three I can see they are not the same type but what are they? found in gravel load west of Houston Texas from Brazos River

It’s winter and time to explore as many canyons as possible before it gets hot here. As always; in search of exercise, fossils and other items of interest. A visual summary of the ascent of one side canyon and the descent of the another. The entrance to the two canyon loop Today I had to share the trail Ordovician formations with small cave Ordovician staircase walkway in canyon bottom, Silurian cliffs at top of pic As the main canyon ascends, the hiking eventually meets where Ordovician contacts Silurian At the top of this Silurian dry falls is the Devonian but not much of it. This Devonian area is just before the canyon splits into two canyons

Any clue what this is? It's about the size of a quarter, but thicker. It was found on a Lake Erie beach in OH (30 minutes west of Cleveland, OH). Most fossils from this area are from Dovinian period. It looks like a bunch of shells stuck in chocolate. Are these crinoids?

While @UtahFossilHunter was out for a quick bike ride yesterday, he stumbled across a wash that's been cut by a road. The upper part of the wash above the road is on private land that we do not have permission to be on yet. We had looked at the downstream part of the wash area for fossils before but had not found anything. After some melting of snow and construction, that happened over the last couple days some rocks had been pushed downstream. We decided to look at this wash once again and found these! This is a significant find because it is within 5 miles of my home. Our usual spot is 50 miles from my home so this is great news.

phosphthesi about 36 MB ******************** Phosphatized echinoderm remains from the upper lower Ordovician strata of northern Oland,Sweden preservation,taxonomy and evolution Magnus Svensson Examens arbete i Geologi vid Lunds Universitete n 105/1999 ******************** diacritics omitted("Oeland") Could the bee have any more knees? Nope. characterization:Monograph/thesis. 54 pages excluding bibliography

I have managed to find some fossils I want to preserve such as these ferns and some cordaites. As best as I can read online it seems these should not be cleaned to ensure to not ruin them. Or is that wrong? Is there something to soak them in that won't harm them? Afterwards, what is best to preserve them with? Should they be kept away from sunlight to reduce fading? Basically, would anyone recommend a link or two to read to keep these looking nice. Thank you, Kato ===================== Ferns Cordaite with multi-color staining from different oxidization rates from pyritization???

Hi, I'm visiting my niece who just had a baby, in campbellsville KY. I noticed there are a lot of very ancient fossils in Kentucky. Does anyone have any sites or road cuts to explore? Thanks alot, this is my first post. Stuart

Dear TFF members, I need help with confirming the age of fossils I have found during the trip to the chalk mine in Mielnik. These specimens were found in the slopes and on the road leading to the mine, so a few tens of metres above the chalk deposits. I have read about the Ordovician deposits streching from Białowieża to Mielnik, so maybe they indeed come from this time? The specimens comprise corals, crinoids and brachiopods. I will appreciate your comments/ suggestions.

I found this rock in a creek in middle Tennessee. (Mississippian, St. Louis Limestone & Warsaw Limestone) @Bobby Rico Using your iPhone macro lens tips, I was just now able to magnify an area of this rock which I’ve been wanting to know more about for a while. (I wasn’t aware of the zoomed-in magnifying technique, so thanks for posting!) I’m thinking it is a cluster of three crinoid stems?

This all started over a year ago. I was selected as Member of the Month and a couple of TFF members from Texas invited me down to the big state to collect. I primarily collect in my home region, the northeast, but I've taken fossil forays to New Mexico, Kentucky, and Germany and was willing to consider a trip to Texas and the opportunity to visit some classic fossil sites and collect fossils that are outside my usual focus. I began planning this about ten months ago, contacted potential fossil collecting partners and did my own research on fossil sites, geology, and the types of fossils I would likely encounter. I had never been to Texas let alone fossil collected there. From the Forum I knew there was a lot of great hunting. Then there was all of the logistics, what to stay, what to bring. Since I wanted to bring back a lot driving appeared to be my best option, but I hadn't driven that far solo in over thirty years. Timing of my trip; mid-late September, came right after my daughter went away to college and I was in the middle of moving to a new place. So things couldn't have been more hectic. Finally, early in the morning on September 8th I set out. Things went okay until I was in Kentucky. Just as it was turning nightfall, torrential rain hit, traffic was stopped on the interstate for two and a half hours, and the last two hours of the trip I struggled with wet conditions and poor visibility. I finally arrived at my parents' house just after one in the morning. The next day on my way over to my sister's I took a small detour and stopped at an outcrop I was well familiar with in Leitchfield, the Upper Mississippian Glen Dean Formation.

I don't throw around the word "best" casually, but I think it's safe to say that my recent trip was one of the best in all my years collecting, if not the best. I spent the better part of five or six hours collecting at numerous different sites across western Maryland ranging in age from the lower Devonian to the lower Mississippian, so this is part one of my posts (for simplicity's sake I may include photos of most of my other finds from these sites even if I didn't collect them last go around). The trip started off okay. I visited a couple of my oldest sites that are some small roadside exposures of the Oriskany Sandstone and Mahantango Formation. These sites produced decent material in the past, but over the repeated years of collecting I seem to have worn them out as this time all I found were some brachiopods (including a decent Mucrospirifer sp. from the Mahantango site). I'll talk more about these finds later, but afterwards I found time to visit a new site in the Brallier Formation. By this point it had started to thunder, and while driving to the site the rain started to come in and fog filled up the valley. I thought it was the end of my trip, but as I got to the site it was pretty much dry. My best guess is that I was simply hearing a storm from way off in the distance. The site I visited, as I recently learned, might actually expose two different formations: the Brallier Formation and the Foreknobs Formation. The difficulty in discerning between the various upper Devonian formations in Maryland is multifold. First off, the MGS doesn't differentiate the Harrell, Brallier, and Scherr Formations, even on their most recent geologic maps. Second of all the literature around these deposits is scant and very dated. Most still use the (now) incorrect Woodmont and Chemung Formations, which further exacerbates problems as the Woodmont Formation consisted of the current Brallier and Scherr Formations, making it difficult for an amateur like me to really tell just which fossils occur in either formation. On top of this the contact between the Harrell, Brallier, Scherr, and Foreknobs is mostly gradational, so the differentiating layers lithologically is next to impossible as the beds gradually blend into one another. Generally speaking the Harrell is a dark shale with a fossiliferous limestone (the Tully Limestone) demarcating it's base, the Brallier is mostly dark, fissile shale with interbeds of siltstone, the Scherr is mostly lighter colored shale and siltstone with some sandstone beds, and the Foreknobs is a mixture of gray shales, red shales, conglomerate, sandstone, and siltstone. A guide fossil for the Brallier is the brittle star trace fossil Pteridichnites biseriatus, which was the fossil I originally set out to collect and found in the darker shale. Generally speaking the brachiopod genus Cyrtospirifer sp. in particular C. disjunctus is a guide fossil for the Foreknobs, but I believe this genus also occurs in the Brallier Formation. I found both fossils at this site, the brittle star in the dark shale and the brachiopod in a reddish siltstone, and considering the transition in rock types (one end of the site was just dark, fissile shale and the other had significant amounts of conglomerate and siltstone with shell beds) I think it's likely that the upper end of the cut was in the basal Foreknobs Formation and the lower end was in the upper layers of the Brallier Formation. As such, all of my trace fossils are from the Brallier and almost all of my other fossils are from the Foreknobs. The Brallier Formation is a late Devonian turbidite unit that was deposited in fairly deep water as the Acadian Mountains eroded. It is mostly unfossiliferous, but does have the occasional pelycopod, gastropod, and trace fossil (these being the most common). Ammonoids are also reported from the Brallier. Like I said earlier I originally came trying to find the brittle star trace fossil Pteridichnites but I ended up finding some other very interesting trace fossils. I picked up two of them because I had seen images of similar looking things from the Pennsylvanian of Alabama which I believe @Rockin' Ric labeled as resting traces from horseshoe crabs. These are late Devonian, deep water marine in origin, not terrestrial/freshwater from the Pennsylvanian, so I don't really know what they could be. Perhaps from some other arthropod? Anyways I also found some brittle star traces, including a group of what look to be four or five Pteridichnites biseriatus oriented in life position as if it were an imprint of the brittle star body. Image 1: Pteridichnites biseriatus Image 2: A group of four poorly preserved P. biseriatus Image 3: Unknown arthropod (?) trace fossil Image 4: Unknown arthropod (?) trace fossil If any of you guys know what the last two fossils are, please feel free to let me know.

Does anyone here have any experience with Crawfordsville, IN? I am making a XC trip in a few weeks, and I might be able to reach that general area. I wouldn't mind finding a couple of nice crinoids. I know nothing about the area. Any info would be greatly appreciated. (Accessibility of sites, best sites, etc.) Thanks in advance! -J

Hi Everybody, I found these crinoids on a large chunk of shale on Sunday when I was out with the New York Paleontological Society. I don't know the formation, but the site was a small private quarry in Madison County, N.Y. and based on other species present I'm guessing it is Middle Devonian Hamilton Group. A number of crinoid stems are present plus tiny calyxes with arms and possibly bases. I believe one (or all) of the crinoids (based on the presence of feather-shaped arms) is Gennaeocrinnus. All of this came from one rock. The rock broke up into pieces. At least three have significant crinoid specimens on them. The largest one is 10-11 inches by 8-9 inches. My questions are how do I consolidate this thin and very fragile piece of shale and how do I expose the specimens better? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Hey everyone, I recently came back from a trip to England. Most of the time was spent in museums, especially London's Natural History Museum. Over there, I met the Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology (Tim Ewin), who showed me around some parts of the Echinoderm Collections. Basically, the goal of this visit was to examine some of the echinoderms from the British Chalk, for some comparative research material for my MKFRP project. Some of the stuff in those collections is absolutely amazing - and the amount of material in there is really extensive. This thread will show some of the chalk echinoderm material that I saw over there. Hope you guys'll like this! 2 very well articulated Tylocidaris clavigera in a single nodule of chalk g on Drawer filled with "tylocidarine" regular echinoids. The pink colouring on some of the specimens is due to the fact that some of them needed to have the fine details rendered sharper (this was before the age of digital photography) Partial Tylocidaris clavigera associated with a disarticulated goniasterid (Asteroidea, Goniasteridae) starfish Very well preserved and nearly complete Nymphaster marginatus goniasterid Neat little example of the goniasterid Metopaster Calyx and partial arm of the free-floating crinoid Marsupites testudinarius (sorry for not very good photo quality ) Articulated columnals of an isocrinid crinoid (possibly Isocrinus); this is specifically relevant to my MKFRP project given the age of that fossil (Early Maastrichtian) To finish things off… It's not very "chalk-y", but it's definitely special - a Palaeocoma milleri ophiuroid from the Early Jurassic of Lyme Regis, collected by Mary Anning

I've wanted one of these Moroccan crinoid blocks for ages, so I couldn't turn this one down when I was able to get it for £10 ($13 US). All I had to go on were some poor quality images and I had no idea how big it was. (it's 10 inches across at the widest point). However, because I've never handled one of these before, or seen one in the flesh, I don't really know what to look for in terms of fakery, compositing or restoring. It does have a really horrible surface, making it look like plastic - I'm hoping this is just some sort of thick, ugly substance that has been applied to consolidate the surface, since it doesn't appear to be a cast. I'd be grateful for any opinions, or suggestions of what to look for. Sorry the photos aren't ideal - I tried it outdoors in natural light, and indoors with flash, but the horrible surface made it difficult to photograph well.

Yesterday I signed over my prized crinoid (my avatar) along with 20 other specimens to the University of Michigan, Museum of Paleontology. With this crinoid I donated 7 other prized crinoids, 2 blastoids, 4 Tully Monsters, 2 brachiopods, 1 Mazon insect wing, 2 corals and a Cooksonia. These will then be loaned to the Museum of Natural History to go on permanent display in the new museum to open in 2019. Hardest part was parting with my avatar crinoid. It is what I consider the finest example of an Arthroacantha from the Arkona Formation at Arkona, Ontario. Not that parting with 4 exquisite Tullys wasn't hard. Hey, I offered and they came and took. I just wanted the museum to open with very nice examples of fossils.

I found this a couple of years ago and have periodically taken it out to examine it as I've found the accumulation of fauna adhering to it's surface as very interesting. For awhile I affectionately referred to it as an accretion (as opposed to a concretion), envisioning a clump of mud rolling around in the wave action of a shoreline picking up bits of dead fauna. But now, with the fairly recent posts that have come up about crustacean burrows, I'm second guessing. On the exterior of this piece are brachiopod shell bits and molds, possible pectinid shell molds, crinoid columnals, and tiny gastropod steinkerns and exterior molds with decoration. The dark clumps appear to be pyrite. There are two depression areas, one on the large end, and a smaller one that is offset of the smaller end. These I speculate to be the exposed chamber, should this be a burrow. Notably within these depressions are oval shaped pellets and an interesting fibrous texture. So, I now defer to your opinions! Thank you for looking!