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Beginners luck: one of the very first ammonites I found in March of this year is apparently quite rare, in fact, I’ve never found one since - Graysonites lozoi. I believe the Grayson Formation, where I found this, typically only has nautiloids, and some nice oysters. It’s not in great shape, and I haven’t even tried to remove any matrix, but it’s still an interesting ammonite that looks a bit different from the typical Mortoniceras ammonites I find. Location is Tarrant County, actually in Burleson where I live.

I found this back around Thanksgiving, the end of November, in the Grayson Formation in Tarrant County Texas. I believe it is a Graysonites ammonite, but I was trying to narrow it down to a species. I only have one reference book for Texas ammonites and it doesn’t mention any Graysonites ammonites in Tarrant County. The book is a bit older so some of the nomenclature may have changed too. In the book there are 4 species compared in a table. There are a few more mentioned briefly, but not well described. Only 2 species in the table are reported in the Grayson formation, lozoi and wooldridgei I think this may be the Graysonites lozoi species unless anyone can direct me otherwise. It is 200 mm in diameter and had a max whorl height of 76 mm with a breadth of 49 mm. The number of ribs per whorl is 16. I was hunting with another person the day I found this. He found a much larger one in embedded under the marl ledge about 30 feet from this one. He tried to extract it and shattered it in the attempt. The horns on that one were about 45 mm long! It was an impressive little beast. Any thoughts? Can anyone direct me to additional references with Graysonites in Texas? I probably need to search @Fruitbat‘s PDF library. Or maybe @doushantuo has a good reference. I have others I will be attempting to ID soon as well. The last shot you can just see suture patterns if you zoom in. Hopefully the quality didn’t suffer too much when I attempted to downsize them to put on here.

I’ve been on TFF for a few months. I’ve been collecting fossils for over 25 years, but I’ve never prepped any of them much at all. Anyway, I have an ammonite I found in Hurst, TX that I am prepping. It isn’t in the pretties condition. It is pretty worn down and covered in oysters, but I think it is still a lovely specimen. I’m working on removing the oysters and any matrix. I am also trying to smooth out the surface putting and roughness from brakes. I think it would look very nice to prep down to the sutures in the center of the whirl, but I am not sure how thick that layer is and how far to go into the layer for the best look. Any thoughts on it? Another question I have is about the break. As you can see there is a break. I have glued it back together, but I’d like to minimize the appearance of the break. So I plan to smooth down the the area of the seam and then fill it with the grindings from the fossil prep. I have saved a bunch of those, but I have no idea what I’d mix them with to make a compound to fill the cracks and minimize the appearance of the break. Can anyone give me tips on how I’d do that and what compound/substrate I’d use to mix the grindings with? Here is how it looked from when I found it. Here is how it currently looks. I still have a long way to go on it. This is a close up of the center of the whirl. You can see sutures just showing through. There is still oyster present. I’m working on removing those and the layer above the sutures still.