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Mind blown. Recent posts have been about opalised dino bones, and new beetles in amber. This fossil is an insect in opal! https://entomologytoday.org/2019/01/18/fossilized-insect-discovered-amber-opal/

Is this real as if it is I’m considering buying it thanks

http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2018-12-20-newborn-insects-trapped-amber-show-first-fossil-evidence-how-crack-egg#

http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201812050047.html

I need help in identifying this. Is it a mushroom in Cretaceous burmese amber? Cenomanian burmite from machine state?

https://animals.howstuffworks.com/insects/new-species-parasitoid-wasps-found-inside-rare-fossilized-flies.htm#mkcpgn=rssnws1

this being: Whirling in the late Permian: ancestral Gyrinidae show early radiation of beetles before Permian-Triassic mass extinction Evgeny V. Yan,1,2 Rolf G. Beutel,1 and John F. Lawrence3 BMC Evol Biol. 2018; 18: 33. Published online 2018 Mar 16. doi: 10.1186/s12862-018-1139-8 1,63 MB yanbeutelcoleopterentomollagersts12869-8.pdf

My dad loves fossilized amber, As a teen he was promised a whole piece of amber with a mosquito in it but unfortunately his now homeless cousin stole it and it disappeared forever. He keeps wanting to go hunt for amber but I don’t know any places in Tennessee to go find any. It would make his year to go find a piece so if anyone knows any good locations it would be much appreciated.

It seems that amber fossils have decided that they will be making headlines all this 2018 long http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC1802/S00017/otago-researchers-uncover-new-zealands-first-fossils.htm

Hello Everyone! I am looking to trade for insect fossils (Insects in amber is fine as well) I currently have for trade Bryozoa, Brachiopods, gastropods and echinoids collected from fossil sites in Victoria and New South Wales (International shipping is fine) Thanks Daniel

Spent a few hours tonight mucking around trying to get some nice macro shots of some insects in Baltic amber. Here are the results. Field of view is approximately 7mm, but some of these have been cropped considerably.

This is my first post here. I'm a writer and photographer. Because of circumstances I have been forced this winter to photograph mostly at home, so I started doing some macro photography. Then I found interesting leftovers from the spiders in the basement, and long story short; I started taking pictures of insect inclusions in Baltic Amber. The difficulty of the subject matter intrigued me greatly. I have started to read "History of Insects" by A. Rasnitsyn, D. Quicke (Kluwer, 2002), to understand amber and inclusion process, and "Insects of Britain and Western Europe" by M. Chinery (A and C Black, 2007). I'm trying to be able to identify species and families. I have learned that one of my fossils is a Diptera Nematocera, which means two-winged midge, and thats good enough for my project. Because I plan to get a wider collection, and maybe an exhibition of some sort. So I'm asking for some help with this, and if it's ok to post regularly when in doubt. If someone here could not only tell species and family, but also what the identifying markers are. I'm a fast learner, and will not bother you if I have nothing to show, or can figure it out myself. I try to study, but need som assistance to get started. Fossile insects are not as easy as spotting a bee or wasp or fly. So here are my first images. I have tried to name one or two, but like I said, I no next to nothing of my subject matter. (I have education in anatomy, and a rudimentary understanding of insect parts, but need pointers to put the puzzle together). The size of the inclusions are 2-4mm in body length. All are probably from the Eocene period. Thanks! I am puzzeled by the head of this one. I just call it a Diptera for now. Someone on a forum told me this was a Chironomidae, but why? The bug on the bottom looks like a Weevil. I think this is a Midge hunting an ant. If it is a Nematocera. But it looks like it has hair on the body. Is this a wasp or a fly? I have no idea. A fellow photographer called her a "Ikea bug" Some assembly required:) The seller of this one called her a Diptera Nematocera, or a mosquito of some sort.

Different insects from China for trade.(Daohugou,Inner Mongolia, age: middle jurassic)

My grandfather was a medical doctor and a well known entomologist. He was specialized on geometrid moths and described several hundred new species. He even has his own short Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Bastelberger . But I don't know the first thing about insects. That's a bit embarrassing - if he knew that, he would turn over in his grave. So I could need a helping hand. I got several insects from the Middle to Late Jurassic of Daohugou / Inner Mongolia, but I have no clue what they are. Any help to nail down the order or family is greatly appreciated! Thanks Thomas Insect 1: 3cm Insect 2: 2cm

So I've been trying to do some research on the fossil flora/fauna of the Parachute Creek member of the Green River formation and so far I can only find the following reference mentioned as representing any kind of significant effort to catalogue the fossils: "The Eocene Green River flora of northwestern Colorado and northeastern Utah, HD MacGinitie - 1969 - University of California Press". The problem is, it is out of print and not even listed on the U of C Press site. I found a copy available from a book seller but I'm not sure if it's worth the money to buy it sight unseen. I already have plenty of other books like that already on my shelves. There is a database of sorts that the Denver Museum of Nature and Science has online, but I'll be darned if I can figure out how to work it. Any other suggestions?

As I mentioned in my last post, the Cincinnati Dry Dredgers now have a members blog to record our fossil hunting trips. Last time, I blogged about the fossils in the Ordovician tri-state area (Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana), and this time I start the first of a two-part series about the Triassic fossils of the Solite Quarry. Read about our favorite Triassic Lagerstätte here.

Found this guy last night splitting some shale I had laying around. Found on a piece about the size of a quarter!

Fossils found in Florissant...

Found some more cool insects and one spider this weekend.

Looks like a spider missing a couple legs?

Went to the Florissant fossil quarry, and found some nice fossils. Wondering if I could possibly get them ID'ed, since I'm a novice. Thanks.

Anyone ever collect along road cuts in Connenticut? It seems like most of the sedimentary rocks of the right age run through interstate highways. If you have collected where was it and what did you find? (pictures would be great, site or fossil)

I and other members will be heading to Fossil Rock campground to hunt pit 2 on Sunday October 19th 2014. Hopefully the weather will corporate and we can get our buckets filled! Come and join us. It doesn't matter if you've never done it before, i will be happy to teach you what to look for and how to be successful in your 300mya scavenger hunt. We will meet at the Shell gas station in Coal City @ 8-8:30am. It's just west of rt.55 on 113. Hopefully this link will help http://goo.gl/maps/z6m7q Supplies you need and may want. -shovel, pickaxe, rockhammer (basically a good and sturdy digging device). We will be digging through hard shale. -a pair of gloves to keep from collecting blisters -a pair of extra clothes and boots/shoes definitely helps on the ride home. -a bucket, backpack, rock bag (anything that will handle about 5lbs-50lbs worth of rocks) -water is a must, water, water, water -snacks and food is up to you -hiking boots, old pair of shoes, etc. They will get dirty. -i would say bug spray, but being so late in the year hopefully they won't be too crazy. -also it's $5 a person to dig at the campground. This pit is great for very well preserved plants, wood, insects and horseshoe crabs. I have found some awesomely preserved stuff there. These are some of the hardest nodules you will collect anywhere in the Mazon Creek area, and sometimes they take over 30+ freeze/thaw cycles to pop. As i stated above, we WILL be digging, so eat your Wheaties. You can hike around and try and surface collect, but since the spoil piles aren't that tall it may be a waste of time. Here's a live weather link to check the weather for that day. http://m.accuweather.com/en/us/coal-city-il/60416/weather-forecast/332818 Hope to see you there!

Dear all, It was difficult, very difficult to wait with posting, since I am very, very excited about this fossil find. However, I also wanted the Dutch magazine version to come out first. Well, it finally did this Tuesday, so here is some info in English, along with a couple of the figures. During a visit to the Piesberg near Osnabrück (Germany) in 2010, I found a stem fragment of Calamites decorated with strange, elongate-oval structures [Fig. 1]. While those features were unusual and quite remarkable, it proved difficult to find information about them and the fossil consequently went into my collection as unidentified. Last January, however, I stumbled upon a research paper that could shed light on the matter. The elongate-oval structures turn out to be one of the oldest-known examples of endophytic oviposition, i.e. egg-laying inside plant tissue, by insects. Fig. 1. The fossil specimen is atypical in several respects [Fig. 2]. The stem fragment doesn’t show the longitudinal ribs one usually sees on the internodes of Calamites. This is because we are looking at a preservation of the epidermis (outer layer of the stem), not at a cast of the central pith, which are more commonly found. Fossils of the epidermis (sometimes referred to as Calamophyllites) typically have internodes with a smooth surface (though it may be lightly striated or wrinkled), leaving few diagnostic features. Nonetheless, due to the presence of a characteristic nodal line with large, circular branch-scars [Fig. 2, shown on schematic in green], the fossil fragment can be identified as Calamites (subgenus Calamitina) with reasonable confidence. Below the nodal line with branch-scars, about eight elongate-oval structures can be observed [Fig. 1]. They are all orientated roughly parallel to the axis of the calamite stem and vary in length from 6 to 16 mm. A foreign nature with respect to the plant tissue is suggested by the gümbelite film in which the epidermis is preserved (gümbelite is a hydromuscovite and responsible for the well-known silver-grey colour of the fossils from the Piesberg). Note how this thin film of mineralization does not extend across several of the elongate-oval structures, which may indicate that the plant tissue there is either missing or damaged. Their exact origin, however, remained a mystery to me. Until recently. Fig. 2. While looking for information on some Carboniferous localities in France, I happened upon the research article ‘Earliest Evidence of Insect Endophytic Oviposition’ by Olivier Béthoux et al. (2004). The paper describes insect egg-laying structures, called oviposition-scars, found on two stem fragments of Calamites cistii from the Upper Carboniferous (Stephanian B/C) of Graissessac, Southern France. These scars are elongate-oval structures, orientated parallel to the axis of the stem, occurring on a preservation of calamite epidermis [see their Figures 1 and 2]. Careful preparation of three of these scars yielded small spherical cavities, which the researchers interpreted as imprints of the eggs themselves [see their Figure 2b]. The oviposition-scars from Graissessac vary in length from 5 to 38 mm and are surrounded by a thin film of organic material [see their Figure 2c]. Given the strong resemblance with the Piesberg-material, it didn’t take long to make the link with the mystery markings I found years earlier. Now, after confirmation by email from Olivier Béthoux and in person from Han van Konijnenburg-van Cittert, I can with reasonable certainty say that some sort of Carboniferous insect has laid its eggs in the calamite stem I found in the Piesberg quarry. This type of trace fossils is quite rare, so I am very happy I brought this one home. As a nice bonus this specimen comes from the Westphalian D, and is thus somewhat older (about 4 million years) than the published material from Graissessac (Stephanian BC), which is still cited as the oldest occurrence in recent literature. So you can really say this specimen from the Piesberg is one of the oldest examples around! Hope this was as fun and informative as this fossil has been for me, Tim