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Summer vacation fossil hunting week. Like each summer Natalie and I spend 1 week of our holiday for a fossil hunting trip. Usually the destination for this is the Isle of Wight, but due to the current covid situations we had to choose another location. So we went for 1 week to the French coast altering between late Cretaceous and Jurassic deposits.. Although there were no big tide or storms we still got our fair share of fossils in the boulders on the beaches and we even had a few spots of gault clay exposed where we found some nice phosphate ammonites and crustaceans. I’ll let you all enjoy the holiday pictures: Natalie found this exqusite little lobster in situ on the beach on the 1st day: ( Hoploparia longimana, Albian ( Gault clay ) ) soon joined by another specimen. Ichthyosaur vert from the Kimmeridgian: more beach: jurassic ripplemarks: Chalky ammonites in the loose boulders: Mantelliceras sp. : lower Cenomanian Cunningtoniceras inerme Mid. Cenomanian And a large one found by a local collector that we got to take back home ( Thx a lot Luc ) ( Lewesiceras peramplum, Turonian ) And a few pieces after cleanup and prepwork: Albian Ammonites from the gault clay: Gault clay crabs: a few of the chalky ammonites: a nice rare heteromorph: Turrilites scheuchzerianus mid. Cenomanian before and after prep:

My son went on a canoe trip a few days ago and even though he took most of the fossils to his house he did drop some stuff off at my house. I wish he was on this forum so he could tell you folks how he wrapped his cheap plastic canoe around a rock in the middle of the river! Ha!!! Quite the story I assure you! Here is some stuff Im helping him out with but that kid sure has one heck of alot of Placenticeras ammo's!!! RB Here is one of the prettiest ive seen. Gunna take some work to save this one and has a super nice keel!!! My son said I could have this one. What a kid huh? My hope was that the rest of this concretion was loaded with more ammo's? This was the only one in the rock. Very purty but not good enough for this guy. He also found some lobster concs which surprized him,, and me too! Here is one Im putting back together that may turn out purty good? I take a toothbrush and water to clean all the pieces up and then its just a matter of gluing the puzzle back together. Not as easy as it sounds. I dont let even a grain of sand get in the way. A grain of sand can cause a lot more trouble than one thinks!!! Here ive glued on a piece to the main chunk and also two smaller pieces back together and then those will be glued on. And WAAALAAA,,,, all back together. Now its just wait for glue cure and it will be ready to go. This will be one of my winter projects. This lobster will be Hoploparia or Paleonepherops?

I did a tad bit of major clean up on my prep bench. Trying to get ready to start prepping some fishy's. Its not done but did find some things that have been buried for awhile. Some of these are now in the fossil room. Still have over halfway to go and wondering what I will be finding. Nice to be able to see some of my bench though. RB

I bought this lobster concretion from a guy right here in Helena at the rock and jem show. Took me about 3 years to get this finished cause of the problems I ran into. I would get frustrated and put it aside for some months and then go on the attack again, run into another problem and toss aside. Anyways, after my son picked it up not too long ago and seeing how he thought it was super cool, It renewed my interest and I finished it up. This is Hoploparia from the Bear Paw Formation. RB

The Palaeocast podcast released a very interesting episode on Decapods with Dr Carrie Schweitzer of Kent State University. http://www.palaeocast.com/decapods/

Its been a long time coming, but my biggest display cabinet is finally coming along. Ive got more crabs and lobsters, but no clue as to where they are at right now. I moved about 11 years ago and boxed everything up. In a box or 3 somewhere? I can also see now that ive got a 'display stand' problem. I need some kind of stands for the bigger crabs to be sitting 3 or 4 inches higher than they sit right now. But still, its lookin purty good. and ive also got quite a bit of room left for more, that's a good thing. RB

A friend of mine and myself took 4 hours to clean up and organize my fossil garage. What a freekin job! But its amazing to me all I forget. I found 2 big milk crates of crab concretions, and lots and lots of unprepped ammonite material and I do mean lots, probably 10 boxesl! Wow!!! Im getting very forgetful nowadays. Ran into about a dozen or so lobsters that still need to be prepped out! Lots of fish slabs! Lots of odds and ends too and some very special things that need to get into my collection display cabinets. I don't really want to push the 'envy' botton, but being in the clean up mode, when he asked me "what about this" I simply would say, "take it" or "its yours". He left for home with lots of fossils to say the least. But what for me that really got my attention was a small box with a lobster conc in it. Its a lobster Ive seen before, but only pieces and this one appears to be somewhat complete even though a bit crushed. Very cool to me being a lobster colletor. Here is a pic of the box. Now ive got tons more prep work to do.

While at the Quartzite show last week I ran into a guy who had a box of lobster concretions. At first I was super excited, then realized all the super bad luck ive had with these things in the very near past. We kept a talking and he realized that I wasn't that interested. I also realized he didn't want them. So,,, we made a deal. The deal is that I prep out the best ones, I get first pick and he ends up with whatever is next in line. I told him to give me at least a year and he was happy with that. Looks like I just may get me a good fossil lobster? I went through his box of 11 concretions and they began to drop like fly's! I told this guy that would happen. These 3 that look to have good possibilities all have issues, but just for the chance to get a good lobster is truly a good deal for me. RB

Prehistoric Lobsters Made Homes of Ancient Ammonoid Shells by Brian Switek, Wired.com, March 12, 2012 http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/prehistoric-lobsters-made-homes-of-ancient-ammonoid-shells/ This fossil shows lobsters knew how to cuddle msnbc.com ‎http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46721831/ns/technology_and_science-science/ The paper is: Klompmaker, A., and R. Fraaije, 2012, Animal Behavior Frozen in Time: Gregarious Behavior of Early Jurassic Lobsters within an Ammonoid Body Chamber. PLoS ONE. vol. 7, no. 3. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0031893 http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0031893 best wishes, Paul H.