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A couple of weeks ago I went on a trip to the Zandmotor beach in the Netherlands. This beach is mainly known for Pleistocene fossils. I try to go every couple of weeks, but this time I found a couple of really nice fossils - all within the time span of 20-30 minutes. In total I stayed for a couple of hours and found a couple more bone fragments. I would love to share my top 3 with you: The first one is the best fossil I’ve found so far: a piece of upper jaw from a woolly rhino (coelodonta antiquitatis) with the first molar. The second one is a complete radius from an otter (lutra lutra). The final find of the three was a fragment of a radius from either a cave lion (panthera leo spelaea) or a bear (ursus sp.). I still need to compare this one in real life with someone else’s collection. I’m incredibly stoked to have found these beautiful fossils and wanted to share it with you!

So I was recently looking at Canid detention cause of the dire wolf tooth I found this past weekend - and stumbled across pictures of upper Dire Wolf M2s, and thought they looked familiar. A while ago, back in August, I found this tooth that I sent to Hulbert for an ID. He said it was an Otter M1. However, while it looks quite similar to an Otter M1, it also seems to match a Dire Wolf M2, possibly even more closely. So first here’s the tooth - it’s 14.2mm long: The size fits both Enhydritherium terraenovae (Which is the Otter) M1s: And Canis dirus M2s: It looks as though the otter molar has a wider section of tooth where the protocone sits (lingual side) compared to the Dire Wolf M2, which has a longer labial side. My tooth seems to have a longer labial side, but just barely, but I’m also really not 100% sure. Anyone have any ideas, or a way to tell? @Harry Pristis @Shellseeker @digit

Hi all - in the hopes of attempting to reach a wider audience, and anyone who has collected possible sea otter fossils, I'm sharing the first two posts from my blog "The Coastal Paleontologist" in a short series on sea otter paleontology and evolution. The first one is mostly a bit on sea otter biology, and the second is the first one that really deals with the paleontology aspect. The third (and fourth?) posts will deal with what the limited fossil record can tell us about sea otter evolution. The sea otter fossil record is quite poor, and I'm hoping that some of you may have found some fossil specimens and might consider making them available for scientific study. Anyway, here's part 1: https://coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-terrible-fossil-record-of-sea.html And part 2: http://coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-terrible-fossil-record-of-sea.html Part 3: will update as soon as I get it finished! And a teaser - the left mandible of the holotype specimen of Enhydra macrodonta from the Crannell Junction locality right off of Highway 101 near Arcata, California. I spent about 3 years emailing various curators about this fossil, if they had it on loan, and I finally got a response from Dr. William Miller III at Humboldt State University in Arcata that he didn't remember such a specimen existing there. The paleontologist who named it, Dr. Frank Kilmer, who was retired, mailed me a letter indicating that the mandibles had been given back to the private collector (!!!) after the species was published - but nobody at HSU knew their name! One former student did, but would not return my phone calls. I visited HSU in 2008 when I was an undergraduate student and rifled through their teaching collection and found A mandible, but I didn't think it was THE mandible, because of Kilmer's letter, and a misplaced label suggesting it was from a different locality (and therefore a duplicate specimen rather than the original). Dr. Miller indicated I should arrange for the fossils to be transferred to a larger museum, as he was certain that the collection would be thrown in the garbage after he retired! I visited again two years later and set aside all the specimens that should be transferred and secured an agreement from HSU for the material to be transferred to UC Berkeley, which finally happened about five years later. I did not realize that this mandible was in fact THE mandible, or at least half of the holotype (the right mandible is still missing, presumably in that private collection) until I was able to download a much, much higher quality scan of the photographic plates in Kilmer's 1972 paper, and I was able to match barnacle scars between the published image and the fossil. So, we may not have the more complete of the two mandibles, but at least we have one of them, and it is my hope that there is more material in private collections and that more can be discovered in the future.

Big otter with a varied diet? http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-41932937