Heliobatis Prep?

[zeromangoCO]

Hi everyone, last month I went on a trip to American Fossil Quarry. My sister and I had a great time, and we were lucky enough to find this juvenile partial Heliobatis radians. I'm really happy with this find, but since I've never found a stingray before, I have no clue how to prep it. Can the pos/neg plates be glued together and then prepared? Or is this a bad idea? There's also a crack running horizontally through the plates, but I know how to glue that back together. Anyway, I'm mainly wondering how to prepare it due to the delicate spines, and I really don't want to mess this specimen up. I've prepared other green river fish, but I've never worked on a ray, so I'd like to be careful. If you guys have any advice, I'd really appreciate it. Thank you and have a good day!

[Top Trilo]

Nice find I love the GRF stingrays, not sure how much prep you can do on the split fish layer, @Ptychodus04 or @RJB would be more helpful

[jpc]

This is about as good as it gets.  This is a no-prep stingray.   Leave it as is.  

[RJB]

What jpc said.

 

RB

[Ptychodus04]

I respectfully disagree with @jpc and @RJB in part. The part that I disagree on is that there’s no prep to do on this. Under a microscope with the right tools, a very skilled preparator can remove the bits of matrix partially covering the ray.

That being said, since you’re here asking for tips, I wholeheartedly agree with the two adept preparators above who said “don’t prep it”.

 

 

 

[jpc]

52 minutes ago, Ptychodus04 said:

I respectfully disagree with @jpc and @RJB in part. The part that I disagree on is that there’s no prep to do on this. Under a microscope with the right tools, a very skilled preparator can remove the bits of matrix partially covering the ray.

That being said, since you’re here asking for tips, I wholeheartedly agree with the two adept preparators above who said “don’t prep it”.

 

 

 

Yes indeed, but this is not a "glue the two pieces together and start from one side" project.  

[PrehistoricWonders]

4 hours ago, jpc said:

Yes indeed, but this is not a "glue the two pieces together and start from one side" project.  

100% agree. 
 

If you’re thinking of prepping it yourself, I wouldn’t recommend it. The risk of damage out ways the reward of a successful prep (which would be incredibly difficult and time consuming) 

if you’re thinking of having it professionally prepped, that’s up too you, but I don’t know if it would be worth it. Good luck with whatever you end up doing!

 

on another note, here’s one we got from American fossil quarry this month! It’s being professionally prepped right now and then I’ll most likely enter it in the fossil of the month category 

[Ptychodus04]

On 7/4/2021 at 10:59 AM, jpc said:

Yes indeed, but this is not a "glue the two pieces together and start from one side" project.  

Most definitely. I’ve done that on fish before with great success but wouldn’t do it on a ray.

[PrehistoricWonders]

4 hours ago, Ptychodus04 said:

Most definitely. I’ve done that on fish before with great success but wouldn’t do it on a ray.

Mind if I pm you about that? I’ve got a Mio that I plan on doing it with, but could use some help on learning how too do it. 

[Ptychodus04]

1 hour ago, Familyroadtrip said:

Mind if I pm you about that? I’ve got a Mio that I plan on doing it with, but could use some help on learning how too do it. 

PM away. It’s an easy process, you just have to be brave enough.