PaleoNoel's Summer of Fun: Week 3

[PaleoNoel]

Given the success I had in the White River fm. the week before, my third and final outing of the summer was just icing on the cake to an already phenomenal fossil hunting session. But what I would come to find is that this figurative cake would be getting a massive dose of that sugary goodness, and man it felt sweet. 

This time around I would be joined by my best friend Michael (@Mickeyb06)who would be taking on his first ever fossil hunting adventure in Wyoming's Lance fm. While it wasn't my intention for this to be his first experience in the field, we made the most of it and it was great to have him there (we had wanted to take a preliminary trip down to Jersey to get some hunting under his belt before graduating to dinosaurs & arid badlands, but work & life got in the way).

I've had great success on this ranch before, so I was hoping for the best & that the fossil gods would smile upon me once again.

Day 1 began at a hillside microsite which I had visited in years past. 

Ceratopsid/hadrosaur spit tooth

A view of the site

The view from the site of the gorgeous rolling plains.

Michael & I moved down the slope away from the main layer to an anthill I wanted to check out. Among other small fossils. my best find was a Richardoestesia tooth.

Not far away I found this strange bone which someone thought could have been a turtle vertebra, but thanks to some guidance on the ID section of the forum, I've been able to determine is likely a crocodilian metacarpal/tarsal.

 

Ceratopsid spitter.

Two crocodilian teeth.

 

 

A small piece of ceratopsid frill & a worked piece of stone.

 

 

 

Edited July 13, 2021 by PaleoNoel

[PaleoNoel]

After leaving the general vicinity of the hillside microsite, the group took a break for lunch and moved on to the next site on the agenda. I'm not going to dwell too much on the details of the site, but they consisted of some small exposures surrounding by mostly grass. The spot proved to be productive & one of the kids hunting near me even found a partial pachycephalosaur claw. 

Champsosaur vertebra

My biggest croc tooth I've found in the American west thus far. 

Next came my find of the afternoon, a Nanotyrannus or Dakotaraptor tooth.

Crocodilian tooth

A nice gastropod to end the day.

[Ludwigia]

And nice bandaids too

[jpc]

Fun stuff.  Did you post the wrong photo up top there?  The first photo you have labeled as a ceratopsian/hadro spit tooth.  I see some sort of vertebra.  

[PaleoNoel]

4 minutes ago, jpc said:

Fun stuff.  Did you post the wrong photo up top there?  The first photo you have labeled as a ceratopsian/hadro spit tooth.  I see some sort of vertebra.  

Nope it's a view of the cross section of the tooth with a bone fragment next to it.

[jpc]

4 minutes ago, PaleoNoel said:

Nope it's a view of the cross section of the tooth with a bone fragment next to it.

so the tooth is the piece on the right?  

[PaleoNoel]

18 minutes ago, jpc said:

so the tooth is the piece on the right?  

On the left, the sort of galaga ship shaped piece. 

[jpc]

1 hour ago, PaleoNoel said:

On the left, the sort of galaga ship shaped piece. 

OK... I see it now, we are looking down onto the chewing surface.  I saw that as bone surface, not tooth surface.  Just goes to show how photos can be interpreted differently.  But now that I see it , it is obvious. 

[PaleoNoel]

Day 2 began on a microsite deposit I was quite familiar with. On my first ever visit to this ranch my dad found a partial Anzu claw and I found a section of Ceratopsid lower beak among some other cool finds. The following summer I found some nice bits of amber and a partial Tyrannosaurus tooth in several pieces (one of which I actually had collected that first year and eventually connected with the others!). I had high hopes but tempered expectations this time around given that there would be more people on the site and it had been visited for many years at this point. 

A view of a few exposures at the site.

Turtle shell pieces (Trionychidae & Compsemys).

Champsosaur vert.

Some interesting ripple marks in the harder, non fossiliferous capstone.

Some mud folds preserved in the same type of rock I found a few feet away.

 

 

[Randyw]

Once again thanks again for a great report! There’s some really nice finds there!

[PaleoNoel]

In the afternoon the group set off to explore another expansive section of the ranch. Splitting off from the others, Michael and I decided to check out a long stretch of drainage basin which produced some cool finds for us. First of which was this section of frill.

 

Next, I found what is currently the largest gar vertebra in my collection. Crazy to think these things are still kicking it in the swamps of North America today, but I guess it makes sense when you're a toothy, armored survival machine which can breath air in oxygen poor conditions. 

A piece of ceratopsid crown.

Melvius? Bowfin tooth. May be champsosaur but I'm not sure as I've never actually seen good photos of definitive champ teeth. I would assume they would be more conical than the flatter bowfin teeth I'm familiar with, and I have a few potential candidates from both Lance & Hell Creek.

My next find was this odd bone whose cross section I noticed among some other fragments. It turned out to be a large chunk of... something, probably not identifiable.

Nearby was this awesome chunk of frill.

A view of the general area we were hunting.

The carcass of a hognose snake we found on the road. I know they play dead but this one was definitively deceased as I'm pretty sure it was run over by one of our cars unfortunately.

Edited July 16, 2021 by PaleoNoel

[Pixpaleosky]

Thank you for these great trip reports 

 

[PaleoNoel]

Day 3 was definitely one of my favorite days I've ever had in the Lance formation and you'll see why shortly. Our morning began at a sandy series of exposures which had been carved out of the rolling plains by wind & water into a large gully.

The windswept prairie.

A view of the site and my fellow hunters.

A cool hoodoo or toadstool formed by the softer sand being weathered away while carrying a piece of harder capstone on top.

A hadrosaur spit tooth.

My find of the morning: a fragment of Tyrannosaurus tooth!

Nice little croc tooth.

After a few more minutes at the first spot, Michael and I set off to try and find a nearby site I had success at back in 2018, but wasn't visited in 2019. Along the way we ran into a coyote who bolted in the other direction, along with another horned lizard.

Checking out an anthill a few meters away from the site itself proved eventful as Michael found a cool little lizard jaw section, not something you find everyday out here.

Within the first few minutes at the site, I was rewarded for returning when I found this gorgeous ceratopsid crown with much of the root preserved.

On our hands & knees picking through the loose rocks, I noticed a familiar shape and quickly told Michael to freeze.

A juvenile Tyrannosaurus tooth! I was elated to have found it, further confirmation that this site was worth revisiting, with evidently a lot left to offer. 

One of the biggest Brachychampsa teeth I've ever found.

A nice little Edmontosaurus crown.

Crocodilian osteoderm.

I didn't think this day could get much better, but it did. 

While I didn't initially recognize it while it was on the ground, thinking maybe it was a spit tooth, I soon realized that I had a nodosaur tooth on my hands! Given the formation it most likely belongs to Denversaurus. Definitely one of my favorite finds of the week, it was my first ever ankylosaurian tooth I had ever found in the field, although not the first in my collection as I found one in my Aguja fm. matrix one month prior.

Another croc osteoderm.

And my final find of the day- a piece which is either a partial ankylosaurian osteoderm or a fragment of ceratopsid skull. 

Going back through my photos I found these two shots of some exposures, although they aren't of the site I was hunting. I assume it was a spot we saw on our way back to the cars.

22 hours ago, Randyw said:

Once again thanks again for a great report! There’s some really nice finds there!

 

16 minutes ago, Pixpaleosky said:

Thank you for these great trip reports 

 

Glad you're enjoying them! I appreciate the positive feedback.

[PaleoNoel]

Day 4 began with the gang being given parameters and being let loose on another large section of ranch. Me, Michael and several others eventually ended up at a familiar micro site, one I like to call by several names; the sandbox, the whale rocks and the micro-micro site. All of those titles are rather self explanatory once you see the pics and the fossils we found. Two years before I had visited this site and picked some nice little fossils off of an anthill which consisted of some small croc teeth, fish verts, a Richardoestesia tooth and a potential Thescelosaurus premaxillary tooth. Given that prior success, I headed straight towards that same anthill, hoping my tiny, biting insect buddies had collected some more just for us. This time, I had a better plan in place than just squatting down, picking fossils off the surface and having to move every few minutes to avoid getting covered in ant bites. Instead I used the pill bottles I use to carry my smaller finds to scoop dirt off the mound. That sediment would be brought over to the hard capstone which I would use as a makeshift work bench, similar to my method from week 1 where I was splitting conglomerate. 

My first couple finds came in the form of these little fish verts.

Worn croc tooth.

A view of the makeshift work bench and the site.

Michael recreating my profile picture.

Me

A spit tooth embedded in the sandstone.

A small jaw, not sure if it's salamander, lizard or fish but I'm thinking salamander premaxilla? I can post it on an ID soon.

Nice little croc tooth.

Another small jaw section. 

My best find of the day: What was at that point the smallest theropod tooth in my collection, potentially Acheroraptor but not super well preserved so it's hard to be certain. Close examinations shows what appear to be the distinct ridges.

A tiny Myledaphus (guitarfish) tooth.

A Richardoestesia tooth with a broken tip.

Some fish crushing plates

And of course the day wouldn't be complete without a horned lizard.

 

Edited July 17, 2021 by PaleoNoel

[PaleoNoel]

To end the day, Michael and I visited a spot that I was excited for all week, a conglomerate site called Benny Hill. This was the spot I had visited on my first ever trip to this ranch where me, my father and Mike Payne (PaleoProspectors Guide) were all making extraordinary finds. Some of my highlights from that 2017 adventure included a hybodont spine, thescelosaur vert, a couple pieces of rex tooth, a complete ceratopsid crown, the back of a Didelphodon jaw and a Pectinodon tooth among others. Mike ended up having one of his best days of hunting too, finding a 4 inch rex tooth, a beautiful Nano tooth and a Didelphodon jaw complete with teeth. Needless to say I came in with high hopes, but I couldn't shake the lingering suspicion that the site would be near depleted after years of PaleoProspectors hunting it. That fear was confirmed, as after a couple hours we came up with nothing really extraordinary. That's just the way she goes sometimes. 

A view of the site. 

Melvius tooth.

Croc scute.

Myledaphus tooth.

A piece of theropod tooth enamel, part of a recurring theme of me finding a number of enamel shards which were all frustratingly unassociated. 

Find of the afternoon, this big ole gal. Someone thought she might be pregnant due to her girth. We tried giving her some water before letting her go but she mostly just sat there, slightly dampened looking at us. 

This would be our last day in the Lance fm.

Edited July 17, 2021 by PaleoNoel

[PaleoNoel]

It's only fitting that I finish writing my report from last summer's trip on the cusp of the next.

Our last day would be spent on the same White River ranch I spent the previous week on. Since I had already spent a great deal of time here I didn't collect nearly as much and gave a bunch of my finds to Michael who was still developing his eye for fossils, something that can be difficult to acquire in this formation for beginners. From where we entered we managed to work our way into the area surrounding the cattle reservoir. 

One mistake I made this day was trying to cross that reservoir, thinking it was all dry. Instead I managed to get mired in the mud, and following my escape, would have to deal with mud covered boots and socks for the duration of the day. Michael has a great video of that predicament which he could post here at some point.

Small artiodactyl maxilla piece

Find of the Morning: A piece of Hesperocyon maxilla, my first example of this section of the jaw.

A small artiodactyl jaw missing all of its teeth except for the canine.

A tooth whose identity I wasn't sure about, but would be revealed later in the day. 

A beautiful piece of agatized wood. Michael found another great piece which was much sharper. I'm told these were brought to the area by humans rather than being naturally occurring, which I'm inclined to believe.

After taking a break by the cars to have our lunch and cool off, we headed into the sandstone gullies nearby. This area was made up of strongly cemented sandstone, with relatively large grains, my assumption would be that this was a river or stream channel. As we moved through the wash system, we began finding a few pieces of tortoise shell and bone here and there, most of the time eroding from the walls, allowing me to recognize their potential for producing something interesting at any elevation. 

As I turned a corner and scanned the area I saw a patch of dark stand out from the light and after a few steps closer I was able to recognize it as a rhino tooth.

Interested, I carefully dug around to see how much more was buried. 

One tooth became several. I started getting real excited!

That tooth became a large jaw section.

Complete with a canine/tusk!

A picture of me digging out one of my favorite fossils from the trip. An exclamation point to cap off what was already a long and successful adventure. 

Thanks for coming along with me through these three weeks of fun. I hope you enjoyed and I appreciate everyone's patience with this project's conclusion. Stay tuned, because the next journey begins tomorrow!

-Noel

[Fossilis Willis]

Thanks for the excellent report(s). Looks like you made some good finds and great memories. Good luck on this year's trip, I can't wait to see what you come away with this go round. Hopefully we don't have to wait until next summer to see the report from this year.

[Praefectus]

Great finds and excellent trip report!