First go at prepping a Duck Creek fm ammonite

[hadrosauridae]

OK, I missed the Fossil Friday post by a day. The cold weather lately has kept me indoors and away from fossil exploration, so here is a partial prep of a partial ammonite from the Lake Texhoma Duck creek fm. Prepping something no true separation of "fossil" and matrix is quite challenging, especially considering how well they can, at times, weather out and become separated naturally.

The matrix seems to be getting harder to separate as I move toward smaller sections. I can make out that this does have the inner whorls , so I dont want to blow them out. This has really slowed me down on this prep. It seems like my larger scribe (with a blunter tip) is doing better at removing the matrix than my smaller CP9160 which is a lot more prone to just piercing through. 

 

 

[Ptychodus04]

Those ammonites can be a real nightmare to prep. The blunt tip does tend to work better in my experience as well. I keep a couple blunted styli around when I need to pop the matrix off rather than scribe through it. There’s a bit more percussive force applied to the specimen with a blunt stylus. 

[RJB]

10 hours ago, Ptychodus04 said:

There’s a bit more percussive force applied to the specimen with a blunt stylus. 

There's a word ive not heard before.  Love it.  I also use a blunted tip for smoothing crab concretions but not because of the percussive force. 

 

RB

[fossilhunter21]

Looking very nice! Nice job on the video!