Backlog fossil prep

[Manticocerasman]

The last few fieldtrips didn’t deliver a lot of fossils, so now I got time to get started at my backlog of fossil preps from the Lompret quarry. I still have well over 100kg of material to sort and to prep from there.

Last weekend while rummaging through a few of those boxes I picked up one that got my interest. A Fragment of a large nodule with a part of a nicely sized Gephuroceratid poking out.

After a good look, there were a couple of other fossil fragments visible in there, sadly the matrix was extremely hard.

I had to use a grinder and hammer and chisel to get through it, the problem was that apart from the few visible specimens I was grinding in to it blind, so It happened that I grinded through a few fossils that weren’t visible on the outside.

But from time to time I was lucky and exposed a few more fossils, including a nice small pyritized Manticoceras.

After that I got the specimens out, I used a grinder to go over the matrix and used colour deepener on the fossils, this gives a nice colour contrast between the fossils and the matrix.

The fossils visible on the finished piece are: a few Gephurocertids like Manticoceras sp., a little Tornoceratid, a Bactrites sp., a fragment of a nautiloid orthocone and a brachiopod Ryocarhynchus tumidus.

The piece is from the late Devonian, Frasnian, Matagne formation near Chimayin Belgium.

 

 

A goniatite poking out  

 

 

Grinding, chiseling and airscribing...

 

 

almost done:

 

All cleaned up

 

picture with scale:

 

 

[Ludwigia]

Very nice piece!

[jpc]

Oooohhhh... that is really nice.

 

[Randyw]

Great job! It looks great