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January 2012 Finds Of The Month


JohnJ

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A fresh new year holds the potential for us to find the best fossils of our lives. Research, exploration, and persistence eventually reward novice and experienced collectors. Best wishes to all this year! :jig:

For the time being, the format of the contests will remain the same.

The objective is to have fun. So carefully read the rules below, and go make some great finds! Entries will be taken through January 31st. Please let us know if you have any questions, and thanks for sharing more of your fossils and research this month.

To view the Winning Fossils from past contests visit the Find Of The Month Winner's Gallery.

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Rules for The Fossil Forum's Vertebrate and Invertebrate/Plant Find of the Month Contests

1. You find a great Vertebrate Fossil or Invertebrate/Plant Fossil! Only fossils found by you.

2. Post your entry in the Find of the Month topic. Use a separate post for each entry.

3. Your Fossil must have been found during the Month of the Contest, or the significant Preparation of your Fossil must have been

completed during the Month of the Contest.

4. You must include the Date of your Discovery or the Date of Preparation Completion.

5. You must include the common or scientific name.

6. You must include the Geologic Age or Geologic Formation where the Fossil was found.

7. Play fair. No bought fossils.

Shortly after the end of the Month, separate Polls will be created for the Vertebrate and Invertebrate/Plant Find of the Month. The maximum entries allowed by the Polling software will be selected for each contest by the staff.

In addition to the fun of a contest, we also want to learn more about the Fossils. So, only entries posted with a CLEAR photo and that meet the other guidelines will be placed into the Poll.

Within a few days, we will know the two winning Finds of the Month! Now, go find your fossil, do your research, and make an entry!

The human mind has the ability to believe anything is true.  -  JJ

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I'll add my best fossil find to date. :)

It might be a common fossil worm, but so far, I have not heard of any others than this one be found in this location. In the location description, it has not much recognition of worms being found, so for the location, it is a little rare in that respect.

Found in Totternhoe, Bedfordshire, on December 28th 2011, but I got round to preparing it on January 1st 2012. I forgot to take pictures before prep, but I can tell you the line of the worm was just about visible.

It is around 70 - 90 million years old, (late Cretaceous).

About 5cm in length including the curl at the end.

(?) Ampullacea (a worm)

I hope it is worthy of fossil of the month. ;)

Best wishes,

Thomas.

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Finally got a fossil worthy enough to try this out.

Date: January 3, 2012

Name: Giant Thresher (Alopias Grandis)

Age: Miocene

Location: Along the Potomac River

Length: 1 9/16" Width: 1 1/8"

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Its been a while since I partook of this fun, but here is my entry find of the month. This ammonite is from the Pierre Shale of Weston County, Wyoming. Found yesterday, 7 Jan 2012; prepped today. I htink this is Jeltzkytes plenus. The ammonite is incomlete, missing much of the living chamber, but the truly exciting thing is the little second ammonite I found inside the whorl. See second and third pix. Notice that you can see all the way into the center whorls of the little guy. I cannot with certainty ID the second ammonite, but a baby J. plenus is quite likely.

Here is the fossil in the field, and the ammonite all prepped:

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And two views of the little guy in the center:

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My father surprised me last weekend with a bug that I had found back in 2010. With the start of the new year, he decided to prep some stuff since he didn't have to go to work on the 2nd. This is one of the items I got back. Unfortunately I don't have any before pictures, but when I found this specimen all that was visible was the top left half of the cephalon. I was thrilled and shocked to find out that this guy was complete!

Name: Thaleops sp.

Size: 40mm

Age: Ordovician (Blackriverian)

Formation: Platteville Formation, Mifflin member

Location: Southwest Wisconsin

Found: Fall of 2010

Prepped: Jan. 2, 2012

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OK......let's give this another shot.

Background....late October I was collecting in a small quarry in upstate New York with a couple of friends. It was cold and began to rain and my friends wanted to move on but I was still working on a large slab of shale and didn't want to leave. The next thing I knew they were lifting the slab into my Jeep. I got the message.

That slab stayed in my garage until this week when I started hacking away looking for trilobites. What I found was a nice cephalopod, positive and negative. I began to clean it and noticed what appeared to be cracks. Under a 10X lens the cracks revealed themselves to be bryozoa. Very tiny bryozoa. Here are the pictures. I hope you enjoy them.

Cephalopod....Spyroceras nuntium.

Bryozoa......Hederella filiformis.

Middle Devonian

Delphi Station Member

Skaneateles Formation

Tom

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AVOCATIONAL PALEONTOLOGIST

STROKE SURVIVOR

CANCER SURVIVOR

CURMUDGEON

"THERE IS A VERY FINE LINE BETWEEN AVOCATIONAL PALEONTOLOGY AND MENTAL ILLNESS"

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My father surprised me last weekend with a bug that I had found back in 2010. With the start of the new year, he decided to prep some stuff since he didn't have to go to work on the 2nd. This is one of the items I got back.

Name: Thaleops cf. mobydicki

Size: 40mm

Age: Ordovician (Blackriverian)

Formation: Platteville Formation, Mifflin member

Location: Southwest Wisconsin

Found: Fall of 2010

Prepped: Jan. 2, 2012

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This Thaleops is previously undescribed from Wisconsin? :geek:

Exciting discovery... Congrats on another superb trilobite Caleb! :fistbump:

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This Thaleops is previously undescribed from Wisconsin? :geek:

Exciting discovery... Congrats on another superb trilobite Caleb! :fistbump:

It is indeed undiscribed from Wisconsin. It is photographed in the paper "PLATTEVILLE AND DECORAH TRILOBITES FROM ILLINOIS AND WISCONSIN" (DeMott, 1963) but labeled just as Thaleops(Illaenus) sp.

EDIT: After looking through the plates in the paper "A systematic revision of Thaleops" (S. Westrop and L. Amati, 2004), T. mobydicki has a tapering axial lobe and a longer pygidium. Because of this, I have decided to just go with Thaleops sp. as the current ID.

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It is indeed undiscribed from Wisconsin. It is photographed in the paper MIDDLE AND LATE ORDOVICIAN LITHOSTRATIGRAPHY AND BIOSTRATIGRAPHY OF THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY but labeled just as Thaleops(Illaenus) sp. Thaleops mobydicki is just the closest ID regarding age and appearance I've come across. The Mifflin mbr. of the Platteville formation is very close in age to the Bromide fm. in which Thaleops mobydicki was originally described.

This might warrant the first bug named in your honor... as a potential holotype specimen that one is just perfect! :judge: :pic:

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I usually do not get to collect fossils in January but due to an unusually warm Winter, i made it out to a black shale site in Northern Illinois. The site is Pennsylvannian aged (approximately 300 mya) and has similar fauna to the Mecca and Logan quarries studied by Dr. R Zangerl in Northern Indiana.

Just as i was about to call it quits for the day, I was fortunate to collect this very rare Iniopterygian or "flying shark".

These bizzare sharks had many unusual features including pectoral fins placed high up on the body like a modern flying fish.

Any complete sharks are a rarity in the fossil record. This bizarre specimen measures approximately six inches in length.

Collected January 5th 2012.

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Finally got a fossil worthy enough to try this out.

Date: January 3, 2012

Name: Giant Thresher (Alopias Grandis)

Age: Miocene

Location: Along the Potomac River

Length: 1 9/16" Width: 1 1/8"

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Definetely worthy! Very nice preservation!

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Hesperhys antiquus (peccary) tooth

Miocene, Kirkwood formation

New Jersey USA

found January 7 2012

I was able to add a peccary tooth to my collection and it's a very nice one. Miocene terrestrial mammal teeth are rare in New Jersey.

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Here is my First (major) find of the new year... A Carcharodon Megalodon seed tooth.

Just cleaned, and fit the pieces together for the first time today, though it was discovered last week (time gets away from me, and I can't remember the exact date).

One Megalodon tooth and two associated pieces of hollow enamel (found in the same scoop and fit along the sides)...

Found in Arcadia, FL.

Age: Miocene?

Probably from the third or fourth row of teeth in the shark's upper jaw, because it has a mostly undeveloped root.

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Enjoy!

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I found this complete 2.5" Dalmanites limulurus with both negative and positive halves on 1/11/2012.

Middle Silurian, Clinton Group, Rochester Shale.

Monroe County, Rochester, New York.

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Many times I've wondered how much there is to know.  
led zeppelin

 

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Hurray for mild days in January, mikeymig! :)

It was a little weird collecting in the sun and 500 weather. Now the site is under a few inches of snow and the wind is blowing at 45mph. :(

Many times I've wondered how much there is to know.  
led zeppelin

 

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I would like to submit this giant hunk of Endoceras Protieforme...it is the widest nautiloid I have found yet! This monster may have been 3-4 feet long when alive! B)

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Georgian Bay Formation, Ordovician (445 mya), found on Jan. 7

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Finally got a fossil worthy enough to try this out.

Date: January 3, 2012

Name: Giant Thresher (Alopias Grandis)

Age: Miocene

Location: Along the Potomac River

Length: 1 9/16" Width: 1 1/8"

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Beautiful tooth, I love it.

Bulldozers and dirt Bulldozers and dirt
behind the trailer, my desert
Them red clay piles are heaven on earth
I get my rocks off, bulldozers and dirt

Patterson Hood; Drive-By Truckers

 

image.png.0c956e87cee523facebb6947cb34e842.png May 2016  MOTM.png.61350469b02f439fd4d5d77c2c69da85.png.a47e14d65deb3f8b242019b3a81d8160.png.b42a25e3438348310ba19ce6852f50c1.png May 2012 IPFOTM5.png.fb4f2a268e315c58c5980ed865b39e1f.png.1721b8912c45105152ac70b0ae8303c3.png.2b6263683ee32421d97e7fa481bd418a.pngAug 2013, May 2016, Apr 2020 VFOTM.png.f1b09c78bf88298b009b0da14ef44cf0.png.af5065d0585e85f4accd8b291bf0cc2e.png.72a83362710033c9bdc8510be7454b66.png.9171036128e7f95de57b6a0f03c491da.png Oct 2022

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Hesperhys antiquus (peccary) tooth

Miocene, Kirkwood formation

New Jersey USA

found January 7 2012

I was able to add a peccary tooth to my collection and it's a very nice one. Miocene mammal teeth are rare in New Jersey.

Did u find this tooth on a beach, near a stream, or in a quarry? I never knew you could find something like that in Jersey. I love peccaries! I found a good one (skull)in the Badlands back in 95 then started collecting other species from diff times and diff places. COOL TOOTH!

Many times I've wondered how much there is to know.  
led zeppelin

 

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My Vertebrate entree for the month is a Chondrichthyes tooth, Janassa, 1.5 cm tall

I was very happy to find this rare tooth complete while out collecting

Upper Mississippian, Upper Chesterian, Upper Bangor Limestone

Morgan Co., Al. found Jan. 16, 2012

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My Invertebrate entree for the month is a Crinoid crown, Linocrinus cariniferous, 4 cm wide

Middle Mississippian, Lower Monteagle Ls, St. Genevieveian

Madison Co., Al, found Jan. 16, 2012

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Did u find this tooth on a beach, near a stream, or in a quarry? I never knew you could find something like that in Jersey. I love peccaries! I found a good one (skull)in the Badlands back in 95 then started collecting other species from diff times and diff places. COOL TOOTH!

Thanks, I found it sifting gravel in a creek. Thery're very hard to find in NJ and it's my first one. I always like finding mammal teeth because they're so unexpected. Wow a skull, that's awesome!

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The weather is not in favor of my finding the rest of my sea monster this month though I remain hopeful that one day I will add to this find.

My submission for Vertebrate of the Month January 2012

Odontocete indet caudal vertebrae

Middle Miocene

Central Virginia, undisclosed creek bed

Found January 2nd and 8th

Ref: http://www.wellesley...ebral%20ost.pdf

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...I'd rather be digging...Life

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