Your Fossil Avatar?

[TyrannosaurusRex]

For those of the members that have fossils as their avatars, what Fossil do you have?

 

I have always thought it was interesting, and there are several on here that have aroused my curiosity.

 

Mine is just the Tyrannosaurus owned by Michael Covel.

[sandgroper]

The fossil pictured in my avatar is me.

[TyrannosaurusRex]

11 minutes ago, sandgroper said:

The fossil pictured in my avatar is me.

No sad face needed haha! It's a great photo.

[sandgroper]

Well, the lovely Dutch backpacker in the photo was very nice and the location on the Ningaloo Reef is great too! There are some great avatars here so it'll be nice to hear what they are!

[marguy]

 Worm (?) burrows, continental permian red sandstone, Brive Basin, France

 

 

[TyrannosaurusRex]

Just now, marguy said:

 Worm (?) burrows, continental permian red sandstone, Brive Basin, France

 

 

Very interesting!

[PFOOLEY]

Prionocyclus hyatti ammonite under ultra violet light. 

[snolly50]

The items in my icon, while not fossils (yet) may be classified as artifacts. The saxophone is dated circa 1932, while the scruffy guy is a 1950's vintage. One of those is remarkably well preserved, while the other is "rode hard and put up wet."

[digit]

While several members have changed and adapted their avatars over the years, mine is set is stone (in more ways that one).

 

When deciding what to use as an avatar I looked around the house for something that would look good in a square aspect ratio. I have a lot more fossils now than I did 4 years ago and might have chosen something different now then back then. This Diplomystus dentatus is one that I found with my wife on my anniversary several years ago when we took a trip from Florida to see Grand Teton N. P. and Yellowstone N.P. and discovered Kemmerer along the route from where we picked up the car in Salt Lake City, UT. When I discovered that this was the place that all those spectacular fish fossil plates I'd been seeing in specialty stores came from (Green River Formation) it rekindled my boyhood passion for fossil hunting. Most of the quarries were closed in mid-October but George Putnam who ran a rock/fossil shop in the basement of an antiques store in town said he'd take us out as long as the weather held. We dug with him for two days and were having great fun and reasonable success for newbies. The next day when we woke up in Jackson, WY to see Grand Teton the landscape was dusted with fresh snow. In email conversations with George we discovered that the Kemmerer area had been buried under the first heavy blanket of winter snow and we had managed the last two fossil hunting days of the season.

 

We didn't expect to find but a few fish plates and we had the entire trunk filled with our finds. We picked up two inexpensive (and very dusty) red roll-along suitcases from the top shelf of a K-Mart that we found in Jackson in which to carry back our finds. During our stay in Yellowstone later in the trip we unloaded all of our fish plates into our hotel room and spread them out over every horizontal surface we could find in the room--beds, floor, desk, bathroom counter. It had been raining the week before we were in Kemmerer and the plates were quite damp (and cold). We turned the heat up in our room and alternated that with turning the A/C on full blast to desiccate the moisture from the room (we steamed up the windows and the neighbors must have wondered what we were doing). After a few days the fish plates were dry and noticeably less heavy. I sorted out the best pieces I could find and re-wrapped those in newspaper and slowly filled as many as I could take into the two red roll-ons. We still had a couple of copier-paper boxes full of our "extras" (we had no time to sort out the fish plates while we were collecting and this was our first chance to grade them and select what we wanted).

 

I didn't want to leave our boxes of "extra" fish fossils behind in the hotel room in Yellowstone so I contacted George to see if he could use them. He used to trim down lower grade fossils and package them with a magnifying glass, dental pick and instructions to make "fossil kits" that he sold to science classes or anybody who wanted to prep Green River fish plates but couldn't make it to Kemmerer. We arranged to head back to Kemmerer with our spares but we couldn't retrace our steps as snow had continued to fall and the south entrance to Yellowstone (being of higher elevation) was completely closed with several feet of snow blocking the road. With map in hand (this was a few years back) we plotted a course from West Yellowstone in Montana through Idaho and along some back roads back to Kemmerer where we dropped off our excess booty before returning the rental car and catching our flight back home. The route through the back country was an unplanned portion of our trip but we had fun navigating our way back to Kemmerer off the major highways on small rural routes. I'll always remember that part of the trip as it is where I shot this image which now hangs on my wall as a print.

 

At the Salt Lake City airport, we had fun going through security with two heavy roll-ons packed with rock. The TSA inspector at the X-ray machine inquired if these were "tile samples" but when we said we'd been in Kemmerer he quickly replied, "Oh, fish fossils". I guess this is not as unusual a scenario as we'd thought. We'd managed to get bumped up to first class for the flight home (much easier to do a decade ago) and put one of the suitcases under the seat in front of us--there was actually that much room. I only put one suitcase in the overhead which had a stated weight limit of 70 pounds (each of these suitcases exceeded 80 pounds ).

 

I prepped several of the fish plates with nothing more than dental picks and a lighted magnifying glass sitting in my garage and using the bed of my pick-up truck as a work surface. Can't work for too long that way and it took me some months working a little at a time to prep several of the plates. I only have two on display in the house (this Diplo is one of them) and I've given most away to friends--one was part of the last auction to benefit the forum ended just recently. After only a decade I've finally decided to buy my first air scribe and try to complete some of the remaining fish plates that have been collecting dust in my garage. The air scribe arrives today.

 

While we were out splitting rock with George in Kemmerer he told me that he had recently been visited by a film crew taping for a new show on the Travel Channel (but George did not remember what it was called). This turned out to be the old "Best Places to Find Cash & Treasures" a slightly cheesy show with the gimmick of trying to apply a value to everything they found in each episode. We put the search term "kemmerer" in our DVR (a precursor to the modern day TiVo) and several months later the show popped up and we started recording other episodes of this show. One of the other shows was on hunting for meg teeth in the Peace River and featured Mark Renz of Fossil Expeditions. We had been to Caspersen Beach in Venice, FL and had only found a few exceedingly worn fossil shark teeth that were barely recognizable and took the opportunity to contact Mark and set up a trip with him on the Peace River. We were not the only ones with that idea--once the episode had aired Mark went from a few customers a couple of times a week to dozens each day. He hired friends of his to help manage the overflow. On a cold April morning in 2007 we met Mark and wearing a wetsuit for the 50 degree air and river temp had a blast sifting for fossils in the Peace River. In addition to the usual variety of shark teeth and other common finds, I found a nice whale vertebra that day and an odd looking rock that I held onto to see if it was anything. Turned out it was a worn whale tympanic bulla. Mark asked me why I had thought to keep that and I said that it looked strangely biological and thought I should keep it to get it verified by him. Mark has been a good friend and I occasionally see him with customers when we're out on the river sifting for fossils on the Peace.

 

So, it was that trip to Kemmerer which restarted my love for fossils and more importantly my passion for being out in the field searching for some long forgotten clue to creatures from the past. For my wife and me it is not the fossils that are the actual goal, they are really just Hitchcock's McGuffins--plot devices that serve as a focus for our collecting expeditions out in the field. We've been to a lot of interesting places, met some great people, and searched for some interesting fossils along the way and there is still a long long list of fossil finds yet to experience.

 

Just goes to show that sometimes there is a lot of words hiding behind a tiny avatar (especially when you ask a story teller).

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[Troodon]

The Tyrant King...  is there any other

[LordTrilobite]

My own logo. A stylised trilobite.

[TyrannosaurusRex]

Already some very interesting answers. 

 

 

 

LordTrilobite I love that you did that! It looks really nice!

Digit that is a very interesting story. I love hearing things like that.

[dirtdauber]

A marine turtle pelvic girdle. It, along with associated bones, is currently being studied and should be proposed as a new species within a year or so.

[TyrannosaurusRex]

8 minutes ago, dirtdauber said:

A marine turtle pelvic girdle. It, along with associated bones, is currently being studied and should be proposed as a new species within a year or so.

Now THAT is one I have wondered about for some time. Very nice to know.

[tmaier]

Mine is and internal cast and likely some echnoid of the genus Schizaster. It is Eocene and comes from the Ocala Limestone formation of Florida.

I like the color, contours, and contrasts of the photo. I found this specimen myself, and prepped it out (not too hard with Ocala limestone), and took the photo myself. The shadows and texture are pretty nice. It is still partially in the matrix, and that forms a base, so it sits nicely on a shelf.

[Ptychodus04]

My avatar is me prepping the type specimen of Pentanogmius fritschi. The coolest fish in the Western Interior Seaway... except for X. audax!

[HamptonsDoc]

4 hours ago, sandgroper said:

The fossil pictured in my avatar is me.

 

 

My avatar is my dog on our favorite beach around the block from my house!  She's not a fossil yet. 

[caldigger]

A rolled trilobite snaked off of Google images, for no other reason than it looked like a smiling face.  No personal attachment, no real story behind it, call me boring if you will. I just liked the picture.

[digit]

When I first saw your roller avatar--before I looked closer--it appeared to me like a turtle face. A bit of the brain's natural tendency toward pareidolia.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[TyrannosaurusRex]

1 hour ago, caldigger said:

A rolled trilobite snaked off of Google images, for no other reason than it looked like a smiling face.  No personal attachment, no real story behind it, call me boring if you will. I just liked the picture.

 

32 minutes ago, digit said:

When I first saw your roller avatar--before I looked closer--it appeared to me like a turtle face. A bit of the brain's natural tendency toward pareidolia.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

It took me several looks at it before I realized it wasn't a Komodo dragon hahah!

[tmaier]

Doh! All this time I thought Caldigger's avatar was a Gila Monster lizard! I thought you were in to herpetology or something.

[jpc]

Mine is a Peratherium skull form the White river Fm.  Skull plus a few neck verts.  It is about 2 inches long.   One of my best small mammal fossils.  

 

(Note... I think Peratherium is an actual European genus, the N American version may actually be called Herpetotherium... I should look into this).  

[Fruitbat]

The oreodont Miniochoerus gracile from the Eocene/Oligocene of NW Nebraska.  The best one I've ever found!  Absolutely no reconstruction!

 

-Joe

[Ludwigia]

Mine is my best preserved Ludwigia haugi ammonite, my avatar namesake. I found it several years ago in my middle Jurassic hunting ground.

[DE&i]

4 hours ago, digit said:

While several members have changed and adapted their avatars over the years, mine is set is stone (in more ways that one).

 

When deciding what to use as an avatar I looked around the house for something that would look good in a square aspect ratio. I have a lot more fossils now than I did 4 years ago and might have chosen something different now then back then. This Diplomystus dentatus is one that I found with my wife on my anniversary several years ago when we took a trip from Florida to see Grand Teton N. P. and Yellowstone N.P. and discovered Kemmerer along the route from where we picked up the car in Salt Lake City, UT. When I discovered that this was the place that all those spectacular fish fossil plates I'd been seeing in specialty stores came from (Green River Formation) it rekindled my boyhood passion for fossil hunting. Most of the quarries were closed in mid-October but George Putnam who ran a rock/fossil shop in the basement of an antiques store in town said he'd take us out as long as the weather held. We dug with him for two days and were having great fun and reasonable success for newbies. The next day when we woke up in Jackson, WY to see Grand Teton the landscape was dusted with fresh snow. In email conversations with George we discovered that the Kemmerer area had been buried under the first heavy blanket of winter snow and we had managed the last two fossil hunting days of the season.

 

We didn't expect to find but a few fish plates and we had the entire trunk filled with our finds. We picked up two inexpensive (and very dusty) red roll-along suitcases from the top shelf of a K-Mart that we found in Jackson in which to carry back our finds. During our stay in Yellowstone later in the trip we unloaded all of our fish plates into our hotel room and spread them out over every horizontal surface we could find in the room--beds, floor, desk, bathroom counter. It had been raining the week before we were in Kemmerer and the plates were quite damp (and cold). We turned the heat up in our room and alternated that with turning the A/C on full blast to desiccate the moisture from the room (we steamed up the windows and the neighbors must have wondered what we were doing). After a few days the fish plates were dry and noticeably less heavy. I sorted out the best pieces I could find and re-wrapped those in newspaper and slowly filled as many as I could take into the two red roll-ons. We still had a couple of copier-paper boxes full of our "extras" (we had no time to sort out the fish plates while we were collecting and this was our first chance to grade them and select what we wanted).

 

I didn't want to leave our boxes of "extra" fish fossils behind in the hotel room in Yellowstone so I contacted George to see if he could use them. He used to trim down lower grade fossils and package them with a magnifying glass, dental pick and instructions to make "fossil kits" that he sold to science classes or anybody who wanted to prep Green River fish plates but couldn't make it to Kemmerer. We arranged to head back to Kemmerer with our spares but we couldn't retrace our steps as snow had continued to fall and the south entrance to Yellowstone (being of higher elevation) was completely closed with several feet of snow blocking the road. With map in hand (this was a few years back) we plotted a course from West Yellowstone in Montana through Idaho and along some back roads back to Kemmerer where we dropped off our excess booty before returning the rental car and catching our flight back home. The route through the back country was an unplanned portion of our trip but we had fun navigating our way back to Kemmerer off the major highways on small rural routes. I'll always remember that part of the trip as it is where I shot this image which now hangs on my wall as a print.

 

At the Salt Lake City airport, we had fun going through security with two heavy roll-ons packed with rock. The TSA inspector at the X-ray machine inquired if these were "tile samples" but when we said we'd been in Kemmerer he quickly replied, "Oh, fish fossils". I guess this is not as unusual a scenario as we'd thought. We'd managed to get bumped up to first class for the flight home (much easier to do a decade ago) and put one of the suitcases under the seat in front of us--there was actually that much room. I only put one suitcase in the overhead which had a stated weight limit of 70 pounds (each of these suitcases exceeded 80 pounds ).

 

I prepped several of the fish plates with nothing more than dental picks and a lighted magnifying glass sitting in my garage and using the bed of my pick-up truck as a work surface. Can't work for too long that way and it took me some months working a little at a time to prep several of the plates. I only have two on display in the house (this Diplo is one of them) and I've given most away to friends--one was part of the last auction to benefit the forum ended just recently. After only a decade I've finally decided to buy my first air scribe and try to complete some of the remaining fish plates that have been collecting dust in my garage. The air scribe arrives today.

 

While we were out splitting rock with George in Kemmerer he told me that he had recently been visited by a film crew taping for a new show on the Travel Channel (but George did not remember what it was called). This turned out to be the old "Best Places to Find Cash & Treasures" a slightly cheesy show with the gimmick of trying to apply a value to everything they found in each episode. We put the search term "kemmerer" in our DVR (a precursor to the modern day TiVo) and several months later the show popped up and we started recording other episodes of this show. One of the other shows was on hunting for meg teeth in the Peace River and featured Mark Renz of Fossil Expeditions. We had been to Caspersen Beach in Venice, FL and had only found a few exceedingly worn fossil shark teeth that were barely recognizable and took the opportunity to contact Mark and set up a trip with him on the Peace River. We were not the only ones with that idea--once the episode had aired Mark went from a few customers a couple of times a week to dozens each day. He hired friends of his to help manage the overflow. On a cold April morning in 2007 we met Mark and wearing a wetsuit for the 50 degree air and river temp had a blast sifting for fossils in the Peace River. In addition to the usual variety of shark teeth and other common finds, I found a nice whale vertebra that day and an odd looking rock that I held onto to see if it was anything. Turned out it was a worn whale tympanic bulla. Mark asked me why I had thought to keep that and I said that it looked strangely biological and thought I should keep it to get it verified by him. Mark has been a good friend and I occasionally see him with customers when we're out on the river sifting for fossils on the Peace.

 

So, it was that trip to Kemmerer which restarted my love for fossils and more importantly my passion for being out in the field searching for some long forgotten clue to creatures from the past. For my wife and me it is not the fossils that are the actual goal, they are really just Hitchcock's McGuffins--plot devices that serve as a focus for our collecting expeditions out in the field. We've been to a lot of interesting places, met some great people, and searched for some interesting fossils along the way and there is still a long long list of fossil finds yet to experience.

 

Just goes to show that sometimes there is a lot of words hiding behind a tiny avatar (especially when you ask a story teller).

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

 

Brilliant read , the phrase " don't judge a book by its cover " springs to mind "