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So I've been collecting fossils for a few years now, i have a bunch of ammonites, sea urchins, mollusks and plants but I have no idea where can i learn what exact species they are. I'm wandering if there is any books or sites to which you can point me so I can gather some knowledge .

I know there is an ID section in this site but I want to be able to tell what species I have found, myself.

By the way I'm from Europe.

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There are > 100.000 fossil invertebrate species described in the literature. Its a near invincible task, to comprehend them all.

 

Therefore, the most important piece of primary information is formation. From which rock formation does a fossil come from? This restricts the amount of species usually to a few hundred, often only to a few dozen.

 

For many, many formations, papers or even monographs are published, describing the fossil content or at least some fossil groups in them, eg. brachiopods, trilobits, etc.

Try googling the name of the formations your fossils are coming from. For better results, you may include the word "fossil" and you could also use google scholar:

https://scholar.google.at/

 

Good luck, and please share your results with us! Thank you!
Franz Bernhard

 

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+1. Unlike usual biology the formation info is more important than appearance. But there are other problems: 1. Fossils from different layers are often mixed up in one place 2.You do not always know what to look for (as with ammonites people tend to take shell fragments for vertebrae, aptychi for clams, etc). So you have to obtain a certain level of biology, paleontology and fossil appearance knowledge in general. I would recommend:

1. Reading a basic paleontology manual with lots of pictures

2. Geting familiar with your location stratigraphic info (google, preferably with schemes of layers that come to surface and their age/position/how they look). If its on a river bank, there will be several layers and formations in one place.

3. Learning what types of fossils are associated with the formation, especially the most common ones, look up their pictures on the web

4. When you are more or less in the know, search for a pictured local species guide and compare the descriptions to your finds

Overall its not an easy task and the undestanding will only come with time. Ufortunately even well-known scientists happen to make identification mistakes and cant clearly explain how they came to one or another conclusion.

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All of the above advice is indespensable. It is also helpful to get to know people who have some knowledge, like paleontologists and geologists at the nearest natural science museum or other experienced fossil collectors. Perhaps there is a society or club in your country and neighborhood which you could join.

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Greetings from the Lake of Constance. Roger

http://www.steinkern.de/

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Read books; many books. Once you have read 25 books you will be able to identify two or three species and maybe 50 genera. If you collect a specific location you will be able to identify the species found there quickly if you read the literature written about the formations present at that site. 

 

Rinse, repeat x 50 and you will become an informed amateur. I'm 68 years old and still guessing more than half the time.

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Mark.

 

Fossil hunting is easy -- they don't run away when you shoot at them!

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