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Hello! I had a nice afternoon in northwest Dallas County, Texas, finding some beautiful pyrite and even a couple of fossilized fish skeletons (my extraction abilities were lacking). This bone came out of the clay at water level in the creek I was exploring. Right where I was finding fish skeletons, but this bone seems to belong to a far larger creature than the small and fragile fish skeletons I was finding embedded in the shale. Thanks in advance for your assistance!

One quick way to tell gold from pyrite is to put this thing in sunshine. The gold/pyrite will shine nicely. Now turn around and put it in your own shadow. Gold will shine nicely some more but pyrite will be dull yellow in the shade.

It keeps the same shine also, in sunlight and shadow, nothing changes. It also has no straight or cubed looking edges like the pyrite I've seen seems to have. Pyrite is also highly magnetic isn't it? No part of this thing is magnetic even slightly.

It didn't seem to be magnetic at all. I thought it might have been pyrite also but I've not noticed pyrite being as heavy as this is. It's surprisingly at least 5-7 pounds and the size of a golf ball.

On Saturday 4/20 i went out hunting the clay quarry again as the low river tides don't match my schedule and the dredged piles in the port area are closed off because of bird breeding season. So more pinkish brown hastalis teeth for now, must get boring watching them, at least i'm having good fun hunting them. I felt like taking it easy today, but the first shovel already delivered.. a nice C. hastalis tooth. And with the first sifter not even properly filled up, the next one already turned up.. A nice half of a whale tooth .. And eventually 6 hours later 'taking it easy' resulted in.. Pile of bones and burrows and a bag of teeth.. Together with a good pile of shark teeth, some of exceptionally good quality, i took home some verts. Actually there's a lot of boney material turning up, but often verts are the only recognizable pieces.. Afterward I took the time for making some pics of the locality. The eroded Oligocene clay.. Eventually the bad bricks made of this clay end up back in the quarry, a bit surreal.. Septary. Pyrite nodules in the clay.. And the obligatory surface find on the way out.. Here's the best teeth cleaned up.. And the complete haul.. Grtz, Dries

Pyrite for the most part is only considered weakly magnetic. Perhaps you would attach a photo of the back side of the specimen. The side that is touching the palm of the hand opposite to the golden C

Hey everyone – I’ve been looking through the site and found a high number of postings related to pareidolia – for obvious reasons. I found this interesting given that it is something I frequently deal with in my career, just in different ways. Pareidolia arises from a complex mix of psychological but also neurological factors. I won’t go into details of the psychological factors (there are many, perhaps a different post?) but a cursory mention of top-down-processing and suggestibility factors is warranted. Although admittedly this falls within perhaps a “softer science” there are reliable and valid personality inventories and questionnaires that objectively measure these factors to some degree. But perhaps more importantly, in the spirit of consilience, there is harder, more biologically driven evidence that helps explain the phenomenon of pareidolia. I help run a neuropsychology evaluation service in a busy metropolitan hospital. One of the more common patient demographics we see is the elderly, typically with concerns of some form of dementia. In one form of dementia, dementia from what is called Lewy-body disease (LBD- abnormal deposits of a protein called alpha-synuclein in the brain) a hallmark sign is visual hallucinations (VH), usually well-formed, with colors and even frequently three dimensional. Although VH are frequent in many psychological disorders, in this form of dementia they are notable because they reflect not a psychological demise as much as neurological (biology) one. Such happen in individuals with no psychological history whatsoever (prior to the onset of their disease), and are correlated with LBD in visual cortex and other areas of the brain used for processing of visual information (found in post-mortem studies). In fact, kinda a novel but brilliant advance in the field are pareidolia tests that try to illicit VH from varying degrees of neural stimuli. Perhaps the most well-known is called the noise pareidolia test https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0154713 This test is frequently used to evaluate for dementia thought to be caused by LBD. Really interesting test. I will not publish it here, but it can be found (public domain). Essentially what it is - is a series of pictures with varying degrees of unstructured, neutral visual information pitted against pictures with structured, non-neutral information (identifiable images). Respondents have to not only correctly identify the real images but also not be duped by the foils. Studies have been fairly consistent in that patients with LBD correctly identify the real images on par with others, but incorrectly “see” something in the foils. As mentioned, such findings correlate with LBD is visual and associated brain cortices. Functional neuroimaging studies also show the same response pattern on noise pareidolia tests is correlated with hypoperfusion (in living subjects) in the same cortical areas. As a reminder, these findings occur in individuals with no known mental health history prior to the onset of their disease. No, I don’t post any of this to suggest that those who fall prey to pareidolia effects (all of us fall for it at some point) have brain damage. So, lets avoid any of those comments (in fact, after an intense day of shark tooth hunting I figurately see them EVERYWHERE). But, I do think it is an interesting analog to what has been discussed already, and perhaps can add to the pareidolia literature and musings that have already been posted. As all good scientists do, we shouldn’t be afraid or deny our biases; whether they be psychological or even neurological, but rather be open to embracing them and learning about them. This allows for a degree of predictability and pattern-recognition, which ultimately will help us from being prey to the vicious jaws of pareidolia effects. TB

Yes. True to science in general, though we like to think of Alzheimer's disease and dementia due to LB as separate entities, they are different pathologies but highly related and not as neatly separated as our textbooks tell us. In reality, most AD patients have some LB disease, and vice-versa. When there is a diagnosis of one over the other, it is a diagnosis of pathological predominance, not of exclusivity. In fact, in Parkinson disease, LB signs are often present, and vice-versa. Parkinson patients can also have VH....

It's unlikely but is it attracted to a magnet? The locality supports the possibility of finding pyrite.

While it is true that transmission of Lyme disease does not occur until the tick vector (Ixodes scapularis) has been attached for 36-48 hrs, that is not true for other tick-borne pathogens. Viral pathogens such as Powassen virus are transmitted by the same tick, without the delay. Although it is rare compared to Lyme it causes a much more serious disease. Two other pathogens, Anaplasma phagocytophila, and Babesia microti, are also transmitted by this tick and transmission has not been demonstrated to be delayed. Other ticks transmit different pathogens. In particular, wood ticks (Dermacentor andersoni and D. variabilis) transmit Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, a serious (sometimes fatal) disease that despite the name is common in the Appalachian area as well as the western states. The Lone Star tick, Amblyomma americanum, vectors monocytic ehrlichiosis and STARI. None of these diseases require 36-48 hrs of feeding before they are transmitted. The reason for the delay in the case of Lyme disease is that the pathogen, Borrelia burgdorferi, has to change major proteins on its surface in order to move from the tick gut, through the salivary glands, and into the human (or mouse) host, and this change, which is stimulated when the tick attaches and starts to feed, takes time. Other pathogens don’t have to make this change. My reason for telling you all this? Ticks are bad news. Besides being generally nasty with irritating bites, they transmit lots of diseases in addition to Lyme, and only Lyme is known to have a delay in transmission. So it is important to avoid letting ticks attach, as much as possible. If you do find an attached tick, if possible you should save it for identification after you remove it, as the species can suggest diseases to watch for. One more thing to be aware of, Lone Star tick bites can cause a condition called red meat allergy or alpha-gal syndrome. This is an allergy caused by the tick saliva proteins, and it results in a permanent allergy to red meat (not fish or poultry). This condition is becoming a lot more common. There are cases known where a single Lone Star tick bite has caused the condition. There is no treatment or way to cure the allergy once it has developed. If you like red meat, beware the Lone Star tick!! Don

Not sure if these resources have been shared before, but this is how professional collection managers deal with pyrite disease/decay/rot. From the LA County Natural History Museum: https://lacmip.github.io/emu/documentation/pyritedecay/ June, 2019 Volume 11 of the Geological Curator is devoted to the subject: https://www.geocurator.org/images/resources/geocurator/vol11/geocurator_11_1.pdf Fenlon and Petrera's paper on page 9 has a good discussion about various coatings which were historically used as well as what the current best practice. It seems the current best practice for museums is storage in low oxygen microenvironments, i.e. storing it in a cardboard box with plastazote foam, putting in an RP System(R) Type K oxygen scavenger, and sealing in Escal (TM) Neo barrier film.

Also, remember chemicals are not even needed if one is careful to inspect the body after a trip to the woods. Transmission | Lyme Disease | CDC Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (.gov) https://www.cdc.gov › lyme › transmission Jan 20, 2023 — In most cases, a tick must be attached for 36 to 48 hours or more before the Lyme disease bacterium can be transmitted. If you remove a tick ...

Found some pyrite ammonites on Charmouth Beach. They are soaking right now in acetone. Need to get something like Paraloid-B72 or Paraloid B-67 which is unavailable here in US. All I know is that the equivalent needs to be hydrophobic. Any suggestions?

Before the construction of the Fore River Shipyard in Braintree and Quincy, a bit of the Braintree Argillite was dumped in Quincy. I have rediscovered the site of the spoil piles which are briefly mentioned in a paper about the MA trilobites. I got a few minutes of collecting before the rain got too heavy and I had to leave. The trilobites are found in a fine grained, weakly bedded light argillite that oxidises and forms an orange coating when weathered. I found some larger Paradoxides fragments in a darker argillite with a slightly larger grain size. This argillite weathers first to a blotchy dark grey, then orange spots of what look like limonite form on the surface. Trilobites are also found in an almost chert-like massive argillite that contain dark things which look like trilobite shell but are some sort of mineral. All contain vugs of calcite and pyrite. The finds. Paradoxides harlani left genal and small glabella. Left pleura, And a poorly preserved cranidium on the back. An even more poorly preserved cranidium. Believe it or not, even more badly preserved. Very partial imprint. Still more badly preserved. Large cranidium taken under dramatic lighting. A very effaced bunch of thoracic segments. Negative but still with some shell. Taken under dramatic lighting. And last, a very unusually rectangular cranidium, with a ”Agraulos” quadrangularis on the left of it. Notice the very robust occipital spine on the unidentified. Any ideas? Thanks to @piranha for the papers.

Hi again. As far as I know the pigments in mollusc shells are rather organic than mineral pigments, so I think the probability is low to have them preserved in a pure impression where the original shell is gone. On the other hand, organic pigments have in some cases been found in much older fossils and who knows what interactions took place between the original shell material and its matrix. After all a 10 gram dead echinoid can change its chemical environment, effectively making a pound of pyrite grow. Ho much pattern is preserved in the process is the interesting part. And maybe there is some original shell left. I am not arguing that it is original pattern, I just argue its looking enough like it to take the closest look you can. Looking at related younger gastropods to see if the pattern would fit could also help, but diversity is high... Best regards, J

I apologize in advance...I know nothing of fossils. A friend gave me this. It's from the coal mine by Sparta Illinois. The same mines that the pyrite suns come from. He said it was a snail. Here's my dumb question... is the snail the whole thing or just the small circle in the middle? As i stated...i know nothing of this so thank you for your help.

Hello all, it’s been a long time since I’ve last posted. A lot has changed, and I’ve been getting the fossil hunting bug again. (No pun-intended) You know what bug I do not want to catch? Ticks. I’ve already seen 3 this year, thankfully none on myself since I’ve been avoiding brush and tall grass. Yet the fear of catching a tick-born-disease is keeping me from fossil hunting. I am going on a fossil hunt out to a spot in western Pennsylvania this Saturday with my fossil club that I haven’t been to since 2016. I’m excited but also nervous about ticks. In the past there wasn’t a ton of brush there, since it’s a dam spillway in a park. But I went during the fall then, and as I remember ticks weren’t nearly as much of an issue then as they are today. Do any of you have any tips to keep ticks off of me this trip? I’ve read about DEET and permethrin sprays, and I am still unsure. I have two cats, so I am also worried about the toxicity of permethrin and other anti-tick substances. I will probably be wearing jeans and long sleeves to protect myself. Any help would be appreciated.

There's a ton of pyrite in big brook. I have two bright gold mussell steinkerns that I found last year. Most likely that is what the "gold" is.

Nice fossil haul. A tip for IDing gold. bring it out in the sun in your hand; it will shine like gold. Now turn around an put your hand in your shadow. Gold will still shine. pyrite or other non-golds will not. I don't know much about gold in the northeast, but I would be shocked if it is gold.

As someone who has contracted lyme disease. The best preventative method is to wear womens pantihouse under your pants.

Hello Everyone! After my very successful trip to Charmouth last time, I have been on 4 single day trips across the months of February/March/April, and wanted to share each days finds. I was once again looking for bone fossils - and had more luck than I possibly could have hoped for as far as I am concerned! I spent the majority of the time on Charmouth beach, though I did walk across to Lyme Regis Church cliffs on a couple of days. DAY 1 I found 4 very nice bone fossils, including my first articulated vertebrae, and my first definite piece of jaw! Apart from the damage to one side, the bone quality on this Ichthyosaur tail vertebra is very nice - an excellent start to the first day. My first set of articulated vertebrae! The base of the neural arches are also present though most has been been worn off. A nice section of Ichthyosaur jaw, with some other bone fragments stuck in the pyrite. A fairly worn Ichthyosaur vertebra which at the time was my largest to date. DAY 2 3 Bone fossils were found on day 2 - all of which were vertebrae. 3 Articulated ichthyosaur vertebrae - although these are worn down to pretty much a pebble - I was still over the moon with this. Next challenge would be finding 4 articulated! Another single tail vertebrae, the size and preservation on this one is so similar to the one I found in day 1 (and only found a week apart), which makes me think these could be from the same animal. Half an Ichthyosaur vertebra, which shows the bone tie shape nicely. DAY 3 4 Bone fossils were found on day 3, including my best preserved ichthyosaur vertebra, and a section of jaw with some worn down teeth. My assumption on this one is that it is an Ichthyosaur paddle digit, though I wasn't aware that they could be sloped like this? But the bone surface on the top and bottom have the lines radiating from the centre like I have seen on other digits. My best preserved vertebra to date, the photo doesn't do it justice but the bone quality is amazing on this one, and it has pretty much 0 wear from the sea. A quite worn unknown piece of bone, although the shape initially suggested paddle digit to me, I'm now not so sure A very small section of jaw with some worn down teeth! This one was just staring at me on my walk back to the car to drive home. DAY 4 This is easily the best day I have had fossil hunting to date - and I think I will be hard pressed to beat these finds. 2 Good sided articulated Ichthyosaur vertebrae from- need some mudstone cleaning off. This was the first find of the day - and it only got better from here on. A Partial Caturus sp. fish skull! Probably my favourite find to date. I am able to identify the branchiostegal rays at the bottom there but if anyone with more knowledge about fish skulls recognises any of the other skull sections please let me know. I assumed that the next bone up from the rays in the below photo is the dentary/angular but again I am very new to all this. This bone appears to have an ovular cross section from the second photo below which is what made me think jaw. 2 Nice sized ichthyosaur vertebrae with the neural arches present - in the matrix. A small piece of bone, I wasn't too sure on this one, and it may be too small to really know what this could have been. I found some nice ammonites, crinoids and a devils toenail too, though as I was mainly looking for bones, hence why I didn't end up putting them in this post. I actually managed to find more bones than in my 5 day trip from before where I was looking for bones. My favourites definitely have to be the fish skull, the large articulated vertebrae with neural arches, and the jaw with teeth. Needless to say I have definitely 'caught the bug', and will be returning again soon.

Seems like the older I get the less I post here? Its not that I quit prepping. Still prepping up a storm, only less hours per session. I get in about 15 hours a week. I've got 57 crab concretions from NZ to get done. Only done about 7 so far, but I'm doing the biggest ones first mostly and those take some serious time. Right now I'm working on some rather large fossil fish from Lebanon. Gots 3 of them that are all betweem 2.5 and 3.5 feet. Also have some really old fish from Scotland that I need to do. Gots projects litterally laying all over the place in all stages of prep. Its a disease, but a disease I think lots of people would love to have. If I only had a couple of Jack O Lanturns and a record with some spooky ghost sounds this would have been Halloween night. Already have the skeleton laying about. This is a saw fish from lebanon that im getting ready for prep. You can see the backer board just to the right that it will be glued onto with sylicone. I first had to remove about half the rock to make it a whoooooole lot lighter. Went from 91 lbs to about 50. Its got one bad crack that I will have to repair, but overall, a really nice specimen.

The natural texture of pyrite could easily mask that of bone. An experienced eye may be able to better say.

Sorry, this looks like pyrite to me. The mineral does sometimes replace fossils, but I don't recognize this as such.