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I'm currently working on a simulation of extinct biomes, i'm slowly learning how to make everything as realistic as possible for realtime 3d simulation. I would like to start with plants recreated from some Silurian, lower devonian and upper devonian, and slowly working to recreating the biomes in the areas where they lived and later i'l like to add animals aswell. All my research is made with google i'm not a professional in archeology or 3d art, some of the models are very simple and unpolished for now and will be updated. The project is in the early stages for now but it runs very well on most pc's Here are ome of the plants that lived in the late devonian Tetraxylopteris and leaf detail Archeopteris and branch detail Calamophyton Protolepidodendropsis Uang (China) Weylandia rhenana Aneurophyton Wattieza Leclercqia

Hi all, Last weekend I took a trip, again, to the Florissant Fossil Quarry. The quarry doesn’t normally open until Memorial Day, but I went with the Colorado State University entomology club. I successfully lobbied for the club to take a field trip there, and the club got the trip funded by the student’s association so we got to go in as a by-appointment special group for “free” (at least for us). Perhaps this whole process is a story I’ll tell another time. Anyway, for those not familiar in the upper Eocene Florissant Formation fossils of insects and plants are highly abundant, but fossils of vertebrates are exceptionally rare. This is despite being a superficially similar depositional environment to the Green River Formation, where fish fossils are abundant. Well, after countless total hours of splitting in the quarry over the years I’ve finally come across a vertebrate fossil - the head of a teleost fish! This is exciting simply because fish fossils are very rare in this rock unit. The shale breaking split the fossil, so presumably the body is still out in the quarry somewhere. There are of course fish described from Florissant, but I’m not familiar with them. The only identification I can readily make is teleost. Thought I’d share a rare find! My “white whale” for the Florissant Formation is still a spider fossil. There were three spiders found by entomology club participants, but of course I was not one of them. Of course I’d find the way more rare thing, but not the thing I wanted 😀

Thank you! I'm adding some new improvements Real dimensions - In Blender i had to model all similar models with the same dimensions so i can fit them with the same virtual skeleton, the real dimensions have to be inside the simulation. The animals are very small and cause some camera issues, to animate everything right i had to set everything 10x timel larger, including plants (this is a temporary solution) I'm using this tape measure to adjust them, Promatis patulus is usualy 5cm wide so i'l make it 50cm Size and color variation - To ad variable size to the models i'm using a simple code to randomly set the dimentions between minimum and maximum once the simulation starts For example Paleozygopleura hamiltoniae is usualy up to 1.5cm sometimes 2-3, the ones below are all the same model, but are randomly resized between 0.75 - 1.5cm - There is also an adjustment for color variation, below the variation is exagerated but it's going to be used very subtle Molting + time dilation Trilobite molting is a slow process, there is feature called time dilation that allows me to slow down the animation of a model, in this case the molting animation To view this slow process the player can speed up the simulation time (including day night cycle, wind animations etc), here is a video example the slow molting process and suddenly gets 10x times faster when i press a key

Lots of flooding this Spring has churned up the fossil shale layer that sits below the Brush Creek. You'll see some wild plants, but I wasn't expecting this large Syringodendron (Sigillaria trunk sans bark). It's heavy and made of once-soaked creek shale, so I'm not sure if I'll end up keeping it.

Don't know where you'll be in the panhandle but if you have the ability to head north into southern Alabama, you may wish to check out the "Point A Dam" in Andalusia, Alabama. A search of this forum (and the wider internet) should turn up some information on that locality. I've never been but I do know fossil clubs have gone there in the past. If you'll be near the Pensacola area I can recommend an interesting stop if you like unusual plants. My wife and I went to the Yellow River Marsh Preserve State Park in Milton, FL (just east of Pensacola) to see the White-topped Pitcher plants in bloom. The park itself was overgrown (and in need of a prescribed burn) but the road to the park (Dickerson City Rd) was lined with blooming pitchers all along the swales on either side. Quite a site to see! https://maps.app.goo.gl/qoLziMCoGPNq3diX8 Cheers. -Ken

Excellent photo essay and selection of Carboniferous plants. Congratulations and thanks for sharing.

Thanks! I’m open to that possibility, not a bad suggestion. It might be correct, too. I had a friend with me who gives guided tours and he had a massive fossil collection and he thinks it’s bone..I only notice it is not symmetrically round all the way, it shifts width/height at the part that starts curving, so it’s taller than wide along the curve, and no plants were close to it so I see what my friend saw as well. One end is sharp and it has a glossy exterior, in case the photos didn’t do justice to what I see in person!

Found this really pretty piece in the same area as Permian plants, such as walchia. Looks like it may have been a couple layers of conifer needles? Also thinking it's maybe tiny bore holes. Might just be unrecognizable from weathering. It's so pretty I'm going to use it for an art piece! Thank you very much for your feedback.

Long overdue to post about some of my NC finds from earlier this year! First up was a very exciting trip to the NC Triassic to look for a variety of plant fossils, which were my first Mesozoic plants. Beautiful white coloring on some of them as well, the matrix is extremely soft (you can easily scrape it with your finger nails) so I've done some experimenting with how to best consolidate them without damaging the visual effect. Not a ton of variety at the site, but they are abundant and sometimes surprisingly well preserved. I have found Otozamites hespera and Otozamites powelli, as well as a few other kinds of plants. I also disturbed a "hibernating" lizard, initially I was concerned that my digging had injured him, but after a some time in the sun he scampered off seemingly no worse for the experience.

That looks like a seed but I don't think it is fossilized. I know nothing about tropical plants.

The ocotillo are flowering and other plants are beginning to show nice flowers which is making the hummingbirds happy. Wish I could snag a photo of them feeding. Palo Verde trees in bloom.

I'm pretty good with the ones with an octet of legs as well. Tammy and I made a roadtrip to the panhandle (Pensacola area) to try to see some of the White-topped Pitcher Plants (Sarracenia leucophylla) in bloom. Sadly, most of the parks that were supposed to be packed with thousands of them were overrun with vegetation. The Splinter Hill Bog Preserve just over the border into Alabama is taking steps to clear the underbrush using prescribed burns. Unfortunately for us, they seemed to have done this just a few days before our arrival. Nothing was left of the largest single population of S. leucophylla but a few charred pitchers and flowers. We shall have to return at a later date to be able to see for ourselves the wondrous profusion that I've seen in online images. We fared a little better the next morning at the Yellow River Marsh Preserve State Park. The loop around the lake at this park and the trail through the nearby Garcon Point Water Management Area were sadly choked with undergrowth and the population of pitchers was missing. These locations seem like they could use a good prescribed burn to restore the bog habitat for the pitchers. Ironically, the best population of pitchers (and upright sundews, Drosera filiformis f. tracyi ) were to be found in a swale area alongside the road leading into the park. Tiny yellow (3 mm) long flowers of the carnivorous Zigzag Bladderwort, Utricularia subulata, could be seen if you looked closely and had the right search image. A sign in the park mentioned that Yellow Crab Spiders, Misumena vatia, might be found hiding camouflaged among yellow blooms. We searched a couple hundred yellow flowers only to spot its kin--what seems to be the Green Crab Spider, Misumessus oblongus. At just a few millimeters long and with the flowers blowing in the breeze I fired off around 20 attempted images only to find that the first one was the only one in focus. Cheers. -Ken

Hi!! I'm Kimi, just a girl who loves ALL things Nature. I'm especially drawn to rocks/ fossils, plants, and insects. Sometimes I think the rocks and fossils are even drawn to me! With gratitude and reverence, I can also say that most plants are dear Allies to me, and always show me great patience as I continue to learn and grow.🌱✨️ That being said, Nature continuously offers us new opportunities to learn and grow, no matter where we are on our journey. Although my son will tell you this about me, "she always THINKS she found a fossil", he is never convinced. Me, being a novice to fossils, would love to better my understanding of these ancient treasures. So, without further ado, here are the first four finds that I am curious about......🥁 I know the one is definitely an ocean type fossil, just not sure what, but are the other three just cool rocks? Idk.... I reside in Arizona now (Michigan native), which is where these were found, AZ. I find rocks all over the state, but the main places would be locally (around the valley), Superstition area, Tucson area, Stafford, Christopher Creek, Sedona, and Flagstaff. There are so many more that I have questions about too, but maybe by posting a few at a time, I can begin to discern for myself which ones have potential. At least that is my aspiration. Thanks friends! I appreciate you♡ #1 #2 #3 # 4

A snapshot of zoophycos out of a layer here known as the Andrecito Formation (lower Mississippian) and finally a solitary imprint of a shell in shale. This is unusual for the area as the shale tends to be non-fossiliferous except for land plants. Given the geology it had to have been Mississippian but it's possible to have washed in from higher ground over time and be Pennsylvanian. Also, a solitary plant fossil of what might have been sigillaria but its too badly preserved to be certain. 100% sure this was washed in from higher ground over a mile away over time as that's the closest formations of Pennsylvanian which is the first documented time plants were found in our area.

I collected this many years ago in the Quimper Sandstone in WA and have not been able to identify it. It appears to be a plant structure where the top splays out into a few "branches" with some lobed structure on the top. Reminds me somewhat of a lotus top where the flower would develop. Ok, all you plant guys and others, let me know if you know what it is or if you have some ideas. The specimen is about 7 CM including the top piece. Thanks

late carboniferous/early permian, north china, plants for ID.

Good question. It is statewide, all public lands including waterways owned by the state. Keep in mind, the permit is only required for collecting vertebrate fossils, not invertebrates (shells, etc). This quote is from the Florid Permit website: "Fossil sharks teeth are specifically excluded from these regulations, as are the fossils of plants, invertebrate animals (e.g., mollusks, sea urchins, crabs, etc.), and other organisms, so no permit is required to collect such specimens." https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/vertpaleo/amateur-collector/fossil-permit/

The previous thread posted was filling up and I needed a short break. The Castle Dale Museum was a nice treat as this was my first visit any of the towns along highway 10 which runs north and south on the west side of a huge Morrison Formation where the Cleveland-Lloyd dino quarry is located and endless locations of Cretaceous, Triassic and Jurassic fossils are found. These fossil locations are mostly treeless as you see in my photos so that surface finds are only a matter of walking through the formations. People think there are "secret spots" to find the best hunting grounds for big and small game, rocks, minerals, rare plants, fossils, etc. Nope...nearly if not all land has been walked on by humans. Those who hunt fossils in Utah talk of such places and In my opinion these "secret spots" or " honey holes" are only such in their own minds. Today's tech just using Google Earth mapping will find anything you look for. Crashed airplanes- simple. Morrison formations in Utah deserts...way too easy. Fossil concretions are quite visible from satellites looking down into Utah deserts. Not to poo-poo on the idea myself, people ask me all the time where I caught such a huge fish. I say I caught it in the mouth. They persist and I say in the water. They get the point and we have a laugh. Then I will share a location with them. They ask what bait. I say 'bread', they say, 'Bread?', I say bread, they repeat, 'bread?', I say yes, like a sandwich. Again the light bulb comes on, we laugh and I tell them that every source of Utah waters has big fish like this in it and most people feed ducks at those water sources. Fish are under the ducks eating bread, too. This applies to fossil hunting in Utah...where did you find that? In the desert. Between Green River and Salina or Moab and Price or even in Salt Lake City. Then I say fossils are under your feet. However, giving away your favorite spot isn't smart collecting because someone has already been there. But at the moment it can be your "secret spot" and productive site. Utah certainly has been fossil hunted for over a century continuously. Off the soap box, back to the trip which thus far has allotted me 4 hours of sleep in two days. Lets go, Steve! Here's my "secret spot". Thanks to Landsat/Copernicus imagery. The banded Morrison Formation is easily seen from space and the Cretaceous formation is like the pie crust around it. The Jurassic National Monument is also known as the Cleveland-Llyod Quarry. You can google it for more. Keeping the honest folks honest. Once I parked among the other visitors, I checked it and the gal asked if I had a park pass. I showed her mine. She sees the "Senior" diamond shaped emblem on it and says, no, that's not your card, Yes it is, here's my license to go with it. She smiling, no way you're that old. Yepperdo! I get in free and we had a nice, fun , chat about retirement, thinking good thoughts, loving life and making the most of it. The daylight caused many reflections on the glass cases. A bone in a jacket. The most touted Dino next to the Utahraptor, the Allosaurus. Say Cheese! Outdoors is mile and a half trail and the other building covering the 'big pile of dino bones'. This model seemed quite well constructed. Upon exiting, I noticed we were also leaving the Morrison formation. See any concretions? See any now? When I was close to entering the Park site, I noticed a couple getting out of the van with buckets and a pic. Well, methinks there's a blatant clue. Be sure to dial 811 before you dig! Upon driving back out of Morrison formation back onto BLM land and Cretaceous sites, I noticed the same vehicle still there over an hour later. But the couple weren't visible. I turned down the side road, stopped , put on my hat and greeted them. All went well and they welcomed me to join them. I offered to move to another site and they still welcomed the company. I showed them what I had found the day before in another town outskirts and they had not seen trace fossils here before but the guy knew that meant tunnels, burrows, footprints. They actually had bird tracks from that place in the beginning of the other thread with the snow on the summit pass. I found a nice trace fossil right away and gave it to them to get their bearing on what to look for. They were excited and the gal found 4-5 quickly and was very pleased with them. They had been at this location several times and were about to leave but suggested I search the hills and into the washes and ditches. I helped lift a huge concretion into their vehicle and they did the same for me as they left. Bending down to lift their concretion I saw this piece under his foot. I did take a few pics but enthusiasm won out as it always does and the picture taking falls to the wayside. A pic of his find. A pic of mine. ...and more... The Heavy. I'll get the bucket contents sorted ASAP and add those. Gotta apply some generous amounts of CA to some pieces. Steve PS - Oh, I early forgot! While I was at the Nat. Park I was traipsing along with a family, mom, dad and twin boys. The boys talked fossils the whole trip according to the mom. They were from Georgia and were going to the Natural History Museum in Salt Lake the next day before flying out. I said your boys will love it. It's like a 100 of this collection. One boy asked was this a fossil - holding a polished rock. His mom said it's a rock, I said , yes it is, but it could be a fossil gastrolith. A what? the boys exclaimed. Gastro= stomach, lith = rock. A stomach rock. Dinosaurs swallowed rocks to help grind and digest their food, just like birds do. But if you stop by my car on the way out, I'll give you a for real fossil each. I gave them my Birgella sp. gastropod fossils collected the day before. They were happy.

I agree with coal. And I feel pretty sure that the marks that resemble plants have a merely accidental resemblance to plants. Many phenomena in Nature mimic plant growth.

Hello everyone and hope you're all having a wonderful day. Recently, I had the brilliant opportunity to volunteer at the Australian Museum in Sydney. It has definitely been a highlight of this year for me, and I thoroughly enjoyed it! While I was there, I spent a lot of time exploring the museum, and eventually saw and took photographs of every palaeontological item on display I am aware of, and would like to show them all to you now as an early Christmas present. I do know @Notidanodon did get to share some photographs of the museum a while ago. If you're wondering why the opalised shells Notidanodon shared are not in this topic, they are no longer on display as far as I know. I did also get to see some fossil specimens behind-the-scenes, but I did not get to take pictures of them, so these are only the fossils and replicas on public display I do have a lot of photos of other things as well, particularly the Rameses travelling exhibition, as well as labels of the palaeontology items, so if you want anything in particular, please PM me. I also have a lot of similar photographs of the Australian Fossil and Mineral Museum in Bathurst, and will probably post those next year. This will be a long topic, and I doubt I'll finish it all today, but here goes: Dinosaur Gallery Entrance Replica skeleton of Jobaria tiguidensis and Afrovenator abakensis, originally discovered by Paul Sereno. You'll see that a lot of Sereno's skeletons are on display in this gallery, as he was involved with its creation. The Jobaria mount from behind; note the upper floor of displays no longer accesible which the sauropod's head reaches up into. From talking with the other volunteers I'm pretty sure this upper floor used to be part of the 'More than Dinosaurs' gallery which the current Dinosaurs gallery replaced, but I cannot find any images of the older gallery to confirm this besides a close-up of a Stegosaurus (which is still in the museum). Mesozoic Plants Pretty nicely, there is a decent amount of space in the gallery dedicated to non-dinosaurs. While I would have preferred a simple 'Fossil Gallery' with a variety of extinct organisms on display, this is still a good compromise. Photograph showing how the plants section, labelled 'A Changing World', is presented. Each of the large windows is into a cabinet displaying the real fossil plants, and are accompanied by a reconstruction of terrestrial life at the time at a child's eyeline, so they can get a better idea of how life on land looked in each period. You can look into them through the small rectangles below the large windows. They all appear in '3D'. The orange circles cover up areas where children can smell what certain plants would have been like (the Triassic one is of a conifer, and the Cretaceous one is of a flowering plant). Australian Triassic plants. Top left is Rissikia media, bottom left is Dicroidium zuberi and right is Cladophelbis australis. Here is the reconstruction of the Triassic. Australian Jurassic Plants. Left is Agathis jurassica, right is Osmundacaulis sp. Here is the accompanying Jurassic reconstruction. Early Cretaceous Australian plants. Ginkgoites australis at left and Phullopteroides dentata at right. Fun fact; this is where I first learned that seed ferns survived into the Cretaceous, as most dinosaur books simply seem to forget about them after the Triassic period. I guess you can also see my hand here. That's one of the annoying things about all of these items being behind glass; it's difficult to take nice photos of them without getting yourself into them. Still, it's better than the alternative, as you'll see later... Here is the Early Cretaceous reconstruction. Weird how there is a stegosaur, when stegosaurs easily reached their peak diversity and abundance in the Jurassic. Only one plant is in the Late Cretaceous cabinet, and ironically it is unidentified. The final reconstruction, which is of the Late Cretaceous. Interesting how this is the only one to not have a Theropod or Sauropodomorph. Non-Dinosaur Mesozoic Animals Opposite to the plant display, there is a section dedicated to the animals the dinosaurs shared their world with. Interestingly, this section starts out with an Eoraptor lunensis cast, to highlight certain features unique to dinosaurs, such as their hollow hip sockets. You can see parts of the herbivores and carnivores sections in the background. Over my many trips, I often seem to gravitate to this specimen, as besides the Jobaria, Giganotosaurus and Archaeopteryx it is easily the one I have the most photos of on my phone (obviously more than two, don't want to clutter the page). Properly starting off our journey on non-dinosaurs is a display of terrestrial animals. All fossils are real except stated otherwise: Skull of an unidentified Dicynodont found in Zambia. Cast of Rhamphorynchus muensteri from Solnhofen in Bavaria, Germany. Parotosaurus wadei skull from Brookvale, NSW, Australia. Clarotitan andersoni from Brookvale, NSW, Australia. There is another specimen in a different gallery which I took a better picture of. Cleitholepis granulata from Somersby, NSW, Australia. Cavernericthys talbragerensis from Tralbragar, NSW, Australia. It is overlaid on a leaf. You'll notice some other fossils from Tralbragar in the Jurassic plants cabinet, as well as in another gallery. Left is a nymph of Promimara cephalota, found in Koonwarra, Victoria, Australia, and right is an unidentified cockroach from Brookvale, NSW, Australia. Aeschnogomphus sp. from Solnhofen in Bavaria, Germany. This specimen was special, but very annoying to get a photograph of. Cast of lower jaw of Teinolophis trusleri, a monotreme mammal found in Inverloch, Victoria, Australia. According to the label it is the oldest known mammal in Australia, even older than Steropodon. I'm going to start a new post now so that I don't run out of space.

So my son and I have been looking almost exclusively for signs of vertebrate life in Pennsylvania and almost exclusively and obviously in road cuts. My goal this year is to expand a little. I would like to visit Gilboa, site of the earliest known forest! That part of eastern NY state was the shoreline of an inland sea in the Appalachian basin during the middle Devonian. Many field trips are described here of fossils from that inland sea but almost exclusively invertebrate. I know in the past fossils have been found but I'm wondering if anything recent? I would assume if someone has a site they probably don't want to share specifics but just looking for what if anything people have found?

Hello, here's the Geologic timeline for my location. The lighter specimens with coloration are from the Chesterian-Morrowan boundary. Where the first land formations happen locally. Lowest of the Morrowan most likely. If these are the first plants in this location I probably shouldn't expect much biodiversity. To my untrained eye I've only seen neuropteris, cordaite and very rare pieces of calamite. The darker gray specimens are Morrowan-Atokan and from a different location. They are definitely below what is designated as the Bug Scuffle formation. This sphenopteris is not well preserved and getting good relief shots with it being the same color as the matrix is difficult. This time I noticed a lone apparent neuropteris fragment as well

I think the order might be alethopteris, neuropteris and then two potential calamites with internode branching with some trace leaves...but the folks who really know their plants will fill us in.