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Hi i found this maybe pleciasaur opal bone inside an opal i bought can u tell me if it is a pleciasaur or other marine creature looks like either a rib bone or tail its about an inch in size

Hello from outback QLD Australia!

Kronosaurus Korner is unveiling a new fossil collection in April. They have noted that it is very rare worldwide. I'm lucky enough to be able to attend! Like and Follow their page https://www.facebook.com/kronok?mibextid=ZbWKwL If I'm able to get a picture at the unveiling I will post in the forum.

Hi all, See attached - most of these are 5-10mm in size (cm/mm ruler in background). Found at/near base of sandstone cliffs near Aireys Inlet, Victoria, Australia. I have previously found Lovenia fossils in the area (and found a couple more today), but these are much smaller and flatter - more like sand dollars? IDs appreciated, and also suggestions re further cleaning - I just soaked them in water (~30min) and tried to remove loose material, but haven't done anything further. Would it be worth soaking/cleaning them further to try to remove more matrix? Also, do you think the small spines/tripods in 2a/2b/23c are the original spines of the sea urchin? I think 4 is probably the top lid of a similar brachiopod to 3/3a - does that seem reasonable? Cheers & thanks in advance, Oli

We’ve had a little more luck here in Qld Australia, our collection is growing. we think a few great white and Mako? What do you think? so excited to find these.

Hi to everyone... I was hoping someone may have a spare moment to ID? I happened to find this object on a beach in Melbourne, Australia. I thought it was a rusted piece of metal at first, especially considering the weight. I ran the pictures through gpt 4 and was informed that a fossil might be a possibility. What I know about it ... - Its heavy like metal - Its not magnetic - Its 9cm long - Theres an odd hole - One section kind of looks like it could be a broken bone or bones Thanks in advance for any help given! C.

Hi all, I found a small fossil bone near Airey's Inlet. It was located in the scree slope ~3m above the beach, in material that appeared to be eroded from the sandstone cliff (mixed in with fossil shells, sea urchins and sea urchin spines - one of these is pictured). It looks like there is also a possible bryazoan or sponge on the surface of the bone. Thoughts on ID/age? Cheers Oli IMG_9484.HEIC IMG_9496.HEIC IMG_9493.HEIC IMG_9491.HEIC IMG_9500.HEIC

Hi all, We spent yesterday in a different section of the quarry I posted about here. This section yielded some nice fish, plants and even another temnospondyl! Phyllotheca or a different horsetail Xenacanthid pieces Various fish bits A nice nodule with a fish inside I will post some more photos of the temnospondyl once it gets excavated, but here is a loose section from the rear of the skull. After our quarry visit we went to a terrific Eocene plant locality, will post some photos from there next!

Could anyone help with identification of this fossilized fish head section which looks like the upper palate & eye sockets. Found QLD Australia Jan 2024. Some type of gills seem to still be present. Thanks for any information 😄🙏 Kate

I found these fossils in the cliffs here in Victoria. I was told by a fossil collector that they are fish earbones/otoliths. Can anyone confirm what they are? Thanks, Manfi

Hello everyone! A couple of weeks ago, I traveled to Turimetta Beach, a Triassic fossil locality in the Sydney Basin. I found several plant fossils. Some were too fragmentary for ID, but if possible I would like to know people's opinions on the ID of these three. I've read through previous forum posts and am aware these might not be able to be ID'ed. Fossil plate which I found as a rockfall near Turimetta Headland. A relatively large stem which was found in the same rockfall. A small leaf I found at an outcrop on the beach itself. Thanks for any possible help!

Recently we had a quick exploratory trip just south of Sydney in search of Triassic fish and Tertiary leaves. Our first stop yielded a terrific but partially weathered nodule exposed in an outcrop of the Ashfield Shale. A clear layer was present in the cross section so it was likely to yield a fish! This is it after most of it was removed, unfortunately I don't have any before photos but the layer through the middle is clearly visible: Will include photos of the prep later in this post. Our next stop was the main focus of our trip but wasn't too eventful unfortunately. We drove around back roads looking for new outcrops of an unnamed Tertiary formation which sometimes yields very well preserved leaves and insects. We found a few outcrops of it but only one section of road yielded any good leaves. The site: A freshly broken rock with leaves: As soon as we got home I started on the fish nodule. The fish layer had already partially split which was helpful, but meant the inside was quite weathered and covered in calcium carbonate. Splitting the nodule carefully with a knife: A fresh split. Note the white calcium carbonate encrusting the surface: Soaking the pieces in acetic acid (8% vinegar) to dissolve away the calcium carbonate: The same piece I showed before after acid preparation, the fish are now clearly visible: Splitting the rest of the nodule: Reassembling after acid prep: The rock is a thick siderite nodule so is very heavy once all glued together. With pieces this large I usually make a spray foam cradle for the pieces to sit in, meaning I can disassemble it to move it around. Loosely assembled and starting with the spray foam: Surprisingly, this nodule ended up being packed with fish. The main large fish in the middle is likely a species of Elonichthys, but throughout the rest of the nodule are several other genera including Saurichthys, Cleithrolepis and Elpisopholis. Overall I can count just under 60 individual fish on this one rock, many are just small sections of scale pattern though. The Cleithrolepis is likely complete but sits underneath a couple of other fish, and the Saurichthys is tiny and incomplete but its long snout is unmistakable. The preservation in most of the specimens is poor, as with most other Ashfield Shale nodules, but the association of so many fish is of interest! One half of the nodule, I haven't quite finished the counterpart yet but it does have slightly better preservation. Note the partially exposed Cleithrolepis just in front of the pectoral fins of the largest fish: A small but particularly densely packed section: Will include more photos in coming days!

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.

I went fossil hunting on Susan Gilmor Beach Newcastle N.S.W and found this. Can anyone help with identification I am a complete noob

1.75-Billion-Year-Old Fossils Are Oldest Record of Oxygenic Photosynthesis The preserved structures show a process that gave rise to life as we know it. By Isaac Schultz, GIZMODO, January 3, 2023 Photosynthesis Evolved as Early as 1.75 Billion Years Ago, Microfossils Suggest Jan 3, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro. SciNews The paywalled paper is; Demoulin, C.F., Lara, Y.J., Lambion, A. et al. Oldest thylakoids in fossil cells directly evidence oxygenic photosynthesis. Nature (2024). Yours, Paul H.

Hi all, posting some of the photos of fossils I found at Turimetta Beach in NSW. Can anyone recognise any plants or animals in any of these? Would love to know some more about them! Thanks # 1 #2 # 3 # 4 # 5

Hi everyone! Looking for help in ID-ing a found object from the beach. We are absolutely bewildered as to what this is! details: -Found 1 hour north of Sydney, Australia on the beach -Heavy, fossilised object with very distinct “ribbon” like formation patter on end -texture is reminiscent of a claw or tusk -plaque-like material in crevices (it is not sand)

Hello ! I got this fossil from my friend. It's from the Australian Museum. What species does this fossil belong to? I hope everyone be careful of abnormal weather. Thanks.

Hi everyone- absolute Newbie to the forum here. Excited to be getting geological. From what I have seen it looks like this is probably Fossiliferous Limestone as it was found on a South Australian beach. It does however smell rather of gunpowder and is a bit darker than the limestone specimens I've seen. I do wonder what I have found here xAlex