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A little over a week ago I flew to Memphis and then drove down to Tupelo, Mississippi to spend two days collecting at the nearby Blue Springs fossil site, Upper Cretaceous, Ripley Formation, Coon Creek Member. It was my fourth trip there in the past two years. Weather was decent- 65 degrees the first day, 55 the second., a mix of sun and clouds both days. The site was very mucky the first day there, but it dried up for the most part by the second. The first time I visited there, the surface collecting was excellent. Not so much the last three times and this time was exceptionally poor. So, as you can see from the photo, I did a lot of digging. The softer material near the top did have fossils, but normally they crumpled as soon as they were exposed. One particular small nautiloid that was original shell material and mostly gold color was especially heart breaking. As I dug deeper, more intact fossils appeared in the now tougher marl, mostly mollusks with at least some shell material though much of it came off when the rock split.

Today I was supposed to go Fossilhunting in the Silurian Rochester Shale, but plans got changed. All of the people I was supposed to go with came down with one of the many illnesses going around CNY. One of my friends, Tim, was going to my favorite Devonian site so I decided to go with him. My friend Tim is also a member of my local club and I have known him about 20 years. We met up at one of the thruway exits and he followed me to the site. The day was great, without a cloud in the sky. It was still a bit chilly until the sun got higher. Eventually i was able to take my long-sleeved shirts off and put on my t-shirt. Another club member named Sue, who lives only about 5 minutes from the site showed up unexpectedly after about an hour or so. So the 3 of us chatted it up for a couple hours. The finds were pretty typical of the site and many of the usual suspects showed up. I was very happy to find a complete Eldredgeops roller, which has a disarticulated pygidium, right of the bat. I was even more happy when just a short time later I found another Dipluera which looks so similar to the one I found last week. It was partially covered exactly like last week's that at first I thought it was the negative of that one. After a closer look I realized it was a different one all together. I also found a couple Greenops, that might turn out ok as well. All in all it was another great day with good company. I am really liking how 2024 is turning out for me fossil wise and I hope this streak continues. I hope everyone is doing well.

Like the title says... it's a bit on the crammed agenda for only two days. But not if you don't sleep. lol! Old people don't need all that much sleep anyway, so I've found out. Tuesday the 2nd of April I was up in the foothills above Salt Lake City checking out the Anasibirites Bed in the Triassic Thaynes Formation. Wednesday, I'm packing up my camera gear for a session of astrophotography in The Last Chance Desert between Green River and Salina, Utah. Not only is Utah full fossils, it's also renowned for it's beautiful dark skies at night...but only way out in the desert. We have light pollution like anywhere else in the urban environment and just an hour or two we have Bortle Class 1 dark skies. The scale goes from 1 to 9, 9 being like Tokyo and1 being in a desert, ocean or unpopulated, unlit location. Fishing, Astrophotography and Fossils are my big three personal interests among many others. Wife and family are always first but balance in ones life is also a good thing. Enough rambling. Packed the gear for fossils and stars, food, drink, personal safety gear, eye drops ( gotta have it in a dusty desert ) gassed up the Element and I'm off. Never gets boring scenery. Heading over the summit pass @ 7500 feet. First stop was a previous site, Garley Canyon, which was barely thawing the ice and snow with plenty of mud. This time it was dry and I turned in to look for the orange outcrops containing ammonites. Had to visit one of my favorite cacti - Scelerocactus vivipara - the small flowered fishhook cactus. This is an exemplary specimen. Usually BLM land have so many open range cattle that they get squished before growing up. I drove around looking for those orange mounds of possibilities. All the way to the cliff. Not sure what this was besides guessing and worth a photo. Nice, HUGE, slab of inchnofossils, which I left in place. I drove around and did not quite hit the spots where the orange outcropping were to be found. The website I researched had been posted back in 2009 and with time the jeep trails were much rougher and washed away. I also had a timeline to catch a museum before its closure at 4 pm. This canyon and the orange outcroppings weren't going anywhere and miles to go before I don't sleep this night. Second stop is a rockhound mecca. Septarianville also known as the Dragon Egg Nest. Supposedly the only location with red interior septarian nodules. The more common variants are yellowish calcite interiors. We have a nice yellow one and my wife gave the green light for a nice red one to go with it. Here's the turnoff sign. I go down the gravel road a few miles and spot the sign...hmmm.. the sign is a little worse for wear than the online pic and the site is deserted. No tents, no big excavator, no tourists/visitors. I called the number - no answer. The web says open until 8 pm. I'll be following up on this later. They probably have a summer season only. IDK. The site courtesy the big eye in the sky. What the red ones look like. There is online a blogger's site where he drove one mile past this site to find large ammonites in concretions weathered out of the hills nearby. So I find said hills and start checking out the likely spots. It's a dead end road with hills...I couldn't miss it. And I didn't. However there are a lot of hills, ravines, climbing and hiking around and the concretions are few a far between. In fact, I'm not seeing any at all. So on to the next hill. Ahhh! I see a few which have been hammered open. The usual suspects inside. Bivalves, gastropods and some evidence of small ammos. I checked every broken concretion carefully, as I had found at other sites that more than a few keeper fossils were overlooked. Not this time. Just lots of crumbled concretions with many being calcite veined only and Inoceramus bivalves along with gastropods were all I found. Where were the reputed "large ammonites" ?!? Here's a sample of the few concretions found. In the center of this piece I noticed a olive shaped smooth fossil shell. With a little, lite taps I and put this & another into my empty bucket. I believe I found samples of Birgella subglobosa or B. burchi. Not sure. Daylight was waning and I had 50 miles to get deeper into the desert for the evening under the stars. Along the hike back to my car. I noticed a few surface finds of trace fossils. I collected the first one. The sun set in the west as it does and in the east a celestial phenomena occurred; The Belt of Venus appeared. It only lasts a short while so my image captures were spontaneous cell shots out of the window as I drove. On to the desert astrophotography destination. An early evening image before the Milky Way rose in the wee hours between 2 and 5 AM. Jupiter, Orion the Hunter and the Pleiades are heading south for the summer. And the Milky Way season is ON! A rare mud puddle added some interest in the reflection of the stars. A short nap between 12 and 2 and then between 230 and 5 I captured many images of the Milky Way galaxy. Afterwards, another short nap and back to the fossil hunting. First stop, the Castle Dale museum, second stop the Jurassic National Monument, third stop meeting new friends and sharing the excitement of finding amazing ammonites. I also have an interest in ancient American pottery and craft replicas of this type of pottery using locally found clay, slips, organic and mineral paints, primitive tools and outdoor firing techniques used by those original potters. This specimen is from the same location where I collected mine late last year on one of my earliest fossil hunts. And I'm going to post this now to not overload the thread with MB's of images. Next up is the Jurassic National Monument and a few pics of the ammonites found after visiting the Cleveland-Lloyd dinosaur quarry. Steve

Today was a totally awesome day for fossilhunting here in Central New York! The weather was great for March and I had great company. And I haven't even mentioned the fossils yet. I had made plans to get out on a Devonian dig with my friends Stephen( @Buffalopterus ), Trevor, and Gary. I got to the site around 8am and was delighted that it was nice and Sunny. I was surprised when another car showed up and it turned out to be Eric, ( I can't remember forum name). The other guys showed up around 10, followed by Eric's friend Cassie. I really enjoyed everyone's company we all were joking around and laughing the entire day. As the sun got higher it kept getting warmer. And it seemed that everyone was finding stuff. Trilobites were very abundant today. Everyone found multiples I think 5 mostly complete Dipluera's were found today even though they were all small. I lost track of how many Greenops were found, but it was alot, and there were a couple Eldredgeops in the mix. I will say the the Greenops that were found by Trevor were the biggest and nicest ones that I have ever seen from there. He probably found the most Trilos out of everyone today. Lots of nice Brachs, Bivalves, and Gastros, as well. Just a great day all around. Here are my finds. And yes I got another Dipluera!

I was finally able to get out again this weekend to fossil hunt! I found 3 complete trilobites including a lage flexicalymene that was prone. 2 of the trilobites came from Maysville, Kentucky, and the other came from Ceasar's Creek on the way back. I'm not sure what is on the plate I have never seen something like it before. Any information would be appreciated.

A couple weeks ago I was on a fossilunt with my friend Stephen to a Devonian locale near Canandaigua Lake. This was a new spot to me, but is a known spot located on private property. This area is known for crinoids and large Eldredgeops, some up to 3 inches. I went with Stephen and his friend Gary. We arrived shortly after 9am. We parked in the owner's drive way and had a fairly long walk across to cow pastures to get to a creek located in the treeline at the back of the 2nd pasture. This is a Hamilton Group Moscow Formation Middle Devonian site. Crinoid pieces were very abundant in certain layers as well as trilobites in other layers. I found a fewtrilos mostly complete but covered in matrix. Gary found a decent roller. Some rather large corals were found by Stephen. I enjoyed collecting some Naticocema lineata gastrops as these were new to me. I didn't bring a ton of finds home but I was happy with my haul. I am posting pics of my finds, but will post more when I have a chance to take other pics. Some of my finds do not photo well.

Just wanted to see if this is Jasper or not. Thank you. About three to four inches and found in Tehachapi mountains

I’m still stuck on my “deep dive” in the Tarrant formation lately, adding a few more small ammonites, some pet wood and some nice plates of turritella. Tarrant County TX

Another hundred or so prestine hemiaster and heteraster echinoids, some foldy and rough shape oxytropidoceras of various sizes, and my first complete engonoceras ammonite. I almost forgot the hamite. I like the cylindrical shapes of the gastropods, too. Not bad for 1.5 hours on a cold day. South Tarrant County, Texas.

Howdy all, Here's another find I had in the Coon Creek Formation. Been trying to place it but I simply have no idea. Possibly Fasciolariidae?

Some of the highlights from my last trip to Abbey Wood, an Early Eocene site on the border between London and Kent. Mostly sand tiger teeth, but a few angel shark teeth as well, along with some bivalves and gastropods. Some of the rarer stuff includes a sand tiger vertebra and a vertebra from an unidentified bony fish (the two items in the top left).

I went to an “easy walking” spot to enact my own play called The Rockcracker while my daughter went to see The Nutcracker. This Goodland formation spot is a guaranteed echinoid grab every time. I have a bunch of flawless hemiaster whitei echinoids and a small number of heterasters, plus perhaps the smallest ammonite I have and a few nice gastropods.

My annual excursion to visit my family which migrated to Kentucky years ago took place at the end of October into November, lasting two weeks. Of course, the planned trip took me in the vicinity of some excellent fossil bearing sediments and though quality time with family was the primary purpose, I did hope to add to my collection. All of the spots I visited were ones I've been to before; however, the first stop was a new one for me- Paulding, well known and documented on the Forum for its Middle Devonian marine fauna. I drove from the suburbs of New York City for almost eleven hours, raining most of the way, arriving at and spending the night at a hotel in Defiance, Ohio. Paulding was about fifteen minutes away. Drove there the following morning, It was a brisk forty degrees, mostly cloudy, but sunny at times. A TFF member I was supposed to hook up with there unfortunately had to bail last minute. A nearby quarry which exposes the famed Devonian Silica Shale had, years ago, stopped allowing collectors to hunt there. There was a big outcry and the quarry set up a fossil park dumping fossiliferous rock onto a property they owned which the public were free to collect from. Much of it is now overgrown and much of the rock has been reduced to gravel. However, there are still many fossiliferous chunks out there if one is willing to look.

Spent Saturday looking for fossils in the Central Texas area. Came across huge chunks of rocks near the road. I decided to take a closer look. To my surprise saw loads of fist size gastropods embedded in huge stones. Interesting to see large size gastropods concentrated in a single spot like that. I usually see one or two at the most. I was also in the Walnut Formation, but these rocks may come from the Edwards formation or Austin Chalk formation. I'm leaning more toward the Edwards Formation.

Hi, here are pics of my various gastropods from the NW Ohio Dundee. I have tried to assign names based primarily on old literature (Stauffer Bassett), combined with google images. Soo, the names may be out of date or wrong. Interestingly neither Turbinatus or Mastigospira seem to appear in the old faunal lists; interesting because although not abundant, I have found multiple examples. All depends on the layer, I suppose. Anyway, please chime in if you have better names, and comment on how these finds line up with Dundee elsewhere (aka, Ontario).