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Hello, my name is Lance. I stumbled across this forum today because earlier, I found a shell fossil and I just had to know what it was. Haven't gotten my answer just yet, considering my post is fairly new, but I can't wait to find out what it is (I think it might be a mold fossil of something)

American paleontology hobbyist here, seeking wisdom from those of you outside the USA regarding amateur paleontology culture elsewhere. Call me crazy. I'm seeking your stories to use in a planned talk in a session advocating for amateur/hobbyist contributions to paleontology, at the North American Paleontological Convention in June. Which stories? Well, the ones that offer better ways that amateur/hobbyist paleontology can interface with professionals, academics, corporations, and governments. I want to hear about the ways in which differences in cultural or historical or legal framework in different countries have led to different/better relationships with amateur/hobbyist paleontology than we have in the USA. For example: How do municipalities, corporations, and universities regard their role in actively or passively facilitating access/opportunity/education for amateurs/hobbyists? How do states and universities regard hobbyist societies as knowledgeable partners in which to invest trust when it comes to approving outcrop access, amateur grants, etc.? What is the funding mechanism for efforts to keep fossil exposures fresh at designated fossil parks? Is there an amateur paleontology stewardship certification offered by the state, by the municipality, by the national society, by the local museum or university, or by individual quarries that lends meaningful weight when it comes to approving outcrop access, amateur grants, etc.? If you have some interesting answers—especially anecdotal answers—to these and related questions, I'd love to catch up with you for 20 minutes to discuss. Your responses are what will open up possibilities for fossil collectors here in the USA and elsewhere. Let's talk. To start the conversation, send me a DM. Or if you prefer to just leave your thoughts below, that's fine too. Thanks.

The Rio Puerco Valley was my introduction to fossils. For many years now, I have scoured its Late Cretaceous shales and sandstones in search of ammonites. Somewhere along the way, my fascination with the ornament grew into an investigation of its environment. Last week at the New Mexico Geologic Society's Spring meeting, I made my first venture into the world of paleontological science. With the help of Dr. Spencer Lucas of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History, I presented a poster/abstract (Foley & Lucas 2017.pdf) exhibiting my ideas. I received some criticism for incorporating ammonite ornament and caught some grief for including a labeled map...otherwise, this was an amazing learning experience and I am ready to move forward. Back to the rocks!...I have a paper to write. Blue Hill Shale: Spathites puercoensis: Prionocyclys hyatti: Coilopoceras springeri:

It's great to see that this board is so active, and that there's such a good, positive atmosphere here for amateur-professional interaction. So, in that spirit, it seems that there's scope for a new permanent topic. There is a wealth of extraordinary fossils in the collections here, and we've seen the rewards that a good collaboration can bring in the gallery... and there are probably also a lot of palaeontologists, around the world, who would love something specific to work on that is a bit inaccessible for them. There may also be people working on monographs of particulalr groups from particular areas. Why not give them a place to advertise their needs? There's also the issue of collectors/amateurs who have found something they feel ought to be described, but can't find anyone who wants to do it. A parallel thread showcasing available new fossils might also be a really good avenue to go down. At the moment, the site probably isn't on the radar of most palaeontological researchers (including some of the amateur ones), but there are places like the Palaeonet listserver where this board could be brought to their attention. It could really start building some hefty bridges, if the idea takes off. I've certainly got a 'want' or two that I could throw in to begin with! Is this a route the forum would like to go down, at least to try it? I'm happy to announce it on Palaeonet, if so!

Hello! My fiancé and I are located in Missouri. We have never found anything like this before and think it might be amber? We did several “at home” tests on it. It passed the acetone and the high percent isopropyl alcohol test. It did not get sticky or tacky. It is very light and we believed it to be a chunk of plastic at first. This is what it looks like under UV light. I can’t tell if it’s glowing or not? Any input is appreciated! Thank you!

Amateur Fossil Collectors are Essential to Paleontology Kerste Milik “Someone needs to get the fossils out of the ground or off the beach. There are far too many fossils out there for professional paleontologists to salvage and they are continuously being exposed,” said Boessenecker. This exposure leads to fossils being eroded and lost to science, unless amateurs continue to collect. “If we don't collect the fossils, and we're rude or dismissive or simply not proactive about our amateur otreach efforts - then donation streams have a very real danger of drying up,” he said. Link to article

Not as clean looking as a skeleton only, but still pretty good I thought.

I found this rock and believe it may possibly be a fossil? Would appreciate any help with this. Thank you

Hi everyone, I'm new to this forum >> My welcome This is my "fossils collection", some may be just stones some definitely fossils. I collected these during a low tide in the rock pools on Margate sands beach (Kent, England). I picked these up with my hands, no hammering or digging. Over time they presented a white patina on them, maybe calcium? I didn't clean them as it might help to recognize them (maybe a chemical reaction? not an expert so I preferred not to alter them) This is just part 1 of my collection, I will upload more in days to come. The photos are front and back of the fossils. I'd like to know more about what they are; teeth, Belemnites and more? I'll upload here the compressed pictures, for you to identify them, if possible. I'd like to learn how to clean them but I think it requires lots of experience and expensive materials... If you need any pic brighter and crispier, just let me know and I can upload it separately, I'm a Photoshop wizard Omono 1. Tooth? Front 2. Tooth? Back 3. Big belemnite? Looks like a little shark head - FRONT 4. Big belemnite? Looks like a little shark head - BACK 5. 6. 8. 9. 10. 11. Bone? 11. 12. Tooth? n.2 13. Tooth n.2 Detail 14. Tooth n.2 BACK 15. 16. 17. 18. Big belemnite? Looks like a little shark head - DETAIL

All of these were found on gravel bars on Elm Creek in north-eastern Kansas, as we kayak on it a lot.

Just today I was reminded of an idea by a friend about trying to do an SVP meeting for Amateur Palaeontologist. Amateur Palaeontologist could join and share their research while getting suggestions by others as well as getting to know other people in the Paleo community. I’m wondering what everyone would think of something like this and if they would join if it is to happen.

Hello all, newbie here. Primarily a artifact/rock hunter, I find all sorts of fossils here in So. Illinois, usually cronoid related. I think. Anywho, any ideas on this guy, this is on a scraper/tool.

Hello friends! I am experimenting this period with my new Haufwerk W224 air scribe. It is recommended as ideal for beginners and rated for medium to fine preparation. My first lab rat turned out above my expectation. First attempt was done without press. regulator and without filter, since I did not know I needed these. Lab rate Prior preparation and After. Soft limestone for your reference. After having finished the above and onwards I work with pressure regulator (never above 5bar~70psi) and water separating filter to ensure I am using dry air. The next one turned out really bad. One side was already exposed 100% due to weather erosion. The other side was fully covered except the edge. The beginning seemed promising. The first material was removed around 2 o'clock and started chipping away easily. After that I lost my path completely. I couldn't define what is material to remove and what is ammonite. The stone is quite hard limestone from the Jurassic of Bulgaria, Ammonitico Rosso. I believe that with air abrasion with hard material the result would be totally different, but I do not have yet this set up.

I found this in my back yard, it appears to have three tiny fossils (approximately 1cm in size each), getting pictures is hard! I am a very amateur collector, so I really don't know much. I live in Roxbury, Morris County, New Jersey, USA.

Hey Fossil gang, I went out into the hillside forest next to my dorm and found some shells scattered about. It's very possible they're simply snail shells - I'm very novice. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

Hi all, I haven't been on the forum recently, which is a terrible shame, but I will make much more of an effort to be online in the future! I am currently sketching out a small project that, in part, addresses why people collect fossils. At this point I am mostly interested in very brief, oral-history style vignettes on what kinds of fossils you collect, your self-assessment of you collect them, and your knowledge of and experience with fake fossils. If anyone is interested I would love to hear from you!

Hi all, I'm an extreme amateur looking to try my hand at fossil hunting. I live in the triangle region of North Carolina and I've been trying to do some research about what I can expect to find. I live in an undeveloped area and have lots of woods and several creeks around that I was planning to explore. Does anyone have any suggestions about what I should look for or what there is to find in this area? Also, if there are specific things I should look for, what's the best method to find them?

I'm not sure if this is a fossil, but i have been looking at this rock for a few years wondering if it may be a fossil or part of one. I have taken a few pictures to help anyone with potential ID. It is clearly quite porous, which makes me think it is either a fossil or an old bone that has been weathered, but then it almost seems like there are some rocks in it. Any ID help is appreciated.

So my 8 year old son and I did our first ever trip to go find fossils. Attached is what we found in our very untrained 2 hour trip! Haha I literally have no experience outside of reading on this forum from time to time. We may have just picked up some rocks but they looked like fossils to us. I know most most of the teeth are probably goblin and I believe we found 2 Ptychodus. The main things I’m wondering about are the long piece slim piece next to the Ptychodus (possible whale tooth?), two vertebrae looking pieces, the egg shaped piece, and the white pieces. Not sure if they are bones of if they are just random trash we picked up thinking they were treasures. Haha All our tooth fragments Item on right? Egg shaped item Vertebrae? Vertebrae? Cant tell if this tooth is broken or just worn Cool little shell in a rock formation No clue? Looks like bones in rock but could be just river muck This looks like a little flipper but not sure

on this piece, there are several various fossils. I beleive they are all encased in this clay rock. Found in Dresden Tn 38225 in a old creek.

Howdy from the frontier country of New Mexico! I'm Tammy. I stumbled upon this forum while trying to categorize a very large collection of interesting fossil specimens collected in the mid to southwest of New Mexico, by our daughter Carol (an avid fossil collector). During her last visit we separated some of the largest specimens, revering some more than others, discussing the cosmos and the earliest life forms on planet Earth. We recalled that Carol collected rocks as souvenirs from vacations. On a vacation to Minnesota, Carol collected a '(flat) rock'; it was a decade later when she realized it was actually a prehistoric tool! I'm positive that's what started it all! I hope you can forgive our lack of 'technical' terms and a few run-on sentences now and then, as we attempt to analyze and understand this collection. I'm off to read and learn! Sincerest gratitude, Tammy

Howdy All! Been a couple of months since I have posted anything. Work has kept me more than busy with travel. BUT, I wanted to share a quick day trip to my dig site yesterday in northern Cincinnati. I explored far left into the hillside I am excavating to see on the surface what Gastropods, Brachiopods and Bryzoa I could see and I was happily surprised that I found the mother-load! This area of my site was covered by a lot of growth and the runoff of water was less than in other areas I have been digging. I have attached a couple of pics and some real quick finds I cleaned up last night... sorry about the pic quality, I do not own a fancy camera. I love when I am lined up with conference calls and I can enjoy my hobby why listening to statistical analysis (actually mostly ignoring). I will try to save more pics in the comment sections. One specimen has me confused. I found a number of trilobite pieces throughout my day and collected around 25 hash plates with several in them. I have yet to clean them up. But pictured below (if it lets me) is what appears to be the bottom portion of a trilobite but I'm unsure.

Hello Fellow Forum Members, I am a rank amateur from New Jersey, twenty minutes south of Trenton on the Delaware River. While maintaining an extensive rock collection since I was a kid I just recently started looking into collecting fossils. I started this primarily with my 13-year-old daughter as a way to generate interest in our fascinating world and to spend time with her doing something a little atypical for that age range. Being an avid outdoors person, hiker, photographer, and plein air painter I figured that this would be a great way to teach her some important outdoors skills with a really cool reward system. I, of course, go out on my own now and I am hooked. My daughter, caught up in the binary world that most teenagers are so prone to dive into readily, initially found the idea unappealing. However, upon finding a series of sharks teeth and many other interesting fossils (many of which we had to put back due to limits), I know she's hooked as well. Her reaction when she found her first tooth was nothing short of priceless. It's too long to include here but let's just say it was equally rewarding for the both of us. I hope some of the finds on our hunts and the validation (hopefully) of those finds we might find here might spur her on to further interest in whatever capacity she determines is appropriate for her. In the meantime, I'll keep taking her out on hikes and fossil hunts despite her hesitancy. She really is the best kid in the whole world and I am clearly a doting father.

How an Amateur Collector Changed Paleontology Forever To those of The Fossil Forum, I wish to share with you the story of Maiasaura peeblesorum and Marion Brandvold, both good mothers. Maiasaura was discovered forty years ago in June of 1978; this is the month and year of the Maiasaura. Marion and her son, David Trexler, found fossils fascinating long before Jurassic Park popularized dinosaurs. They would often take a vehicle out and go prospecting in their backyard geologic formation known as the Two Medicine. One hot summer evening when walking back to the vehicle, Marion took a small detour and came upon some tiny fossilized bones. In 1937, the Trexlers had opened a rock and jewelry store, and over the years had created a successful jewelry manufacturing and wholesale business along with their ranching interest. However, Marion's heart was always with the land and the animals, and when her husband passed away, she opened a retail store for her merchandise rather than try to keep up with the wholesale business. That way, she still had time for the ranching and rock hunting that she loved. Marion and David had discovered a partial dinosaur in 1971, and they traveled the State of Montana to compare it to all the wonderful previous discoveries they had read about that had been made in Montana. To their surprise, the only dinosaur on display in the entire State was in a little museum in the basement of the high school in Ekalaka, Montana. It had been assembled by a couple of ranchers who had worked with paleontologists from elsewhere who had come to the State, collected, and left. Chagrined that nothing was left behind when professional work was done, they decided to start a small museum in the back of the family store. The goal was to display a dinosaur skeleton from their local area. After all, if ranchers from Ekalaka could do it, so could they. As far as professional training was concerned, Marion had to rely on her familiarity with the ecology of the modern world, as she had no formal education on the subject. However, a ranch foreman when she was young had taught her the art of tracking, and had shown her how each organism interacted with other organisms and its environment. So, when looking for fossil skeletons, Marion expected to see very young and very old animal pieces, but not much in-between. On the fateful evening mentioned previously, Marion, Dave, and Dave's wife, Laurie, were out collecting what they believed to be a fairly complete duckbilled dinosaur skeleton. It is a long, tedious job collecting all the bones present in a dinosaur, and they had uncovered 15 or so at that point. As tools were being put away, Marion went for a little walk, and when Dave and Laurie caught up with her, she was sitting on a small mound of dirt with a big smile on her face. She said, "look what I found!" She was holding several baby dinosaur vertebrae. Within a few minutes, they had found many more, and Dave had found a piece of a jaw with obviously duckbilled dinosaur teeth attached. However, the entire jaw section could be covered by a nickel! They had a baby dinosaur to go with their adult in the museum. Bill Clemens, a mammal paleontologist from Berkely, had stopped in Marion's shop on his way to dig on fossil fish with some colleagues, and was impressed with what had been done in creating a fossil museum without any formal training. At the fish site, he encouraged Jack Horner, then a fossil preparator at Princeton, and Jack's friend Bob Makela, a high school teacher from Rudyard, Montana, to stop at Marion's shop and see the displays. A few days later, Jack and Bob left the fish site and visited Marion's rock shop and museum. Jack introduced himself to Marion, and for the next few hours, they had a wonderful time going over the specimens Marion had on display. Jack then asked if she had anything else, and she showed him a couple of the vertebrae she had picked up from the baby site. Jack's interest was immediately piqued, and he asked if she had more. Marion directed him across the street to where Dave was reassembling the baby bones they had collected. Jack realized immediately that Marion and Dave had something they didn't understand. He asked, "do you know what you have here?", and Dave replied, "Obviously not, since you are so excited." The concept of babies and old animals dying and being preserved in the fossil record, it turned out, was only partially correct. While that cycle probably did occur, baby bones were generally not preserved in the fossil record. The bones Bob and Jack were staring at turned out to be the first baby dinosaur remains known from North America. Jack asked to be allowed to borrow the fossils in order to write them up in a formal publication. The bones were carefully wrapped and placed in a coffee can, and Jack transported them to Princeton. A visit to the site was also in order, and Marion and Dave took Jack and Bob out to the site. Dave also showed Jack a poorly preserved skull that Laurie had discovered, and Jack offered to try to remove it and clean it up for display in Marion's museum. However, after a few years and the specimen was recovered and prepared, it turned out to be the type skull for Maiasaura, and Laurie donated it to Museum of the Rockies, where Jack was working by then. Baby dinosaurs together in a nest past hatching showed a totally different picture of what dinosaurs were thought to be. Jack returned for many years, and eventually the Museum of the Rockies purchased the land where the babies were discovered. The area has become a mecca for paleontological research. The discovery of all this led to a massive shift in the view paleontologist and indeed science as a whole had for extinct animals and modern reptiles. A realization occurred that dinosaurs were truly living, breathing, majestic animals who cared for their young, much like the life we often see around us today. Hungry and thirsty, often looking for a mate, just trying to stay alive in an unforgiving world were the dinosaurs. Far from terrible lizards, they were much like animals and we humans are today. All this came from Marion’s tiny little find. It was her tiny find which led to a surge of interest and public attention. It was her tiny find which started Jack Horner’s career. It was her tiny find that indirectly caused Spielberg to help create Jurassic Park which in turn inspired many into paleontology and many more into other sciences. Those she indirectly inspired have contributed a near inconceivable amount to mankind through science. They range from medical researchers curing diseases, to those looking for extraterrestrial life, and all the way down to myself. A great many started their interest in the sciences with an early love of fossils and dinosaurs. A love Marion Branvold started and continues through her past contribution. Sadly, I never had the opportunity to meet her and she passed away in 2014, at the age of 102. Over the course of my short time in paleontology, I had the honor to stand where her tiny find was made. As the search for more discoveries continues I have been privileged to search with both Jack Horner and Dave Trexler. In the great quest for knowledge, she played her part well, now it is for us to carry on with the next act. What a massive contribution from an amateur and so tiny a find. As others ogle over the next major discovery, keep all this in mind and tell us more of your own tiny find. Eric P. Made with great assistance by David Trexler

Hi all, I’m new to the forum, based in London UK. I’ve collected fossils for years, favourite haunts are Walton-on-the-Naze, Charmouth and Isle of Wight. My dream is to find a lovely big megladon tooth....... cheers Dirk