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Firstly apologies for the lateness of this post, spent a week down in Lyme Regis from the 17th of December. Was out most evenings and some mornings due to the tide times, however i found hunting at night just as productive and with a lot less competition! The weather had been incredibly rough and was a bit unsettling at night when you could hear parts of the cliff falling down! The first few nights i mainly found ammonites and a few pieces of rolled bone (no photos of these, can put some up if anyone wishes me too) Best find was a partial ichthyosaur rostrum from below the Black Ven. Unfortunately no teeth and it has been very well rolled! None the less i was most pleased to find it. Found a couple more nice sized ammonites covered in pyrite and one well worn vertebra. See attached images. If anyone would like anymore photos please do not hesitate to ask. All in all a good week. Thanks for reading.

Here’s another old prep that I finished up today. This is another from the old collection with no information. So, if anyone knows what these are (besides ammonites ) or where they are from I’d be grateful for the help. This is how it came out from the pile on the back of the shelf. I had done a small amount of prospective scribing but not much.

A part of my callovien stage collecting

Here’s one of my rarer finds. Maybe not for the genus itself, but the size. I found this right when I very first started collecting, I took it home, and glued it up. A few months back I was having a clear up, and found it in a draw, not remembering what it what. I then popped it open again to see what was inside, as you can see, it was quite the mess, and was definitely a reverse prepper. Aroun 8 hours later and here she is in all her glory. A 4 inch Pseudolioceras Boulbiense. A rather rare size, usually they come around 2 inches at the most. Hope you all enjoy

Hello I am not a new member but thought I would reintroduce myself Its been a while since I was on here. I have been mega busy and not had time for fossils or collecting. I logged in for the 1st time last week and manage to get a day on the Holderness coast today. Access is really tough, not been for a few years and the car park at East Newton is blocked off, I guess the landowner got fed up of people not paying. Such a shame as it was great beach access. In the end we had to slide down sloppy cliffs. Managed to find a good sized Hildoceras so not a complete flop of a day

Last weekend we went on a fieldtrip to the coast of Northern France. On Saturday morning we went to the beaches of “Cap Blanc Nez” to search for late Cretaceous ammonites in the chalk, although a lot of the beach was covered in sand, we did find quite a few specimens ( Manteliceras and Schloenbachia ) The rise of the tide forced us to leave the beach around 1 pm where we took a break in a local tavern / restaurant. After our lunch we got a little further south to visit late Jurassic deposits. Here finds were scarcer, but here my girlfriend made a terrific find. She had always dreamed to find some Jurassic marine reptile fossils, and this time she did. She found 3 Ichthyosaur vertebrae in connection and in situ on the beach. We also had a nice chat with a local collector who gave us a nice echinoid he found earlier that day. When the sun started to set we went back to our car, just in time to avoid some heavy rainfall. Too tired to make the drive back home we spent the night at a small hotel and went back for a hunt on Cap-Blanc-Nez on the Sunday morning. The first find I made was a rare Cymatoceras Nautilus . This one made my day. Further on the beach we met some fellow fossil collectors hunting for ammonites and we exchanged some info on our finds. Again around 1pm we were forced to leave the beach due to the tide coming up, but with the bags filled with nice fossils to bring back home. 1Sst day on the Cap: Cephalopods in situ: A vieuw on the other side of the channel: White clifs of Dover. 2nd stop: Pointe aux oies: Some Atlantic wall remains: The verts in situ : end of the day: Day 2 , back to Cap Blanc Nez: An overvieuw on most of our finds: and a few pieces after cleanup and prepping: Cheers, Kevin

sorry again, i dont know what the species of these specimens are and also sorry for some reason parts of the photos were cropped and made smaller i think its because i put too much on there so they had to cut down the file size (:

It happens every year. My birthday. We decide to disappear into Northern Alberta along the banks of the Little Smoky and Smoky Rivers. The weather was not warm, but at least it was not snowing like it was during this same weekend in southern Alberta. Mornings started out about -4C and warmed to +6C by the time we were trudging home with our packs full of treasures. Baculites and Scaphites were our targetted fossils, although clams were not ignored. It never seems to get any easier. The first day on the Little Smoky was the easiest on our bodies, but the mud bog for about 500 yards going in was at test on the Rav4 we'd elected to use as our mode of transportation. The driver, not totally familiar with wilderness/oil lease roads made his own decision to push through so we just urged him on (by yelling "give 'er, give 'er, don't stop!") until we came out at the top of the hill. Coming back through it at the end of the day was better as it was more downhill and we (2 passengers) elected to walk along the road and dodge the mud slinging out from under the Rav4. Okay, Day 1 - check. Day 2 was a drop down into a gorge on the Smoky River, below a friend's cattle ranch. We hadn't been there for a couple years and the dead fall and thorns were a wonderful treat to awaken our senses. A few scaphites depressus were found and a couple baculite stacks. Oh, and a wonderful negative that I photographed and another I brought back. There was also a river otter that wasn't too happy with me being in his area. The climb back up the gorge to the ranch was not any easier despite having placed surveyor flagging on a few trees. Day 2 - check. Day 3 brought us down to the Smoky River further downstream from the previous day. Lots of walking, lots of bear scat but very little evidence of fossils. We did find a few clams. We need a good slump to expose more of the fossil layer so won't head back to this area for a couple years.

Had a pretty fun day here in San Antonio, started off by meeting Dan, talked for a little while before he moved on to go scout some other areas, moved down a ways and found a mosasaur vertebrae (my first), and then a pachydiscus (also a first for me) had to leave for a while but came back and found more pachydiscus chunks and then a giant pachydiscus that I had almost stepped on probably 10 times or more.

I would be very greatful if someone could link me to the artists polish/coating they use to preserve and give ammonites a nice shine. I bought beeswax but it came in a large block and melting will be too messy each time. Also the links to buy paraloid and acetone for presevation of bone material. I dont want to buy the wrong thing. online or amazon if possible! Cheers

Last week I was contacted by Neil Landman at the AMNH regarding ammonites of the Corsicana Formation of South Texas. Before the sites were built over, I kept in mind that any and all ammonite finds might be significant from that formation, and noticed that Kenedy and Cobban showed a different ammonite fauna from the same formation in North Texas. While North TX Corsicana is dominated by Sphenodiscus, South Texas Corsicana is dominated by pachydiscids. I had a bunch of diagnostic partial Discoscaphites (conradi?), pachydiscids, Sphenodiscus sp. as well as complete Eutrephoceras c.f. dekayi nautiloids in my remaining surplus, and Neil seems quite pleased to be receiving them this week. Coupled with a bunch of similar donations made to the MMNS and available on loan, Landman's helpers will have a good sampling available to gain a better understanding of certain ammonite ranges in this poorly exposed interval of Upper Cretaceous in South Texas. 3 tips wash out of this exercise. 1) Teach yourself what is significant and what isn't wherever you collect. 2) Don't let bias for pretty fossils keep you from picking up diagnostic partials of anything that might be significant. 3) Take home enough for you AND for science whenever possible for the ultimate win-win.

Hello, I am traveling to the Waco and Austin Texas areas and was wondering if there are any easy to get to sites for echinoids and ammonites? Thanks, Dan

Monday was Labor Day, a holiday. I was going to be off work and home alone. I woke up early for a day off really motivated to get up and get out to the North Sulfur River (NSR), but I was feeling a bit lazy. I didn’t want to wear myself out too much. I am on call all week and being worn out isn’t a good way to start being on call if you have to stay up all night working. I had not been out to the NSR since June, because I nearly did myself in last trip with heat exhaustion. I had plenty of fluids, but the 100 degree heat with no shade was too much for me. Anyway, the weather on Monday was pretty decent. The heat was bearable. Rain was in the forecast. There was a tropical storm spinning off inland and we were having storms from that. I got ready and drove the 1:20 minutes to my favorite bridge outside of Ladonia. I arrived about 9:00. Rain was predicted to start about 11:00. I didn’t know how bad it would be or how long it would last. So, I figured I had about 2 hours to get some hunting in. Entering the NSR can be a challenge along most of the section of river which was channeled back in the early 1900s. The banks are about 30 feet high and mostly vertical. Normally I enter from the south side of the bridge, but it seems everyone I know who goes there enters from the north side. I thought I’d try that entrance for once. I parked my car along a narrow path next to the guardrail near the bridge. I got out and got my gear ready. Before putting on my pack I walked out to the edge of the precipice of the bank and looked down to the riverbed 30 feet below. To my left was the bridge. I saw a ridiculously steep (80 degrees) path, if you could call it that, plummeting down into the river. I thought “No way! You’ve got to be kidding me!!!” It looked more like a wash and going down it would be more like falling or repelling if I had a rope. There was no way I could come back up that with a 40-50 pound pack. Plus I didn’t have a rope with me. Hum, maybe I need to add rope to my NSR gear list. I am not a rock climbing type girl. I am around a soft 50% marshmallow consistency. There isn’t a whole lot of muscle on me. I am all adventure and no brawn. This is a picture of the river from the top of the bank. IT is not the best pic, but you get the idea that it is a long way down. You can't really see the wash, but it starts behind the pillar on the left and runs behind that bush straight down to the bottom. I turned to walk back to my car and drive over to my usual entrance, but as I turned I saw an opening in the dense undergrowth. I walked towards it. There was a rope tied to a tree at the top of the hill. It was strung downhill and attached to another sapling 20 feet below. It wasn’t much of a rope, less than 1 cm thick with infrequent, small knots of maybe 1 cm in size. They would not be much to grab onto. It would help getting down for sure and it looked strong enough, but man was it steep (60 degreeish)!! It was really steep for about 20 feet or so and then leveled off for a bit and then there was some concrete rubble in the wash that ran along the path. From the level area you had to drop down about 3 feet and then walk the rubble to the riverbed. There was only one sizeable (2 inches) sapling to grab at or break your fall with on the 20 foot part. There were numerous saplings and a poison ivy vine that were ¼- ½ inch thick. There was a rebar type stake sticking up about 8 inches from the ground maybe 5 feet down the hill, I assume for a foothold of sorts. It looked like someone had tried to notch some steps into the hill with a shovel every 3 feet or so, but they were eroded so barely of any use anymore. I think I must be crazy, or ridiculously overdue for an adventure. It has been 3 months since I’d been to the NSR after all. I decided to go ahead and try it. I hoped I would not live to regret my choice. I went and got my pack, which was already about 15 pounds with my 4 pound sledge hammer, rock hammer, drinking fluids, my 40 caliber pistol (protection from wild hogs) and other gear. I put my pack on and walked to the edge of the hill. I took one step and slid. I was wearing tennis shoes with only a little tread. I turned around, went back to my car and put on my hiking boots. I tried going down the hill facing forward, but couldn’t do it. So I turned around and grabbed the rope and wrapped it around my hand and began to lower myself down backwards. In retrospect I can see I clearly did not think my exit strategy out. I will post another part in a couple minutes..

Got a chance to get off of work early so I hit a new creek I wanted to check out. I'm glad I did. I was only out for maybe 2 hours. These are my first ammonite and echinoid finds and now I want more!! I'm not use to creek hunting as I'm use to road cuts and mountain terrain

Went out on a hunting trip at the weekend, and came away with quite a few decent finds. These are all in-land finds from locations near Ilminster, and the finds are all from the Toarcian pediod (182-174m years ago). Please forgive me having forgotten most of the names of the ammonites, I'm not great at remembering them. This ammonite, a Dactylioceras of some kind, is covered in clay which is absolutely full of what appear to be trace fossils from worm activity. This isn't uncommon, but I've rarely seen such a vivid example. Close up: The rear of this large, crushed harpoceras is a jumble of mixed up fossil bits, which you often find in the various layers of the beacon limestone. Top left there is quite an interesting bit of shell, which looks as if it might perhaps be part of a crushed teuthid phragmocone. A nice little double-dac. This is one of the scarcer ammonites from this location (I've forgotten the name), especially at this large size. I have one or two locations I can go to and stand a chance of finding these. They are often heavily re-worked, and this specimen was obviously exposed after fossilisation and heavily rolled on the seabed. It's structurally sound, but the shell - which seems to have been originally preserved - has been almost completely worn away. Such a shame!

Some triasic ammonite for exchange! EU.

Hello, I am Richard from Chinese Camp CA. I live atop the Mariposa Formation which is late Jurassic. I try to go fossil hunting every weekend. The quality of fossils is not great, but I regularly find ammonites and buchia, and less often belemnites (and a few oddities I haven't identified). I was born in England and found an ammonite when 5 or 6. I've loved fossils since them (I'm 50) and take my son out hunting for them regularly. I spent 11 year in the US Navy on submarines, and the last 20 at a research lab. To all of you: Best of luck collecting, learning, and enjoying fossils! Richard