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I like collecting fossils, but I usually am not sure what my finds are. Please, could you help me identify these fossils? I noted down some possibilities down below. 1 - could be a late Albian ammonite from central Serbia, but I am not entirely sure. Acquired in Serbia. 2 - Found at Southerndown, Wales. Could it be a tree root or something in the region of that? It has a cross-hatched pattern if you look closely. 3 & 4 - A shell I found at Penarth, Wales but I am not entirely sure what it is called. 5 - A bone I found in the mud at Tites Point, Severn, Gloucestershire. maybe a birds? 6 - Some shells I found in mudstone at Charmouth, England. Was found in the same stone as 7. 7 - wood I found at Charmouth? It was very crumbly and delicate. 8 - A Trilobite fragment possibly, Llanfawr quarries, Wales. 9 - A bivalve I found in Southerndown. Not sure what it is though.

Hello all! It's almost spring, and that means it's time for @Kane and me to alter the geography of New York state once again! Current plans are to start at Penn Dixie on April 26th, then off to the DSR area on Saturday. Sunday is a mystery still, but we're working on it. As always, anyone is welcome to come out and join in the destruction, er... fossil hunting. Last year was a heck of a thing, lots of good stuff was found, and I think everyone had a pretty good time. @Pagurus, @JamesAndTheFossilPeach , @Fossildude19 , @Malcolmt, @Jeffrey P (I'm sure there are more I'm forgetting off-hand.)

Fossils on Wheels received another generous donation to our education programs this week. TFF member @Herb sent us a box of super cool invertebrates. He sent us a diversity of fossils from the Southern US that cover a wide range of eras. These fossils will be given to students in fossil starter kits and used in hands-on activities. Herb's donation is also awesome because this pushes me to learning a lot more about invertebrate fossils. One of the best parts of teaching kids about natural history through fossil exploration is that I get to learn a lot. Good teachers learn and challenge themselves so they can challenge their students. I do not have a lot of knowledge about these types of animals but I am so excited to start learning. Among the fossils we received were- Mississippian Corals and Brachiopods from Kentucky, Crinoid stems and Silurian sponges from Tennessee, Cretaceous Gastropods from Texas, and Eocene Bivalves from Alabama. Thank you Herb for a generous donation that will get put to good use

I mentioned in a recent post that I was heading off into the field, or in this case the woods, again. It's getting to be a habit with me that I don't think to take my camera until it's to late, so, true to form, I forgot it again. This is why I've titled this with "Crate", since that's all I have to show for the trip to begin with. My plan was to go to my favorite Callovian site in order to finally fulfill my recurring dream of a large, well-preserved Bullatimorphites and/or Cadoceras ammonite. I always drive down to the end of a forestry road and park the car under the trees before I mosey off to the site, but this time it didn't quite pan out. The farther on I drove into the woods, the more the snow and ice had accumulated, so when I turned around and reversed into my parking spot, I noticed for the first time that I had to drive slightly uphill in order to complete the maneuver. Problem was that I couldn't, since the wheels were running on the spot and digging deeper into the quagmire every second. My head became immediately filled with visions of walking the 5 kilometers back to the next village in search of a tow truck or a frendly farmer, but after I'd settled down a bit, I decided that the best thing would be to get out of the car and assess the situation first. Fortunately, being a serious fossil collector, I always have a plethora of tools of all sorts in the trunk, so I selected my trusty pickaxe and spent the next half hour shaving the 5-inch layer of ice, mud and decaying leaves down to the gravel roadbed. Then, easing off in second gear, I managed to get back to dry land, so to speak. Thank goodness! It was at this point that I also decided that since I hadn't brought along my downhill skis, I would forgo slipping and sliding to a site which is more than likely still buried under a foot of snow. Fortunately this area has a good number of sites to chose from, so after a bit of driving around, I managed to find one on the hills of the Scheffheu which is pretty well free of snow and spent the rest of the day exploring and chipping out the odd fossil. This time it's a selection from the Aalenian and Bajocian of ammos and bivaves along with one belemnite, all of which need a good bit of prep.

The weather suddenly warmed up for a few days and started melting the snow, so I figured I'd grab the opportunity yesterday and check out the Geisingen area as long as the weather held. It's supposed to get colder again next week, so I thought I'd try to take advantage before more snow gets dumped on us. This was my first sojourn in over a month, so I was just glad to get out into the field, even if it didn't pan out much. I'd heard that a group had been digging with some success at the clay pit, so I thought I'd have a look-see to at least assess the situation there. It turned out that the spot where they had dug was pretty obvious, but the clay from above had slid down and buried it, which would make for a days work for a group of 4. I then decided to explore the old north end of the pit in the hopes that slips had perhaps created some new exposures, didn't find any though, so I doubled back down the east edge to a spot where I'd found some loose blocks in the distant past and started scratching around a bit. Luck was with me this time in the form of a nicely weathered block which gave up 3 well-preserved ammos and a few bivalves. I was needless to say already more than satisfied with these results, but since it was still early in the afternoon, I decided to check out a field nearby which had been productive in the past. I had noticed while driving past it on the way to the pit that it had been freshly plowed. This also turned out to be a good decision. I ended up after a couple of hours with a mini sack full of ammos in varying conditions of preservation, some in matrix, some free. All in all, it was a good day, so my itch has been stilled for another month or so, I would say. I didn't think to take my camera along again , so there are no in situ pictures, but I can at least provide you with a photo of the finds and I promise to post some of them once they're prepped.

I should have posted this long ago, but am going to do it now, in the hope that then it is behind me and then I can look forward to future adventures. Due to ill health from 2012, finances and responsibilities, I have been unable to do any personal collecting except for this one wonderful trip which reminded me that I've still got it in me. In October 2016 wifey and I were relaxing in a bar on Tarifa beach, the southernmost point in mainland Europe, located at the south-western corner of Spain, opposite Tangier, the two Pillars of Hercules that are the entrance to the Mediterranean from the Atlantic. I noticed an island connected to the mainland by a man made causeway. it had a lighthouse on and some ruins, so I thought that being only a little distance, I'd go and explore. Here is the location, to the left of the picture is the Mediterranean, to the right, the Atlantic. There are no more location pics, I'm afraid, as wifey can't be prised away from bars very easily and she has the camera phone, but the island was closed to visitors without a guide or permit as it's a place for protected birds, the lighthouse and Napoleonic fortress ruins. But to the left of the causeway was a small beach with exposed rocks and even a little notice board explaining that the rocks were a Miocene oyster bed 5 to 10 million years old. My interest was aroused so I clambered about the beach and found the fossils in the next post. Very pleased with myself, I was, especially as I had no tools and the rock was really seriously hard. Had to use other bits of rock as hammer and chisels. And my breathing held out pretty well. I can still do this! Life's Good.

Hello to everyone. I am studying Geology in the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and I am facing difficulties in passing the subject of Invertebrate Paleontology. This subject requires Identification of fossils both in power point but also live. Because of this I am interested in buying models (paper models, plastic models , whatever) of fossils. I have been told by my professor that some of the samples exhibited during classes were sold to the University a very long time ago by a well known shop which I will not name that sells such products. Sadly though I have not been able to find what I need. Since public advertising of such shops is against the forum's rules I would like to be informed by Personal message if necessary of anywhere I can purchase the fossils I need. Also I would be much obliged if someone could point me in the right direction without violating the forum's rules. Thank you in advance

Hello fossil experts! I am an underwater documentary filmmaker based in China. I came across a fossil wall in the underwater karst cave systems of Guangxi province this year and am hoping you can help shed some light on them for me, as I am admittedly not a fossil expert in any way. The fossil wall is approximately 25-40 meters underwater in the freshwater limestone cave systems in the mountains of central Guangxi province. I have not attempted to count them yet, and as far as I know no one has studying or catalogued them. The cave is well known in the cave diving community of China. But, as you can imagine, this is a pretty small community. I would appreciate any help identifying the type of fossils they may be, and any relevant information on approximate dates or the way in which they would have arrived in these cave systems. As I said, this in not my area of expertise, so all information is useful! (I am having attaching the photos with this post, so will attempt to post them separately) Thank you!

A bit of a weird trip yesterday. I combined two hobbies at the same time. You may have seen me wondering what fossil hunting was like on a boat. So I tried the desert version of a canoe: a mountain bike. This is part of the ongoing research on Fossils of Stansbury Island that @Earth Chemistry is conducting there (See thread here). I packed my bike and back pack and drove to the southern tip of the island. We had these layers down before my trip. Red is no fossils, green is fossils.

Hi all, Here are a gastropod and a bivalve that I found in Carniol, southeastern France this summer. They are from the "Gargasian", Aptian, Cretaceous. The pictures aren't fantastic, so if needed I can retake them. Thanks in advance, Max #1 A gastropod (surprisingly not a steinkern, but the shell itself!). Preservation is surprisingly good I find for something this old, especially taking into account the fact it's been replaced by pyrite!

Longtime lurker here. As my first post, this will be a trip report about mine and @UtahFossilHunter 's attempt to find the rumored fossils on Stansbury Island in the middle of the Great Salt Lake. The island isn't quite known for having fossils but the rocks are the right ages for this area. First, we consulted a geologic map of the area we wanted to look through. We used this map from a dissertation of a student at the University of Utah. We decided to go to the undifferentiated Mississippian this time. We had gone out to the area a few times. We had gotten skunked on the Ordovician Garden City Formation and undifferentiated Cambrian in early February. Although, it had a nice view so the hike wasn't for nothing. Both of those formations were empty of macrofossils. (Microfossil analysis coming soon!) So we went to an adjacent valley where a grassy hill sat where the undifferentiated Mississippian would outcrop. We saw a outcrop of phyllite but staying hopeful, we hiked to it looking for any fossils. At the outcrop, I flipped over a rock from one of the beds. Lo and behold, at last, some fossils, albeit slightly metamorphosed. This layer and only this layer is filled with bivalves and brachiopods. We grabbed some sizeable chunks and made are way out. Stay tuned for more progress on research here.

Hi all, Last weekend, there was an excursion organized by the Paleobiologische Kring (a fossil club here in the Netherlands) on the Zandmotor. As you know I had already been quite a lot of times on the Zandmotor, because it is my usual spot. But seeing that a few of my contacts, namely a fossil friend I had met at a fair, Thijs, as well as the curator of the natural history museum in Rotterdam Bram Langeveld (that I know pretty well), were going to the trip, I decided to join in just for the fun of hunting with others. Turns out that was a really smart decision, because their company brought me a lot of luck! The day started off with a small lecture by Bram about the Zandmotor and the finds that can be made there. For most people it was their first time on the Zandmotor, so the lecture was pretty useful for them. Then after that, we went onto the beach to start finding some fossils ourselves. We went from the south side of the beach (Monster), whereas I usually always come from the north side (Kijkduin) as it is closer to my house. The weather was absolutely ideal for fossil hunting. Not cold, but not very warm either. Very little wind, blue sky, few clouds, perfect. During the trip, nearly everyone was looking for mammal (mammoth and other megafaunal Ice Age species) bones. I was, along with two or three others, the only one also looking for shells. As soon as I got onto the beach, I already found a nice partial Mactra glauca, a pretty rare species. A good start already! It didn't take long before some people found mammoth bone fragments. During the hunt, I talked quite a lot to other hunters, especially to Bram and the other shell hunter. Very interesting discussions, I learned a lot of new little details about shell identification. Meanwhile, I was finding some of the most incredible fossil shells! Species that would normally be a trip-maker I found several of, and some beyond-rare species also flashed under my eyes. It was unbelievable how much I was finding! At the end of the hunt, because we went back to the starting point (south side), after having said bye to the others, I had to walk all the way to the north side, so I spent some more time looking, and that revealed even more finds. I couldn't believe how much I was finding! The sun was setting at the time I just left the beach, and that's also when the clouds started to thicken: While walking along the bike path towards the parking where my dad was waiting to pick me up, I made one last very surprising and definitely fun find: a great mammal vertebra! Just laying there on the side of the bike path in plain view. It was pretty sun-bleached, so it must have sat there for quite some time. I was surprised that no one had noticed it before me, but didn't complain either. I suppose another hunter had found it and accidentally left it there? Regardless, it was a fantastic way to finish up this incredible hunt. Apart from the sunset pic above, I didn't take any location (or in-situ) pics during the hunt. If you want to see some more pictures (and finds) from this location you can search the forum for "Zandmotor"; this should bring up some results of the trip reports I've previously made of some of my hunts (I only make trip reports of my most successful/interesting ZM hunts).

Would anyone have a PDF of the following publication? Anatomy of a Regional Mass Extinction: Plio-Pleistocene Decimation of the Western Atlantic Bivalve Fauna Steven M. Stanley PALAIOS Vol. 1, No. 1 (Feb., 1986), pp. 17-36 Thanks in advance! Mike

This all started over a year ago. I was selected as Member of the Month and a couple of TFF members from Texas invited me down to the big state to collect. I primarily collect in my home region, the northeast, but I've taken fossil forays to New Mexico, Kentucky, and Germany and was willing to consider a trip to Texas and the opportunity to visit some classic fossil sites and collect fossils that are outside my usual focus. I began planning this about ten months ago, contacted potential fossil collecting partners and did my own research on fossil sites, geology, and the types of fossils I would likely encounter. I had never been to Texas let alone fossil collected there. From the Forum I knew there was a lot of great hunting. Then there was all of the logistics, what to stay, what to bring. Since I wanted to bring back a lot driving appeared to be my best option, but I hadn't driven that far solo in over thirty years. Timing of my trip; mid-late September, came right after my daughter went away to college and I was in the middle of moving to a new place. So things couldn't have been more hectic. Finally, early in the morning on September 8th I set out. Things went okay until I was in Kentucky. Just as it was turning nightfall, torrential rain hit, traffic was stopped on the interstate for two and a half hours, and the last two hours of the trip I struggled with wet conditions and poor visibility. I finally arrived at my parents' house just after one in the morning. The next day on my way over to my sister's I took a small detour and stopped at an outcrop I was well familiar with in Leitchfield, the Upper Mississippian Glen Dean Formation.

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

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 (:

These are the most numerous former inhabitants(that can be seen with naked eye) in an area I'm studying. Cottonwood Fm, lower Permian, Flint Hills Kansas. There's an odd feature at the anterior end that may help ID it. Would these indicate shallow water environment?

As the missus is at work, I couldn't secure a ride to kickboxing training, and I don't have any assignments to grade (yet), why waste a perfectly lovely morning? So out I hiked to the area just beyond my backyard to poke around in the spoil hills. As I've pretty much picked the place clean, my expectations were low enough that I didn't think I'd come away with anything - which was fine as I would be surrounded by the sights, sounds, and smells of nature. The spoils were laid down over a dozen years ago, and nothing all that new gets exposed over time; rather, sand and sticky mud that bakes hard covers more rock, or weeds and saplings extend their territory. I didn't come away with anything spectacular. Apart from a fragment of a very rare trilobite in these parts, this year has been a bit of a bust at this site. Mixed with construction debris are plenty of lower and middle Devonian limestones and sandstones, many of those that have no reliable bedding planes, or are just filled with tiny brachiopods, some bryozoa, bivalves, etc. There are virtually no trilobites left, apart from tiny fragments here and there. But I did find some ok stuff to take back with me. First up would be these relatively large brachs. I don't usually encounter big brachs in Devonian rocks:

I know this is not Fossil ID, but can someone help me identifying these bivalves? I found it in Algarve. Thank you.

Please ID species. Found it in Algarve, Portugal (miocene, I guess). I would also ask you to please advise me how to preserve it. Shall I varnish it? Thank you.

I don't throw around the word "best" casually, but I think it's safe to say that my recent trip was one of the best in all my years collecting, if not the best. I spent the better part of five or six hours collecting at numerous different sites across western Maryland ranging in age from the lower Devonian to the lower Mississippian, so this is part one of my posts (for simplicity's sake I may include photos of most of my other finds from these sites even if I didn't collect them last go around). The trip started off okay. I visited a couple of my oldest sites that are some small roadside exposures of the Oriskany Sandstone and Mahantango Formation. These sites produced decent material in the past, but over the repeated years of collecting I seem to have worn them out as this time all I found were some brachiopods (including a decent Mucrospirifer sp. from the Mahantango site). I'll talk more about these finds later, but afterwards I found time to visit a new site in the Brallier Formation. By this point it had started to thunder, and while driving to the site the rain started to come in and fog filled up the valley. I thought it was the end of my trip, but as I got to the site it was pretty much dry. My best guess is that I was simply hearing a storm from way off in the distance. The site I visited, as I recently learned, might actually expose two different formations: the Brallier Formation and the Foreknobs Formation. The difficulty in discerning between the various upper Devonian formations in Maryland is multifold. First off, the MGS doesn't differentiate the Harrell, Brallier, and Scherr Formations, even on their most recent geologic maps. Second of all the literature around these deposits is scant and very dated. Most still use the (now) incorrect Woodmont and Chemung Formations, which further exacerbates problems as the Woodmont Formation consisted of the current Brallier and Scherr Formations, making it difficult for an amateur like me to really tell just which fossils occur in either formation. On top of this the contact between the Harrell, Brallier, Scherr, and Foreknobs is mostly gradational, so the differentiating layers lithologically is next to impossible as the beds gradually blend into one another. Generally speaking the Harrell is a dark shale with a fossiliferous limestone (the Tully Limestone) demarcating it's base, the Brallier is mostly dark, fissile shale with interbeds of siltstone, the Scherr is mostly lighter colored shale and siltstone with some sandstone beds, and the Foreknobs is a mixture of gray shales, red shales, conglomerate, sandstone, and siltstone. A guide fossil for the Brallier is the brittle star trace fossil Pteridichnites biseriatus, which was the fossil I originally set out to collect and found in the darker shale. Generally speaking the brachiopod genus Cyrtospirifer sp. in particular C. disjunctus is a guide fossil for the Foreknobs, but I believe this genus also occurs in the Brallier Formation. I found both fossils at this site, the brittle star in the dark shale and the brachiopod in a reddish siltstone, and considering the transition in rock types (one end of the site was just dark, fissile shale and the other had significant amounts of conglomerate and siltstone with shell beds) I think it's likely that the upper end of the cut was in the basal Foreknobs Formation and the lower end was in the upper layers of the Brallier Formation. As such, all of my trace fossils are from the Brallier and almost all of my other fossils are from the Foreknobs. The Brallier Formation is a late Devonian turbidite unit that was deposited in fairly deep water as the Acadian Mountains eroded. It is mostly unfossiliferous, but does have the occasional pelycopod, gastropod, and trace fossil (these being the most common). Ammonoids are also reported from the Brallier. Like I said earlier I originally came trying to find the brittle star trace fossil Pteridichnites but I ended up finding some other very interesting trace fossils. I picked up two of them because I had seen images of similar looking things from the Pennsylvanian of Alabama which I believe @Rockin' Ric labeled as resting traces from horseshoe crabs. These are late Devonian, deep water marine in origin, not terrestrial/freshwater from the Pennsylvanian, so I don't really know what they could be. Perhaps from some other arthropod? Anyways I also found some brittle star traces, including a group of what look to be four or five Pteridichnites biseriatus oriented in life position as if it were an imprint of the brittle star body. Image 1: Pteridichnites biseriatus Image 2: A group of four poorly preserved P. biseriatus Image 3: Unknown arthropod (?) trace fossil Image 4: Unknown arthropod (?) trace fossil If any of you guys know what the last two fossils are, please feel free to let me know.