Search the Community

During my trip to a Bond Formation Rock formation in Oglesby, Illinois on October 8th, 2022, one of the limestone blocks I found had a small reddish fossil sticking out on the side of the rock. It was about 2mm in length so pretty small. I thought it was interesting so I brought it back with the rest of the fossils collected that day. There was not a lot of room in my garage for the block so I put it outside on a supply bin for a while. The next couple of days, It rained ALOT. One day I remembered that the calcite in limestone dissolves in rain, so I went out that night to check on what could be revealed. I was pleasantly surprised at what I found! The rain had exposed more of the fossil to the surface. I believe it's a Chondrichthyan tooth or a piece of a brachiopod, but I'm not 100% sure so I was wondering anyone could give a proper ID for the specimen?

Just a weird impression I would have not looked twice at but it seems to have some material in it that would suggest it is actually a fossil instead of just geological weirdness.

"By looking at growth rings in the bones, the team found that Whatcheeria deltae got big fast and then slowed to a more leisurely but steady growth rate. All of the nine specimens they studied were older juveniles and young adults, Otoo said, so it seems that the animals bulked up to around 3.3 feet (1 meter) in length as they neared sexual maturity and then grew larger more slowly in later adulthood. " https://www.livescience.com/tetrapod-predator-growth Original article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-022-04079-0

Hello! I wonder if anyone would be kind enough to give me an opinion about this… It struck me as looking like fossilised driftwood? I’ll be totally honest, just because it looked so much like a modern piece of driftwood at the ends. The striations seemed weird for rock normal banding, layering. Also, there seems to be faded bands running at right angles to the striations on a couple of faces - which again seemed a wood-like feature? I’m very happy to be wrong though! I was lucky, the tide was just going out when I spotted it still wet - it’s fairly unremarkable dry. It’s from the coast in Fife, Scotland. The rocks in this spot are sandstone / mudstone / siltstone, from fluvial, palustrine and shallow-marine environment, from the Carboniferous. Thanks so much for your time and thoughts!

I need help 2 give an id 2 this fossil it is from The Mississippian age found in Harrodsburg Limestone Formation Washington County, Indiana On the tag is saying it is Orodus which wasn’t around at that time and wasn’t a Hybodont Someone Who works with lots of Carboniferous fossils said it could be a Saivodus root(maybe upside down) what do you think. The root/tooth is about 0.75 cm in size what do you think ? The bottom picture is a fossil of a Saivodus

Wondering about the squiggle in the middle. It is the first time I have seen anything like it. I can get a picture with a jewelry loupe in a bit.

This concretion opened up tonight. I'm not entirely sure what it is. I thought it might be a cross section of a small bone, but I could also seeing it being some weird pyrite formation - the site that this was collected at produces a lot of those. Any thoughts? A couple shots under a microscope.

Yesterday, I embarked on my second journey with the Austin Paleo Society to a famous spot: The Wilson Clay Pit. It's the site of a former clay quarry that was used for the production of bricks. Though it is in private hands, the land owners are very kind and allow fossil hunters to collect a diverse range of Pennsylvanian fossils on their property. One of prize finds from the pit is the highly-coveted Petalodus tooth. Some of y'all may remember me wishing to find one on my last trip to the Brownwood area, only to realize we weren't at the right sites to find them. Well, if there was a place to collect beautiful Petalodus teeth, it would be the Wilson Clay Pit. With that in mind, I excitedly set out on a starry night drive. When I arrived, the sun had just beaten me to Brownwood. Temperatures in Central Texas dropped off recently, so we were looking at a frigid day just above freezing. Everyone was covered head to toe in heavy duty winter wear. Nevertheless, optimism was high, so I didn't hear much complaining! When we got to the site, I was blown away by its dramatic terrain. All of the previous quarry work had created huge artificial mounds of gravel and slabs filled with a variety of vibrant colors. In my opinion, it didn't have the beauty of a natural landscape, rather, the inner fossil-hunter in me was simply in awe of the virtually limitless acreage of huntable ground. Exposed randomly throughout was the Harpersville Formation and Saddle Creek Limestone. After @erose gave us a brief introduction to the site, we all disappeared our own ways into the vast, maze-like property. Notice how there's no one else in the pictures? The pit is huge. If it weren't for the greenery, you might think it's Mars. Most people headed off to one side of the entrance or went straight to the back. I was drawn more to the opposing side where there was a huge mound to climb. My goal was to find a spot that hadn't been touched by previous hunters (some mentioned that the Houston club may have been there recently already), so I was trying to get to places a bit more tedious to reach. Crawling up the gravelly incline, I wiped out within the first ten minutes. Luckily, when I turned around, everyone was already gone . From there, things started off a bit slow. I was scanning the ground, picking up anything mildly interesting since it was all new to me. It took a thousand crinoid stems before my eyes locked onto the bright white color of what could be the "porcelain" appearance of enamel. Nope, just bird poop. This cycle repeated five times before I finally found my first undeniable chip of Petalodus! Lots of Petalodus chunks to be had. These are only the ones I decided to keep! I took this to be a sign that virgin ground was finally reached and immediately got to being more thorough in my search. Pretty soon, the tiny teeth bits became more common than the bird poop and my intensity increased accordingly. After a solid 15 minutes of following the cookie crumbs, I was met with a sight that stole my breath. Before me lay a stone with a giant Petalodus perfectly prepped by natural weathering. It was a hundred times better than what I had expected coming into the day. I quickly snapped a photo and got to carefully packaging it in my backpack. Already, my trip was made. An awesome Petalodus specimen. The tooth is about 45 mm across and 54 mm from top to bottom. The day was still young, so I got back up and went to searching. I think my eyes were only attuned to sharky things as those were what I was picking up the most. My bias towards white objects paid off even more as I accumulated a small collection of Deltodus fragments. I like that their white color contrasts nicely with the black Deltodus I found in my last PSoA trip. Halfway through the day, I looped back around to the entrance where I decided it would be best to drop off my prize find, in case I wiped out again later. Because of my vertebrate success from earlier, I set myself to make some invertebrate finds and give balance to my collecting. I found that the purple layer was invertebrate rich and had heard of the possibility for crinoid calyxes, trilobites, conularids, and more. Climbing up and sliding down the purple slopes was blast. There was often something new to reward the effort and my pockets were quickly heavy with brachiopods, crinoid material, and horn corals. This is not edited. The stuff really is this purple. Unfortunately, I wasn't making any out of this world finds on the invertebrate side, so I instead continued my search while also hiking around the entire perimeter of the pit. The eastern border extended pretty far. As I traveled that way, I noticed more and more chert covering the ground. Some had mentioned arrowheads being found on that side of the property, but I didn't see much worked material. As I circled around, I decided to say screw it with the inverts and go back to searching for teeth. I began inspecting rocks of similar appearance to the ones in which I had found teeth before and made a breakthrough. I couldn't believe it when I spotted the crowns of two decently sized Petalodus poking out of two separate boulders. Unfortunately, the limestone was very tough and I knew that getting them out without shattering them would be nearly impossible. My time would be better spent looking for more accessible ones; if there were two that could be found just like that, then surely there were many more nearby. After showing the teeth to Brian, another PSoA member, we both went on a quest to find a perfect specimen that could pop out. As I travelled up the adjacent mound, I did find a decently sized Petalodus, though most of the crown was missing from weathering. It came out in one piece, but I decided to give it away. Not so long after, I followed up with a beautiful smaller tooth that was entirely burnt orange. In my excitement, I forgot to take an in situ pic and immediately began planning a method of attack. Of course, such an awesome find just had to be buried under a thorn bush. Brian was a great help, pulling away the thorny branches so I could get in and make some swings with the hammer and chisel. It took some work, but the durable limestone eventually gave way and the chunk with the tooth came out. After gathering myself, I noticed that some of the root had splintered off. I did manage to locate one piece of it, but the rest was nowhere to be found. Can't win em all, but still happy with it nonetheless. Another beautiful Petalodus. This one is 37 mm wide and 33 mm tall. By then the sun was setting. Most of the group had already gone home, so it was just me, Brian, and Melvin atop the mound. We had some nice discussion, but I think we were all a bit worn out from a day's worth of running around this fossil hunter's paradise. The weather, too, had gotten tired of strangling us with cold, and a final gentle breeze flowed passed the hilltop. God rays poked out from the Westerly clouds to illuminate the distant expanse of greenery I hadn't noticed until then. The moment was nice. After saying our goodbyes, I was a little dejected seeing that I would soon no longer live in Austin and would thus miss out on a lot of future club activities. PSoA has got a really great community, and I'm glad I was there to experience a bit of it firsthand. Luckily, they do have a lot of trips far away from Austin, so I'm sure we will meet again for a future adventure, someday, once they travel close by my neighborhood. Until then, here are some pics of my finds from my latest PSoA field trip: Petalodus ohioensis? teeth Bryozoans, horn corals, and fusunilids Archaeocidarid plate, crinoid arm (Delocrinus) and stem, and a couple of oddities (perhaps conularid or Poterioceras cephalopod fragments?) Straparollus? gastropod and some gastropod from the order Bellerophontida Whole lot of brachiopods. I think bottom center is Meekella. Is that rare? I only found one. Big purple bivalve Shark family photo Thanks for reading!

I spotted this on the outside of a concretion this week while sorting some buckets. It looks to me like it is possibly a wing, but it's pretty water worn so it could also just be a suggestively worn fern pinnule. I was hoping for a second opinion. @Nimravis @stats @deutscheben @RCFossils @Mark Kmiecik @flipper559 Thanks. A couple shots under a microscope.

I collected this fern from the Middle Pennsylvanian of eastern Illinois. It is not a form I recognize. Do any of the plant enthusiasts here have any thoughts?

Maybe disarticulated calix plates? Maybe bivalve/mollusks? The pattern continues in the agate surrounding the bumpy areas. In a creek Burlington chert maybe.

I had this concretion open today. I immediately noticed what I believe is a coelacanth scale, but on closer inspection there looks to be some other bits that might be related. Any thoughts? @jdp @RCFossils

This is the second part of my post describing my recent fossil hunting trip with @Tales From the Shale in Utica, of which it was awesome!!! So after visiting the abandoned clay pit, we decided to go to another location in Utica one might not expect to be productive - the former peabody coal company Pit 15 (or at least its outskirts), located not to far away from Lake Shannon, Kankakee County, Illinois (I'm am not going to tell the specific route or address so the area doesn't end up being picked clean). We went there as I had heard a report that a while ago, someone found a sizable Cladodus (or cladodont labeled as Cladodus) tooth at Pit 15 itself. At the top of the outskirts of the Pit was truly Beautiful!!! I expected to find simply nodules in the area. What I found instead were a staggering amount of different rocks with a descent portion containing fossils, most of brachipods though. As the area was once a mine, I've somewhat come up with a theory as to why this is - when the mines were closed, the pit was filled not just with nodule containing rocks but by all the types of rocks available in the Utica area ranging from shale to clay to limestone, likely either Ordovician or Carboniferous in age. It's still a pretty productive site and I've recently analyzed many of the specimens with a microscope and dissecting scope and I hope to get some IDs from them! Here's a possible shark spine I found there!

Formation: Bangor Limestone Age: Mississippian Found this location in a remote area of Alabama recently. I Haven't hunted the Bangor in awhile, so I gave it a shot. A fragmentary calyx. Northern Alabama seems to be teeming with these, as I found 8 others in a nearby locality as well. A complete, but squashed roller of a Kaskia? Fenestrella are found commonly articulated with their fans here. This was the best individual I found. My guess is these are Spyroceras? All of my nautiloids come from the Ordovician, so these are unqiue for me. I'm not certain I know what these are. Could be a bryozoan? Bacterial structure? Steinkern? These are sponges I believe, species unknown. Composita brachiopods: Unknown productids: Next are some new brachiopods I have yet to identify. Oh, and here is a brachiopod with an exposed brachidium. Finally here are some blastoids with weird preservational attributes.

Hi people, I have a query regarding the contents of some siderite nodules from a Duckmantian fossil forest site in N Wales for my PhD project. I had thin sections made of parts of several nodules and they all seem to have an abundance of 'faecal pellets'; rounded, often curved (banana-ish) shaped, mostly stratified pellets. These pellets have been replaced by siderite (FeCO3) and sometimes include pyrite and seem to have been the locus for early sulphate reduction by bacteria before conditions arose for the siderite precipitation. I've attached SEM images of the thin sections showing some of these pellets. We have only found a couple of fragments of crustaceans (Euproops I believe) and the host sediments were fine sands and silts. All the images show individual pellets with scale bars but "pellet5" is a zoomed out image showing the abundance of the pellets. They are all replaced by an Fe-rich siderite and are all quartz free. "pellet6" is different with a mottled texture and some potential apatite mixed in. Let me know if anyone has seen similar textures before and/or what could have made them! The palaeoenvironment was purely freshwater with meandering river systems, with a dynamic lycopod dominated fossil forest ecosystem. pellet3.pdf pellet2.pdf pellet1.pdf pellet5.pdf pellet4.pdf

I found some time this past weekend while passing through to take a look at a small stream cut exposing cyclothem layers of marine limestone and swamp coal in east central Illinois. Here are some fossils I found from the marine rocks. Bond formation. Offshore sediments, deep water. Ditomopyge sp. UV Lophophyllidium Not sure what these are. These are magnified. Each one about the size of a grain of sand. Assuming they are crinoidal. Any help with ID appreciated. Very tiny tooth measures <.5mm. The acrodin cap is characteristic of an actinopterygian, but I don't know if it can be identified any further than that. Thanks for looking.

I understand that scallops did not come about until Jurassic so can’t be what this is but I am not sure what it might be. Early Carboniferous, Burlington limestone ish maybe Fernglen? By my thumb in the first picture. Through a jeweler’s loop.

I recall not too long ago there was a pretty interesting scientific article published in the Journal Science describing how scientists analyzed the amount and diversity of chondrichthyan denticles in ichthyoliths from the North and South Pacific dating from around 20-19 million years ago and discovered a sharp drop in the number and diversity of denticles around 19 million years ago, indicating a massive extinction took place which took sharks 2 to 5 million years to somewhat recover from (it's still unknown if this impacted chondrichthyans worldwide or just in the pacific). Here's the paper: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaz3549 E. C. Sibert, L. D. Rubin, An early Miocene extinction in pelagic sharks. Science 372, 1105–1107 (2021). But after reading it, I remembered how the Mississippian and somewhat Pennsylvanian periods of the Carboniferous era have been called the golden age of sharks due to the sheer diversity of chondrichthyan genera alive at that time. http://www.elasmo-research.org/education/evolution/golden_age.htm What I'm wondering is does this paper, in revealing this early miocene extinction event, inadvertently also reveal that the period immediately prior to the event was a second "golden age" for the chondrichthyans?

Starting in 2021, I've been going fossil hunting around the Mazon Creek area in Grundy County, Illinois. The site I visit the most so far is the fairly large Mazonia-Braidwood State Fish and Wildlife Area and at first, I would barley find anything. Then after visiting Monster Lake and another secret location in the area, I started finding more fossils. However, most are around 2-7 cm. In length and I'm still having difficulty getting IDs for them? Would anyone be able to help ID them? I think this could be some sort of Chondrichthyan or a lobe finned fish? Maybe part of a dragonfly wing or a plant? Plant fossil - Genera unknown currently? I don't know what this could be? The specimen here looks almost like a plant fossil. Worm fossil - genera unknown currently.

On Saturday I went fossil hunting with @Tales From the Shale in Utica, LaSalle County, Illinois! We drove for some time looking for roadcuts when we discovered an abandoned clay pit not too far away from the town itself. I learned later its rocks date to the Pennsylvanian period of the Carboniferous era. There were also a bunch of nodules there too, but mostly it was stark shale and Excello shale. We opened the shale rocks up and we found a massive amount of small fossil imprints. But we also found some likely Chondrichthyan spines which I was wondering if anyone could ID the genera? This first specimen I found after breaking open a large piece of Stark Shale. I asked @Tales From the Shale for an ID and he said it very likely a Listracanthus spine. Here is the specimen under a dissecting scope!!! The striations typically seen on chondrichthyans like Listracanthus or Cladodus are more visible here, but I'm a bit unsure if these could be matched to either of these genera?

Hello, found what I think are nautiloids and brachiopods. I found the rock in a stream and I can't say what limestone (maybe brush creek or pine creek), but the area is Glenshaw Formation in northern Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. It's quite difficult for me to get good pictures, let alone good pictures with scale, so I'll tell you that the first two pictures are 2 cm (same organism), the second is 5.5 cm and the largest Nautilus in the last pictures is about 6 cm. All information is appreciated, thanks!

Hi! My name is Evelyn! I'm from South Jersey. Over the weekend I happened upon a fossil bed up north where you were allowed to find your own fossils, and while I was leaving (empty handed, but expected so not disappointed), someone approached me and asked if I had found anything. After saying no, he handed my friend and I four fossils of which I know absolutely nothing about. While my friends and I had always been interested in paleontology in general (with my main interest in amber), this finally made me want to learn more about paleontology. When I say I know nothing, I mean absolutely nothing. I don't understand the time scales, or what ANY of this means: http://www.njfossils.net/. So if you can help me get started I'd greatly greatly appreciate it. As I said earlier, my main interest and focus is in arthropods and amber. Does anyone know if you're able to mine for amber yourself? I've looked into it maybe once before and learned NJ had (or has?) a famous amber reserve, so I may have luck here. I also don't know what kind of critters can be found where. Like where in the world things can be found (such as scorpions, are they restricted to a certain part of the world? Or can everything be found anywhere? Is there any sort of range maps?). I really want to find insect fossils but I've got no clue what I'm doing, lol. Where do I look? I've picked up pieces here and there of things called "formations", but when googling them I just see really broad squares over multiple states, so I'm a little confused... I'm sorry if this is the wrong place to be asking questions, I'm really really new to everything here and I don't often post in forums, and when I do I usually have some sort of knowledge about what I'm doing, but I'm completely in the dark here. I hope to befriend many of you! And thank you for having read through all that text, lol. Evelyn

On Saturday, I went on a fossil hunting trip with @Tales From the Shale in the area of Utica, LaSalle County, Illinois. After some time driving and looking for roadcuts, we discovered an abandoned clay bed/outcrop not too far away from the town itself. There, we discovered an absolutely massive amount of shark spines and teeth! I would like to know if anyone could properly ID some of the specimens we found!! \ This is one of the best shark spines I found at the site!!! It does look somewhat like the spine of Listracanthus, but I'm not 100% sure!! Possible Crusher plate tooth or maybe the bottom part of a large cladodont? Likely fish teeth or denticles, but I'm don't yet know what species/genus this could belong to? I really don't know what this could be? Maybe some sort of mineral or a fish head? Truly beautiful chondricthyian tooth in a clay matrix!!! However, I still don't know what specific group it could belong to? Maybe it could be a large crusher plate?

Howdy! Found this little critter today in Allegheny county, Pennsylvania. It is Pennsylvanian, Glenshaw Formation, probably Brush Creek Limestone. It's a bit different from the ones I'm used to finding and I don't see anything similar in my guides. It is approximately 1.75 cm x 1.25 cm. Even if it can't be ID'd I'd appreciate it if someone could tell me if it's brachiopod or bi-valve. Thanks in advance.

Went to one of my local spots in the northern part of Davidson County last weekend and found a few unknown things within the shale. I know the strata is Chattanooga Shale and the era is from the Mississipian period, but these things are very different from what I have found in other areas of the same strata. Anybody familiar with these? Thank you.