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It has taken me 8 months to finish this prep! Now, thats not working straight through, I have had a lot of other things requiring my time, but I finally finished the prep and reconstruction of the original material! I will post through the phases of this, from the start... This is an indeterminate rib I recovered from the Hell creek formation, on a private ranch near Lemmon SD last year. From what I have learned is that there is not enough diagnostic morphology to distinguish between an Edmontosaurus and a ceratopsian when its not associated with more of the skeleton. This is the rib, after exposing the surface limits. About half was exposed before I started work. Its on a very steep hillside, so I couldnt change position to photograph it without my shadow in the way. I was really hoping the float on the left beside my hammer was the rib head, but it turned out to be a partial, separate rib. It also turned out to be going 180 degrees the wrong way from the body of the rib. I jacketed and extracted the rib, then collected all the float material beside it and at the bottom of the slope. It took me 12 hours to remove it from the jacket and do the rough prep of the first 3 sections (the proximal end), which were the most intact pieces. The matrix is a claystone, so it wasnt terrible to work through, but the bone was pretty weak and highly fractured. With the matrix removed Very highly fractured bone. I had to soak in a lot of butvar just to take it out. Even heavily consolidated, It still was too fragile to remove as a single piece, so I softened the glue everywhere there was a large gap. That actually worked out really well because then I could concentrate on small portions. The sections go right to left, top to bottom. The distal end on the bottom left, and proximal on top right. The start of prep on the first 3 sections. These were the easy pieces to prep. There was so much minutia work to rebuild these first sections. Complete separation of every fracture so that 100% of the matrix and consolidant can be removed in order to get the pieces to fit as well as possible. "Breaking" fossils in order to put them back together feels frustrating, but the result is so much better. I'm pretty sure this has a healed fracture. There appears to be a line of bone remodelling with a noticeable deviation in rib angle. Of course, part of the modern break goes right through the bone repair though. The process of cleaning, separating, blasting away 100% of the matrix in order to reassemble, continued, section by section. Some sections had a lot of tiny pieces. The sections were reassembled, there were still gaps, so I used a nice "Hell creek brown" paleosculp to fill the cracks and provide further stabilization. This would be the toughest portion for me. You can see that after cleaning and positioning the 2 parts that this was actually missing a lot of material. There was one, tiny spot of original connecting bone to give me a true spot work from. Otherwise it would have been pure guesswork. I started with gluing the one true spot, and then packing a core of epoxy putty for stability. There was no way I could have handled it with just the tiny glue point. I had used the brown epoxy to filling all the tiny separations to give it a more natural look, but there were a few spots of missing bone. Since I would be recreating those missing parts, I decided to use a grey epoxy to stand out and say "this is not original". I outlined all the sections that were reassembled, just to give a visualization. I counted 82 pieces, but I know from some of the earlier pictures that there were a lot of tiny bits that arent counted. It was likely over 100 elements in this. I kept the fossil in 2 sections until the very end to make working with it easier. The final joint was a very clean and straight break so I knew it would be simple glue. Using the good old 3rd-hand sand bucket, I made the final glue joint. Even though the top section was able to balance, I held the joint for several minutes, then added a couple strips of tape to final stabilization while the glue had 24 hours to fully cure. And finally, today, here is the completed rib! It feels special since I did every step from exploration, discovery, excavation, jacketing, preparation and reconstruction. Even though the original material prep is complete, I still have work I want to do. I'm excited to fabricate a new head and then weld an armature stand for display. I'm highly tempted to make a mold and cast once the head is complete, but that's a lot of latex and resin ($$$)

During my trip to the Hell creek formation of South Dakota last year, I found this large rib weathering out of a hillside ("cliff side" is a better description). I jacketed what was still in situ, and collected all the surface float at the site, and at the bottom of the cliff it was in. The length in the jacket was 32 inches. Can't determine which species this rib belongs to, most likely from Edmontosaurus or Triceratops, but it will have to remain indeterminant. After removing the excess matrix in the jacket, I discovered that the rib was far more fractured than I thought. Because the rib ended up being pinched by the jacket, I had to remove it in sections instead of a single piece. That worked out for the best anyway, for prepping it in my blast box. I have 40 hours into the removal and gross cleaning of the sections. Another 10 hours and still counting for separating all the breaks and cleaning out all the matrix in between bits so that everything can be reassembled properly. It looks like the rib has a healed fracture, but of course, one of the modern breaks goes through the remodeled bone. The jacketed portion looks to be the main shaft of the rib, only missing a few centimeters of the distal tip, based on the the end has thinned and flattened. The collected float should be the majority of the head, but reconstruction of that will be much harder. I wish I had a cast of a complete rib head to correlate the bits of float to their original position.

This unknown rib was recovered a couple months ago from a private ranch near Faith, SD. I haven't had time to start work on it until a couple days ago. I'm keeping track of my hours on this one just out of curiosity. I never tracked the work on any previous prep projects. So this was found partially exposed with a number of pieces found as float at the bottom of the hill. Everything surface was collected, then the rest of the rib was jacketed to remove. It took me 3 hours to uncover and remove it from the jacket, and then 5 hours separate and clean the pieces of the first section. 12 hours total to clean 3 sections, and then another 3 hours for the micro cleaning and reassembly of those sections. Its only going to get harder, because much of the rest of it looks to be heavily crushed and displaced. It also looks like there is a healed fracture to this rib, but of course, the modern break goes through the remodelled bone.

I am interested in buying this piece of what is advertised as skin. From South Dakota, pretty tiny piece (tape measure in inches). Seller says it is a positive impression, but the grooves are small. My only concern is the color? Is that usual of hadrosaur skin impressions? Im buying on the contract that I can return if it is not how I hoped, but I don’t want the seller to have to ship it only for me to return it so I figured I’d ask first.

Hello everyone! I'm going to start posting fossils individually, to gain more traction on the forum. I'll post a few fossils I am worried are fake or composite today, then repost any fossils I have yet to receive identification for with higher-quality images in about a week. I bought this Edmontosaurus tooth fossil from a somewhat unreliable website online. Is it real? If any of you need more high quality photographs, please tell me. Also, as I don't know where else to post this, I purchased this Tarbosaurus claw replica a while ago. Do any of you know which digit it comes from? Thank you and hope you have a good day!

Hello everyone! I recently acquired the attached fossil as a jaw fragment (with additional bone) of Lambeosaurus lambei. It's supposed to be from the Hell Creek Formation - at any rate, it was found between Jordan and Fort Peck Lake in Montana, and I have no reason to doubt this information. From what I understand, however, L. lambei is a little earlier than Hell Creek and the very existence of lambeosaurs in Hell Creek is a matter of some debate. I've now wondered if there's any obvious reason why this couldn't be a jaw fragment of Edmontosaurus annectens instead. As I'm a complete novice, your insights would be more than welcome. The jaw piece is 21.5 cm (about 8.5 in) long, the bone 26 cm (about 10.2 inch). Thank you very much! Nick

Just purchased this Edmontosaurus ungual and would like to know if it's indeed a toe ungual as advertised or a hand ungual? Considering the small size of 1.75" (length) x 1.5" (wide) is it correct I might assume it's from a juvenile Edmontosaurus? Location: Hell Creek Fm., Powder River Co. Montana

The goal of this project was born by and for people who love dinosaurs and paleoart in general. My purpose is to give people a representation as realistic as possible of what these great extinct creatures were, regardless of the time or work involved. With the funds raised I will publish my first 3d models, a Trex and an Edmontosaurus as an example. of what can be created later.As a photo is worth a thousand words, here you can see the level of detail used to. greetings to all.

This two Edmontosaurus metatarsals are for sale from a seller I trust however they were unable to tell me which digit of the foot that these come from. Would anybody be able to actually tell the digit from the ? @Troodon

Hi all! I am relatively new to the forum as well as to collecting but I have put together a small collection of various specimens over the last year. This collection will keep growing and I will continue to post when I get new specimens. I have some more small specimens but for now I am only posting a selection of my collection. Enjoy! -Ben

Picked up a vert, supposedly found in Montana in Hell Creek formation. It's a little crushed but otherwise intact. Any reason to think it's not Edmontosaurus?

Bought this Edmontosaurus bone during our trip to Colorado. Per the museum staff, they sell bones too damaged to restore. I was thinking it appears to be a first phalanx but it is fairly damaged (whole ?dorsal aspect is missing surface) and I can't be sure.

My Spring trip this year was quite a challenge. Last year we had oppressive heat, it was extremely dry with high winds. This year it was rain, rain and more rain and cool. The ranchers however are in heaven with pastures that are green, green and green. Hopefully it continues for them through the summer. So, we had a few rainout days, lots of drizzle and had to deal with gumbo feet, slippery cliffs and wet bones and matrix. Not the best of conditions for collecting and the group's results showed that. On the downside the day we departed Belle Fouche, where we stay, a very bad storm hit with tennis size hail, 70mph winds and lots of flooding. Unfortunately, there was lots of damage to homes, businesses, vehicles and roadways. Lots of work getting that community back to normal. I'll start with the down days. Visited the BHI to dropoff some specimens. Pete Larsen is currently doing a study on the number of Leptoceratops that exist in the HC formation and wanted to see my maxillae to cast and study. He showed us skull elements that pointed too two distinct species. These are most likely associated since they came from the same deposit. Pete showed us a beautiful replica, that he recently acquired, of Raptorex which is a dubious dinosaur. It's actually a juvie Tarbosaurus. BTW the juvie bones are identical to an adult one. Hmm Trex and Tarbo are very closely related...so does that mean that juvie T rex bones would be similar to that of an adult. A new Stan replica was getting ready to be put together A visit to the Carter County museum is a must on a rainy day Their Anatotitan Dinosaur - actually an old Edmontosaurus Triceratops T rex Nanotyrannus Jane