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Found this in a large creek bed in Dolly Sods WV in the mountains. 8-12 pound stone or so, made a good hiking companion lol. Anyway, looks like it could be an imprint of an extinct tree or a garfish or something but it doesn’t make sense to me that the lines are impressed and the diamond formations are raised, which would make me thing some type of tree or something. Thoughts??

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 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

So a couple of weeks ago, I, along with my younger brother, decided to embark on our first field trip with the Dallas Paleontological Society. The destination was Moss Creek, a decently sized waterway on private property that feeds into the NSR. Just like in the main river, we were seeking a red layer exposure of the Ozan Fm (though I read that this red layer is different from the one at the river). This site is famous for its abundance of marine microfossils, namely shark/fish teeth. One of the people on the trip was a researcher (Shawn Hamm) who is currently finishing up a paper on this very site. I hope to read it once it's published! Anyways, the day was miserably hot as expected, but the scenery and air of discovery made up for it. My brother and I took a more secluded route, traveling downstream whereas most headed upstream. After a bit of searching, I came across a part of the creek bed that was red and, upon close inspection, was filled with tiny black phosphatic fossils. Because the matrix of the layer is so sticky, we couldn't really sift through it at the site. Instead, we, like everyone else, filled up a bucket and took it back to our car. It was a fun day and I met a lot of interesting people. One member told me to use baking soda to break up the matrix and that advice worked like a charm! I'm not sure about a lot of these IDs so feel free to correct me. If you know any species names feel free to drop those too . Here are the pictures of the highlight finds. Sorry the quality is bad... taking pictures of things this small was more difficult than expected: Fishes Lots of Enchodus Fangs and Jaw Sections Lots of Hadrodus Teeth Pachyrhizodus? Teeth Protosphyraena? Teeth. Really not 100% on this ID Pycnodont Teeth Fish Neural Spine. 2nd photo is compared to an X-Fish neural spine I found in Austin. Love the size discrepancy of the two. Fish Verts (Left) and Shark Vert (Right) Sharks Hybodont Shark Tooth. This is one of my favorites. Looks like Lonchidion? but that's just my guess. Lots of Pseudocorax Teeth Lots of un-ID Shark Teeth. Distinguishing between Scapanorhynchus, Carcharias, etc. is way above my pay grade . Trust me, I tried... Cretalamna appendiculata Tooth. By far the biggest tooth. Protolamna? Teeth Squalicorax Teeth. For some reason they all came out broken. Unidentified Tooth. Pathological? The crown is just a flat edge. Shark Coprolite? It's ringed like the ones I've seen online. Sawfish Ischyrhiza Oral Teeth Ischyrhiza? Rostral Teeth Ptychotrygon? Oral Teeth Cantioscyllium? Oral Teeth Misc./Enigmatic Finds Brittle Star Parts? Part of an Urchin? It's rounded and the center has a protrusion for where a spine once was. Kinda looks like a denticle, but may be some weird tooth? Bivalves If you would like any additional pics, let me know. Thanks for reading!

I found this rock with this odd shapes in them. They all mostly seem to have similar shaping and I suspect they may be early Ordovician fish. Any thoughts?

I friend of mine has sent me this,I searched on internet but we can't find what it is.can anyone tell me what is this.it look like old teeth but I'm not sure.tnx for help

Hi Forum, i'd like to post to you this specimen i found in Omhden (DE). It seems to me like fish scales, but because i'm a complete beginner i'd love to receive your opinion Sorry for low quality photos, i have tried different ligths. i'll do my best with better camera if you need. Total length 7cm, width 4cm Thanks a lot Paolo

Thank you for opening this topic. This is my first post here and I am very interested in what I found. I would be more than happy to include more details or pictures needed. Just let me know. Info below: This was found at the beach near Panama City, Florida. It was found just rolling around in the breaking waves. The sinus cavities caught my attention It is approximately 1.5 inches or 3.8 centimeters long

A couple of weeks ago, @Jackito, his son, and I took a trip out to one of his favorite Eagle Ford sites. For those of you who are familiar with Carter's posts, this was once the famed location of the so-called "giving rock", so the bar was set high for the day. I've come across some of Austin's eagle ford material in the past, but it was always only the leftovers of what had been washed through miles of rushing creek water. This was my first time getting to poke through the source material, so I was eager to see what could be found. The water was low and the temperature mild. I was thankful I wouldn't have to suffer trudging around in soggy shoes. As we walked beside the creek, Carter explained the various layers and where the best stuff could be found. He pointed out the notable spots where things like pseudomegachasma and pliosaur teeth had been dug up. I knew to not get my hopes THAT high up, but it was certainly a good motivator to stay attentive and expect the unexpectable. It took me a while to get the hang of pinpointing which slabs were best to open and how. Carter was nice enough to share some of his finds, and I must admit, not everything pictured below was necessarily first spotted by me . I was quickly surprised by the sheer number of shark teeth we started finding. Being the completionist that I am, I would immediately try to excavate every tooth I found. Carter advised me that simply bringing the matrix home and processing it there would be the most efficient use of time which I have come to agree with. Every tooth had fantastic preservation and would often pop right out of the shale (though not necessarily in one piece). The Ptychodus teeth were the most mesmerizing. They basically broke off without a speck of matrix still attached and had a beautiful shine. Thankfully, they were also robust and rarely fell apart. A decently sized Ptychodus still in matrix The amount of Cretoxyrhina to be found was also staggering. Unfortunately, they required a little bit more delicate prep than what I had to offer in the field, so my ratio of broken to unbroken teeth was higher than I'd like to admit. In my defense, I managed to lower that ratio as the day progressed. Squalicorax was also a common sight along with various fish teeth. Carter's son managed to find some turtle material... that was still alive and may or may not have come from out of the stream . For most of the hunt, Carter and I had some nice discussions on things to be found here in Austin along with various chats about life. The hours seemed to fly by so fast, it wasn't long until Carter and Jack had to head on out. They'd been wanting to find some mosasaur material for a while, so I sent info on one of my favorite sites (the place where I came out with 4 mosasaur verts in a day). Hopefully we'll get to hunt together over there some time in the near future. I stuck around as I had a couple hours to kill before needing to drive to a friend's birthday. The rest of the time was spent doing more of the same. I managed to come across a huge Cretodus tooth, but the root was unfortunately nowhere to be found. I also started gathering some of the leftover matrix for later processing for microfossils. The layer was just so rich, how could there not be something cool to find? I filled up a couple Ziploc bags with the stuff and made my way out, thinking of ways I could clean this while residing in a college dorm. The richness of fossils in the matrix. This piece was a little too stony to break down though. Might try vinegar. Suffice it to say, I figured out a way to clean it without clogging the communal sinks, but it's a slow process. Though, I must admit, it's nice to come home each day to a cup's worth of dried micro matrix ready for screening. In only my first batch, I found something I think is pretty amazing. What was at first just a shiny little speck, upon closer analyzing, may, in fact, be a tiny coniasaur tooth! It has that characteristic bulging crown that is instantly recognizable. Hopefully I'm not jumping the gun on this one. A couple rounds later, and many many puny Ptychodus teeth, I managed to spot what appeared to be the tooth plate to a Pycnodont fish or something similar. After some delicate cleaning and lots of paraloid, it's still a little bit scuffed, but there are definitely some little round bulbous teeth in close association. The tooth plate before and after cleaning. Can anyone confirm if it's Pycnodont? There was plenty bony fish and shark material. Interspersed within them were some that eluded my identification (including mayyybe Paraisurus?). I've got plenty of matrix to still go through, so I will post updates if anything cool is found. For now, here are some pictures summarizing the finds: Please excuse the hand pics. It's just that the details come out better on a slightly darker surface as opposed to white paper. Closeups of Coniasaur(?) Tooth L to R: Bony bits, "Coniasaur" tooth, and "Pycnodont" tooth plate The best of the Ptychodus and a close up of the smallest one. The bottom left is smoothed over. Is this maybe feeding damage? Also, any ID for species is much appreciated : Cretoxyrhina mantelli. My favorite is the fat one on the left Best of the Squalicorax falcatus. Right two are a little strange. Possibly symphyseal? Best of Scapanorhynchus and huge rootless Cretodus (hard to see in pic, but its got the wrinkling): Paraisurus? I saw that genus mentioned in a Shawn Hamm publication on the Atco and thought it could be a match. The roots are very skinny on both specimens and the teeth seem vertically stretched. The larger tooth on the left initially appears to be missing half the root, but it is actually nearly complete. The only break is a tiny portion of the root at the very top. The right specimen is very fragmented. No signs of cusps nor nutrient groove on either one. Cantioscyllium orals and Sawfish Rostral Teeth: L to R: Enchodus, Protosphyraena, and Pachyrhizodus Some oddballs. The left is a fragment of some sort of multi-cusped shark tooth. The middle is a a segment of some barbed material that seems similar in appearance to the fishy bits found in the matrix. The right specimen is a shiny crescent shaped thing that I have found in other micro matrixes from Moss Creek and POC. Never kept them, but now I'm curious after finding them again: Thanks for reading!

I came across this for sale, not a fossil vendor so no information on it. Looks to be about 10cm across. I can make our scales, eye sockets, faint limbs - almost like a little Lizard / Thorny Devil. Any thoughts?

It's been a long while since I've posted on here. I haven't been able to collect much lately, but I recently went out to some new haunts and came back with some pretty intriguing stuff I'll hopefully get to follow up on later. I'll start off with an interesting discovery I've had recently. The outcrop exposes rocks stretching from the upper(?) Brallier Formation to the middle(?) Foreknobs Formation. Although I tried searching in the past for brittle star trace fossils, I was mostly unsuccessful in this regard, and over time my interest in it shifted to the much more fossiliferous beds of the Foreknobs (formerly Chemung) Formation. A couple of years ago I posted about finding a fish bone in a boulder next to the outcrop, as well as pointing out I found some potential teeth. Going over my posts, that finding intrigued me so I dug deeper into the presence (or lack thereof) of fish remains in the upper Devonian strata of the region. What I came up with was an 1887 report of the Genesee Shale from New York, an upper Devonian formation roughly analogous to the Scherr (and possibly the lower Foreknobs by the sound of it, it's all rather ambiguous) in Maryland. The authors noted multiple occurrences of fish bones and isolated teeth in sandstone and "fine pebble conglomerate"...similar in description to the rocks of my own outcrop. Coupled with the knowledge of possible fish remains I found previously I decided it'd be worth it to give the outcrop a more thorough look over, this time concentrating instead on the conglomerate facies and ignoring the shale. What I discovered has so far been fairly interesting. As I stated previously the outcrop exposes parts of the Brallier and Foreknobs Formations, including several dozen feet of shale and siltstone in the Foreknobs grading into upper siltstone and sandstone beds closer to the axis of the syncline. Towards the top of the exposed section of the Foreknobs is a bed several inches thick of hard, pebbly conglomerate. After some searching the silty shale above and below the bed is mostly unfossiliferous, although local profusions in brachiopods, crinoids, and other creatures are present. The conglomerate, however, is densely fossiliferous to the point that it forms a veritable coquina in parts running for several feet along the exposure. Because the conglomerate is so hard (made up of quartzose pebbles and sand), and the underlying and overlying beds made of much softer shale and silty rock, the conglomerate is poorly exposed outside of the exposure wall, forming something of a canopy between it and the less resistant layers. It is covered in part by a dense layer of talus from the overlying beds, likewise obscuring part of the exposure. Luckily, however, a few boulders have eroded out from the cut and are free on the ground to examine, and a few loose pieces weathered from the boulders are present around those. In these rocks I have found one chunk of blueish-white fish bone(?), and several possible tooth fragments. I recently examined the outcrop wall looking for more bone/teeth still present in the outcrop, and discovered part of a fish tooth(?) exposed slightly above one of the boulders, and similar looking black enamel(?) specks that could be fish derivatives. They are distinguished from the quartz pebbles by their shiny black appearance, whereas the quartz is mostly lighter gray and translucent. Is this a possible bone bed in the Foreknobs Formation? More scouting is of course needed, but there's a strong possibility in my opinion that, at the minimum, this conglomerate layer is a decent source of fragmentary Devonian fish remains. Note the blueish tint to the fossil. This possible bone fragment was found in a boulder of quartzose, pebbly conglomerate in the middle-upper Foreknobs Formation (Famennian). Note the associated fauna of crinoid and brachiopod fragments. Crinoid stem fragments in particular are extremely common, comprising a large part of the conglomerate "pebbles." This boulder is derived from a layer above a Cyrtospirifer disjunctus bearing shale, indicating it's Chemung age.

I found this near Westmoreland State Park in the Potomac. It seems too well preserved to be a fossil. Clearly a vert, but from what?

I had a couple of requests to show the shark teeth that I have found from Hawaii. I am pleased that folks are interested! All of the fossils were collected directly from the Mid- to Late- Pleistocene Waimanolo Formation. The formation is a mixture of deltaic/nearshore limestone and unconsolidated sands and silts. First, the shark material. There are a group of teeth and two vertebral centra. The shark teeth are in various stages of mineralization, with some completely phosphatized while others haven't altered much since they fell out of the shark's mouth. They appear to be from the blacktip reef shark, Carcharhinus melanopterus, a species currently common in Hawaiian waters. I also had 1 Scyliorhinid tooth, but misplaced it years ago. The vertebral centra are from a Carchariniform shark, probably the C. melanopterus, and seemingly unaltered, which is consistent with the turtle, bird, and some of the fish material that I collected. While some may consider these subfossils, I did recover them from the formation itself, which dates to 400,000 BP, which makes them fossils. The lack of mineralization may be due to the significant carbonate content and resultant high pH of the sediments.

Was going through some bags of fossils I found sometime ago in the Morrin Bridge area of Alberta. There were a couple turtle shell fragments, a tip of a dino claw, a hadrosaur tooth and a ray tooth. There was also this weird vertebrae. While it looks like a dino vert. it is only 1 cm in thickness. The dimensions of the vert. are approx. 2 cm x 2 cm x 1cm. I have found lots of dino vert before but the thickness compared to the rest of the vert. don't make sense. Also both sides appear concave, almost like a fish vert. but not as deep. The photos are not the best and, while the condition of the actual vert is quite good, it is covered in a hard caliche like surface that I can't remove. Anyone have any idea of what this is?

Hey everyone, I have this fossil I found along a beach when I was a kid. Unfortunately, I have no knowledge as to where I found it, other than it was an Ontario provincial park. I suspect it's a fish fin from either the Silurian or Devonian, but I want to get the thoughts of someone who knows more on fauna of this time. Thanks! Ps. There's a little something on the side of the rock that may help with id, it's in the second pic. Looks to me like a part of a plant.

Hello everyone I was browsing on a well known online auction site a few nights ago and spotted this fish fossil. Thinking it looked interesting with a current low bid I put in a cheeky last second bid and got it. It was listed as 'prehistoric fish fossil, Sandstone, two halves' so that's not a lot of help in identification. Looking at the preservation before and after purchase I'm thinking it is from Brazil? Potentially the santana group? Preservation isn't preticualy great, especially around the head and it looks to have partially fell apart because of this I'm not sure of the identification. I'm thinking Rhacolepis? Mind you I could be completly barking up the wrong tree! All comments welcome.

Another mystery specimen; this one belongs to a relative who doesn't take good pics and is far away, so I'll begin by apologizing for the photo quality. No locality info, but this person has many other fossils from Morocco, so that's a possibility. It has hints of fish, but only hints; I think I see one or two fins. What I can't work out is the overlapping arrangement of segments. It looks vaguely like an arthropod (Aglaspid, maybe?), but again, I think I see a fin or two. Uuuughhghghghghghhhh.... It's driving me absolutely bonkers. Help?

I got this fossil slab at a yard sale and it looks to be of 2 fish. On the back it says “Anigbbia?” Sp. as if it’s not spelled correctly and then “55,000,000 yrs old Any information on this fossil would be appreciated. Thank you!

Hello, I was finally able to go to my site in MT that is on a co-workers place. Some years ago I looked there and found quite a bit of good fossils. I was glad to hit it again! This is a bone from a fish I think?? It is kind of paddle shaped. Length = 4.5cm Width = 1.5cm Found in Hill County, MT, Cretaceous age. Thanks for any info!

Hi! I’m still trying to identify one fossil from a particular unit of Pleistocene/Early Holocene lacustrine silt from my hometown of Saskatoon, but I figured I would look away from it for a bit to try and identify another fossil from the same unit I’ve been unable to classify. I have two specimens, both apparently of the same species. They are both approximately 0.5 millimetres across. They are perfectly circular, with lines radiating from the centre and rings of alternating colours (possibly representing growth lines). One specimen is photographed dorsally, showing its circular shape, the other in profile, showing its umbrella-like, protruding outline. All photos are taken through a microscope with my best camera currently available, an iPhone! My main areas of middling expertise are arthropod and vertebrate fossils, so I have no idea what this is! I have briefly studied fossil foraminifera and diatoms in the past, but it looks like nothing I’ve seen in those areas as well. It reminded me of a small limpet, some type of seed or spore, or perhaps even a strange fish scale, but I have no formal suggestions. I’d highly appreciate any help! I will try to supply any additional information you may need. Thank you!

Hi everyone! Im new here, I wil soon make an introduction.I have a question. I recently came accros one of these fossils here in the Netherlands from an old private collection. Can anyone tell me about the rarity of this fossil? From what ive gathered its a set of fossilized leptolepis fish from the Talbragrar fish beds in New South Whales, Australia. Its a fossil site thats been closed for a while now. Even well known geologists that I know personally were unable to correctly identify this piece, never have they even seen such a thing. My piece is 22cm long (8,5inch), it has 3 small fish on and what appears to be an aquatic plant, fully white. 1 of the fish is whole, measuring about 4cm (1.6inch). I read the rules and heard that appraisals are not meant to be done on here. Any help wil be greatly appreciated. With kind regards, Sonny