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Just wanted to share the results of the post crab cleanup I did using some acrylic paint. The first crab had a number of small dings. I wasn't able to find an exact match in terms of color, but the end result looks more like it could be natural variation in the color of the fossil, rather than screaming "here is where Neanderthal Shaman nicked the carapace"! I used a combination of bronze and brown, and added a little more paraloid to make it shinier, which helps visually wash out the color differential. With the second crab, I just added some brown to the little chipped areas. Again, not a perfect match, but much more visually appealing in my opinion. Before After Before After

Finished up the 2nd Pulalius of my career. Overall I am pleased with it, but I have had to endure the great disappointment of having the claws cave in on me. On the left, just part of the claw broke off; hardly noticeable. On the right the whole propodus crumbled, a great tragedy considering how beautiful it was...you could see all the little nodules on it. Perhaps I have to reevaluate my desire to expose the whole front side of the claw...the fact they are so small and hollow tells me I may end up with this result over and over again if I keep being greedy.

Hi all, I haven't been very active on this forum in a while, but I've still been collecting and prepping. Thought I would share a bit of a milestone with you guys.and talk a little about what I've been up to in the time I haven't been active on here. First up, my first Pulalius vulgaris! I had the great pleasure of doing some hunting in the Lincoln Creek Formation with Will @Fossilis Willis a little over a year ago and found this small concretion just over 2 inches in width. How it looked when I got it home: Knocked the extra matrix off quickly, and set it aside to be prepped when I felt more confident in my ability and tools. A few months ago I finally got to work on this conc. Lots of scribing later I found some shell material! From then on it was just a matter of dialing the 9361 way down, and slowly chipping away at the matrix. Some of it had really great separation, and lots of it was the stickiest material I've worked with. Hours were spent holding my breath scribing off layers of matrix less than 1mm thick. Slowly but surely the ventral side of the crab started to appear. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, especially for my first attempt. Really wish the legs had come out better, the prominent leg on the left is disarticulated and dives so deep into the matrix I can't expose it further. The end of another one runs off the concretion below it but no sign of the rest of the leg. And on the right I found a few busted up floating pieces that don't show up super well in the photos, but nothing substantive. I suspect there might be more leg material deeper in but the stylus of the scribe needs to be sharpened and I need to work on other projects so I'm calling it done for now at least. Overall a fun and informative prep, really pushed my limits. I definitely feel a lot more confident about scribing up close and in tight quarters after this one. Massive thanks to Will for his help finding this! As for what I've been up to lately, an even bigger thanks to Will for mentioning a local paleontology group while we were out hunting. I joined NARG (the North American Research Group) and I've been collecting with the group, writing articles for their newsletter, and presenting at their meetings. I've also been taking Geology and Zoology classes at my local community college. This hobby has become a pretty big part of my life, I bet most of you can relate. I find it almost unbelievable looking back at my journey since I joined this forum in 2019. At the time I was 13 years old, looking to get an ID for a trilobite I'd come across online. The forum has been an amazing tool for learning about everything paleontology related and played a huge role in helping me grow my passion. I remember reading through posts of fossil hunts and prep-work on this forum and wishing I could do that someday, and now here I am. Thanks in no small part to the inspiration of this forum, and all the input and help I've gotten from forum members over these past 4 years. In 2 weeks I'll be graduating High School, and in a few months I'm moving out to study geology at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. I honestly don't know what to say except, Thanks TFF!

Hello all, After a few shrimp I finally decided to try giving a crab nodule a go. This is my first time working on a Washington Pulalius vulgaris and so far I am pretty happy with my progress, It hasn't been too sticky and while it's more disarticulated then I expected it seems to all be there. The nodule before prep - this side turned out to be the bottom so I quickly switched to the other After about an hour, I managed not to ding up the carapace too much which I am thrilled about. I am now bout 4 hours in. There are 4 legs on the righthand side and I've managed to expose them only losing a part of the bottommost one. I'm particularly happy with how the claw has come out. The left-hand side of the crab however is a bigger challenge, the one leg I have exposed so far is hollow and you can see the two holes which I think indicate the left arm is hollow also. To prepare them, I am thinking of injecting some thin resin into the voids in the hopes that will give the shell some internal stability. If anyone has any other ideas or experience dealing with voids I'd love to hear it. I am excited to get back to prepping this one.

I just picked up this small fossilized crab, I am told it is from the Oligocene period and was found in the Lincoln Formation SW Washington. My research leads me to believe it is a Pulalius Vulgaris. If anyone can confirm its identity I'd be grateful. There are also these cylindrical cross sections seen in the second picture. Are these fragments of limbs, buried under the matrix or something else?