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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 ($$$)

Found about a week ago at Big Brook.

Hey everyone I am preparing a rib from the Hell Creek formation it isn't in the greatest of shape and I still had a long way to go but wanted to start thinking about maybe trying restoration for the first time and wondering what you guys recommend. Here is the startand here is where I'm at right nowwith the right side there will need to be some fill to the missing bone. My question is though with the degree of curve on the right end do you think I'm close to the head and should try reconstructing the head? I could be looking at the curve wrong too and just have the bottom of the rib, either way though is there any method you guys use in reconstruction to get the bone texture? Thanks for the help I'll continue updating this as I get further into prepping it.

Porous, which leads me to believe it is cetecean. Thank you in advance for the help!

Hello - Is this a whale rib bone? Maybe a Dugong rib bone? Came out of Florida near Venice. Thank you.

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.

Found in Kansas. Thanks in advance!

I'm interested in this rib end from the Hell Creek formation of South Dakota and was wondering if there was any way to identify the species. I've compared it to several large species that were native to the area and in my opinion, this piece compares very well with tyrannosaurus. Then again I'm no expert and would very much appreciate a second opinion. I've included examples of ribs from each species I compared it to.

Hi all, Any thoughts on the legitimacy of this deinonychus rib fragment? There's no further locality information than the Cloverly formation, Montana. Is it possible to identify fragments like this down to species? The structure of two ridges running down the outside of the rib seems common to dinosaur ribs in general. There is a bit of "honeycomb" structure where it's worn - is that suggestive of it being theropod? Even then, could you distinguish it from ornithomimid or juvenile acrocanthosaurus remains? I've asked the seller for extra details on ID - I'll update the thread if they reply.

Largest piece i've come across. Yorktown formation - VA. It was found with what I believe was a bunch of smaller whale skull pieces. I'm at a loss for what this could be. Doesn't look quite look like a skull piece, or mandible, or rib, but i'm not an expert. There is one smooth section on the inside of piece, maybe helpful in identification. I would love others thoughts on what they think it is? Thanks!

Found a few of these. Tips from a Hadrosaurus? Colorado

Found in south Wales on a mud flat at low tide. I’ve tried to clean as best I can. Any input would be amazing, please! I believe it to be an egg or 2 and a rib cage, or tubular crustacean formation, but I’m a total newbie, thanks!!

Hello! I've found this today near Swanage, Southern England in the Purbeck group - early Cretaceous. The initial thought was turtle rib but I'm not particularly familiar with turtle anatomy, so I thought I'd run it by the group. The location has yielded crocodiles, turtles, Iguanodontian dinosaurs and some mammals. Sadly, had a break in it when freeing it from a bigger block, but recovered most of the pieces. Note that it is flat, thin, does not appear to taper or pinch along the length - not clear from the photo but it's uniformly 0.75cm thick and before the break about 8 cm in length. Note the ridge at the right side end in the image - it would flare out slightly from this point if this is the head. The portion at bottom (the side of it) has a broken edge so would be slightly broader when complete, and the same may be true of the other side which is still in matrix. Any help to even a genus level would be great!

Hi all, Back again with a new ID request. Found a mammal bone in the surf of Asbury Park, NJ (USA); this area overlies and regularly exposes fossils from the Kirkwood formation which is known to have been a near-shore marine environment laid down during the early Miocene. The surf also occasionally reveals Pleistocene mammal bones as well as those of modern animals (have found bone bits and crab parts at various stages of fossilization for reference which makes it difficult to decide what's Neogene and what's Quaternary). My initial hunch was that this was a worn marine mammal rib and posted it to a local Facebook group with that in mind. It's very dense with minimal porosity (it was at the tide-line closest to the wave action where dense bone collects and was basically getting pulled back in by the coming high tide) which said dolphin or manatee bone to me. The responses I got were varied though. Some believed it to be a tooth due to an dark, enamel-like layer at the top of the 'top' of the specimen (it's 10cm or nearly 4 inches tall so that's a pretty big tooth). My assumption at that point was it might be Squalodon or some other odontocete from the Miocene. Another person believe it be specifically a incisor from the giant beaver Castoroides (based on the vertical striations) which would place it roughly Pleistocene in age. The final opinion, and the one that is prompting me to message here, confirmed my initial hunch that this is a rib fragment from a Miocene delphinid. I know that marine mammal fossils are relatively common on this forum and there are several experts that lurk around here... anyone have a clue? I've attached images of the specimen in question. It's ~10cm/~4in 'tall' and ~1.5cm/~0.6in 'wide' for reference. Sorry about the sand in the bone, it's basically impossible to get that out at this point. Will also take more pictures if needed.

I’ve been hanging around this forum for a while, and now that I’ve officially joined, I’m gonna start by going through my years’ fossil accumulations, particularly the ones that came from my backyard creek (The Portal) and see if I can’t get them them all correctly IDed. Maybe I’ll call it the Backyard Project, if anyone wants to follow along. So here’s the first item: I hope the picture quality is decent enough. It is about three cm long and one cm wide. I’m very sure it is a bone, and given the long thin shape of it I can only think rib. After a bit of searching the only close match I could find was that of a small mammal. The only thing is that that would seem like a very odd find for where we are, east Hickman, Tennessee, the edge of the Central Basin, which is almost exclusively early Paleozoic (in my fossil experience, specifically Ordovician period). A fish rib sounds more likely for our area, but I just haven’t seen any decent fish ribs yet to compare. Either way, this would be so far the only sign of a vertebrate I have ever seen in our area. According to our geological maps, the nearby waterways might bring in some Mesozoic and Cenozoic from westwards, which could make the chances of a vertebrate it a little more likely. Any information on identification and/or how to identify would be greatly appreciated, and if it is indeed a rib, mammal or fish, is it a lucky find? And how specifically can we classify it with what little we have?

Follow up to my previous post on the mosasaur jaw. Wanted to get my prelim IDs seconded on some other finds. I'm thinking mosasaur teeth--any thoughts on species? Left tooth fragment 3cm long, right tooth 4cm long. Tylosaur, platecarpus and clidastes are possibilities. Can any one point me towards diagnostic marks to differentiate? The other piece I interpret to be a rib (2.5 x 1.5 wide, 10 cm long), with many scavenger shark marks on it. Thanks for your input. Found near ladonia fossil park, Fannin Co, Texas. Late cretaceous.

Hello, I think I found my first serious fossil!! Up until now, I always found invertebrate and plant fossils like echinoids and giant oysters, but recently after fossil hunting last week at my favorite spot, the San Sebastián Limestone, I stumbled upon something absolutely incredible. I was rushing to get home cause it was getting dark and the river was getting pretty cold, but I tripped over this huge stone. I saw the shadow of something stuck and quickly put it in my backpack, swam and crossed the river and bought it home thinking it was some kind of fossilized wood. It is very, very heavy. However, after checking it closely, it looks like it's actually a bone! Those are extremely rare in the island and I've never seen one, so I'm hoping some bone experts can help me properly identify this fossil.

Unknown fossil found at Fort Fisher Beach NC after hurricane a couple years ago. Any ideas? 5" x 1"

Hello, I found this bone cluster in a Miocene era beach deposit on the east coast of the South Island New Zealand. Appears to be ribs of some kind, 5 in total. Perhaps some sort of dolphin? Any help identifying the type of animal this came from would be much appreciated. Scale is in inches. Thanks!