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Hi all! Here I describe how we sift for Late Jurassic fossils in Moscow Fili Park, in continuation of Fili Park evokes mixed feelings. In fact, now it is the main place for Jurassic fish and reptile teeth. Nowhere else in our Jurassic will you be able to say casually: "I'll go find some teeth", here it is possible. Even in Ulyanovsk, with all its skeletons and verts, teeth have to be searched for a very, very long time. For Muscovites, Fili Park is literally close at hand (for me, for example, it takes a little over half an hour to get there). In addition, Fili Park introduces hobbyists to all types of paleo-activities: excavation, sifting, preparation, stabilization, gluing, varnishing, water management, sorting out micro-matrix, etc. On the other hand, it's the most difficult site I have seen in our Jurassic and certainly not a place for a pleasant pastime. Cold, mud, mosquitoes, nettles, everything is flooded with water, everything crumbles and collapses, pouring water and mud on you, while you try to get out your boots gone knee-deep in mud. There are few holes, and digging another is complicated. The place is full of stones, branches and debris, and over the years everything has been so dug up and down that the likelihood of making your way through tons of dirt, debris and old dumps in vain is very high. Excavation and operation of a hole is not a matter of one day or even one person. Dozens of people dig and sift in one hole for a month, with the number of interesting finds combined counted on the fingers of one hand. This year's holes: Unlike Cretaceous sites, micro-matrix in Fili does not consist of teeth in any way. You will not find 60 teeth from a bucket of mud in any wash fraction. In addition, it contains an annoying amount of pseudo-fossils, including those similar to teeth: seeds, twigs, insects, modern shells, black phragmocons and serpula fragments, shiny pebbles, etc. In this regard, there are also objects like this: As far as I understand, these belong to modern insects, if not, please correct. With all this being said, the small size of the location is surprising: all the adventures of recent years have taken place on a small area of 50 by 20 m. I once witnessed guys complaining they could not find teeth by sifting mud. Naive folks! They did not realize the tooth layer was a meter UNDER the stream bed. And the latter is by the way the lowest point of the site. The nikitini zone begins with a thick layer of belemnite shell rock, reminiscent of a concrete lid. After getting through, the matrix becomes soft again, and the pink fulgens fossils get replaced by the black and white palette of nikitini layer. I would call large brachiopods of the genus Mosquella its marker. Instead of smooth kachpurite ammonites, ribbed epivirgatites begin to appear, and rare large (up to 40 cm) lomonossovellas become visible. Each trip for nikitini fossils takes about three hours to clear the old hole. That's why it is important not to postpone the excavation, but keep it within one day, arriving at dawn. Any hole crumbles constantly before the eyes, all the abomination from rubbish and glass to the walls of the fulgens zone slides right into the center of the hole and sinks to the very bottom. Do not try to reinforce the walls with branches and stones, or later you'll have to get all of this out of the target layer. Instead, try to divert as much water as possible from the excavation. See where the streams come from and cut new channels for them. Try not to splash on the walls and do not allow the scooped water to flow back into the hole. The walls collapse where the water flows. Do not make vertical walls, obtuse angles prevent the edges from collapsing. A typical pit in a pit, the smaller hole's edges are formed by the walls of the nikitini belemnite shell rock: For better understanding. Shovel, buckets, sieves, chair. The water has been drained out. The stream is to the right: First of all, in an old (any not freshly dug) hole, you'll have to scoop out several hundred liters of water (the procedure will have to be repeated several times a day). A regular bucket works best here. Unfortunately, the pumps cannot cope with the job. They are either submersible or designed for clean water, etc. Basically a weak surface fecal pump is needed, but there are none for sale. Last time, amateurs in ordinary rubber boots (lol) asked us how we had "drained the hole". With our own hands, getting there in waders up to the max At the second stage, you will need to scoop out all the dirt and debris, a medium-sized fishing scoop helps here (in my opinion, better than a shovel). It is useful when clearing a hole, quickly scooping out water and working with mud. "Awesome" Fili slurry, aka the matrix:

Today I found beautiful tooth, probably shark, maybe Sphenodus? Looking for confirmation. Only glossy part measures 38 mm Found near Cracow, limestone, jurrasic.

I have not been very active with Fossils on Wheels lately. I took some time off and have been just doing family stuff and working. We did manage to start working on improving our shark education programs though and the first area I wanted to address was our total lack of Jurassic era sharks. We are splitting the 4th grade adaptations into 2 one hour long presentations which allows us to get into some deeper science and introduce more sharks. The big gaping hole was in the Jurassic so I searched pretty hard to find some interesting teeth to add. The first picture is two nice Asteracanthus magnus teeth we picked up. I thought this was a great addition for us. I believe this was one of the larger sharks of that time and the teeth are another example of crushing teeth. I was super happy to add some Cretorectolobrus teeth from the UK. This gives us a chance to point out a modern shark family and introduce the kids to Carpet sharks which become a prominent part of the second presentation. I am pretty excited to see the artwork my son comes up with for these small sharks. Not pictured (the camera on my phone is broken and I am too lazy to get out my Canon), a Sphenodus tooth from Russia. I do not believe these are considered a Cow Shark but they in the order Hexanchiformes so we can at least place the order on the timeline in the Jurassic. Important for us because there is absolutely no way we are finding a Jurassic Cow shark tooth lol It also gives us a chance to talk about deepwater sharks and the adaptations they have. Also not pictured and not in hand yet, are two more additions that put modern shark on the timeline. We are getting a Paracestraction tooth which puts Bullheads on the board and a Spathobatis tooth which will be our earliest representative of the rays. We went from zero Jurassic species to 5 which is as far as we will get for now but I am really happy about these additions. They will really help give us a much more complete program and we can introduce some modern shark orders/families pretty early on in the program.

Hi guys, last week I was on holiday in Austria and had the chance to hunt at the area of Adnet. There you can find fossils in the red "Adneter Schichten" which are lower jurassic deposits. I was there twice for about 4 hours at all and I found some cool stuff! At my first visit I found plenty of ammonites, one nautilus and some bivalves. It was a very rainy day. Here is a picture of the site: And this is the only ammonite I could prepped until now: Its a 5 cm long Phylloceras. A kinda common species there. The prep work is really difficult, because there is no really separation layer between stone and fossil. I didnt prepped the nautilus until now so I can you show a picture of the unprepped example: On my second visit the weather was very good (maybe even too hot ). Because of that and because of the enormous luck I had I found some shark teeth I didnt really expect to find one although I had already saw some teeth from there on the internet. But I didnt found one I found many Here are the 4 nicest ones until now: The first one is very fragile and 1 cm long: The second shark tooth is about 2 cm long and I like the combination with a crinoid stem: Then this one is about 1.2 cm long and seems to be only a fragment. But I still like it And last but not least the find of the day: A 2.6 cm long shark tooth!! I will try to take better pictures of last and biggest shark tooth after cutting the stone a bit smaller. At the moment the tooth is on a huge stone! The prep work on the shark teeth was also very hard because the teeth are very fragile and the stone is very hard. I prepped it with different needles and with my air scribe I am very pleased with those finds I assume that all shark teeth are Sphenodus shark teeth. Thanks for watching! Hope you enjoyed

I want to show you a tooth from Drügendorf, a quarry in Germany where you can find fossils from the upper Jurassic. I already posted the tooth but unprepped. The tooth is 2 cm long and well preserved so I am very happy with this I think that its a Sphenodus tooth ... Here is it unprepped: And the prepped one: Thanks for viewing !