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Hey gang, Going thru chucking things out of the garage piles and noticed this good sized, highly weathered chunk of bone which has some parallel grooves/marks that I'm interpreting as possible shark bites. Want to confirm that assumption and ask if that is the case, could the upper 3 somewhat parallel lines and the 2 lower lines be single bites showing 3 teeth and 2 teeth respectively? The one mark on the upper left seems to be slightly curved so would that be consistent with a different angle/different shaped tooth position? Just wondering what you all think? Regards, Chris

Anadara aequalitas has extra ridges on the outer lip. Is that common? Also looks like someone made a permanent home inside. Barnacle I’m assuming.

Another year gone by and time to do this year's Florida Trip report. As the title says, I am going to mix and match fossils with nature, art, and the great comradery experienced during my trip. To start with, lets provide a visual for those who have never been to Florida. They say the roads are paved with fossils. This is partially true in that fossils often form the base for which pavement is then applied. Here is an example of a bike trail in development. Thankfully I was able to extract a few nice finds before asphalt was applied. As someone recently said in a post, easy pickins!! This material was obviously screen washed. The Tamiami is represented more typically in the following photo. Still easy picking, but one must look a little closer to extract it's gems. I have developed an expansive collection of Tamiami gastropods, corals and bivalves over the years. So I limit myself to just one of each species encountered, hopefully improving on the quality in my collection. Here are some of this year's finds. I mentioned part of my report will deal with nature. Here is a snowy egret that was photographed at the motel we frequent. It is known by Virgil to those that stay here. As can be seen, he is quite friendly and comes into our room for snacks!! This interesting crab was seen at the beach frequently. As was this Manatee, which preferred waist deep water, allowing us to dip into the ocean with her. When visiting Florida, I am always blessed with an inland trip to hunt fossils with forum members. This year it was @Shellseeker that invited me on a hunt. Accompanying us was Steve (center), our guide, and my son, Tristan (on the left). Get a load of these shovels!!!!!!!!!! Initially, I suspected they were kidding and we would be using less colossal equipment. Maybe the length is needed to keep the gators at bay. It seemed to work in that No alligator was seen. Now just some of our finds. . This is fish, not shark vertebrae. SMALL bone of unknown source Fish tooth: These were just a few of our favorite finds. Now to regress back to nature. My wife and I met up with Jack (Shellseeker) and his wife on Sanibel Island for a lovely lunch. Say hello to Barb! Afterwards we drove through the J.N. "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge and snapped a few pictures . The finds of the day came from Steve, who found this nice meg and gave it to my son. And then there is Jack who found this gorgeous Sloth tooth. Great job, guys! Just when Jack came up with this sloth tooth, I put him to shame with mine!!!!!! Hopefully those viewing this will not notice, mine is a dugong rib posing as a sloth tooth. Don't tell Jack! To be honest, Jack may be pulling a fast one on me. As I looked over my Florida pictures, I noticed something of concern. What is in Steve's mouth? Does it not appear to be the "tooth" in Jacks hand?? I will let YOU be the judge. During one day when my back was tired of fossil hunting, we visited the Salvador Dali Museum in St Petersburg. Dali was a surrealist artist who produces bizarre images in his works of art. As an example, here is a lithograph titled "Lincoln in Dalivision", when viewed from afar is a remarkable image of Abe. This is a museum worth experiencing if in the area. Where would a trip to Florida be without a bunch of shark's teeth to show off. Enjoy this pile of chompers. Like Dali, I enjoy surrealism so created this for you Another wonderful vacation must come to a close. Hope you enjoyed it!!

Found in landfill behind my building. Can’t seem to find pictures or info. Any help (as always) well appreciated

Not found in place, but in pile used by Florida Highway Dept. in Collier County. Stands exactly 2 inches from base to top of central ridge. Front is perfectly semi circular tapering to flat at rear.

I have recently expanded my fossil hunting to collecting and hunting different shells. Growing up in Florida I found it pretty easy to just overlook them and not take notice to how fascinating each one is. I recently found a nectar spot in Nokomis and one in Northport Florida that has quite a few different Scallop fossils. my issue is, I have been looking around on internet and on this page to identify them. There is so much information on this web site I can’t say enough how thankful I am for it. I have also found a study by the Florida Museum of Natural History about different species of Chesapectens found in SW Florida and in the Panhandle. I feel I’m finding conflicting information and would like to be certain upon what I have been finding. I live in Venice, FL and the areas I have been searching on are on the Tamiami Formation. All of these where found on new construction sites where they are digging a new lakes. i will attempt to put a link up of the study I am referring to. It was already posted in one of the threads I found on this pages, so some of you maybe familiar with it already.thanks in advace Brandon here is link to the report

Just wanted to share a few pictures of some of the Chesapectens i have been finding the past month at a construction site that a new lake was dug. As far as I know they are Chesapecten quinarius and Chesapecten madisonius sarasotensis. Normally I am looking for vertebrate fossils, but just recently expanded my view to invertebrates. I figured what the hell, there has to be something to them and half the places I search are full of them. Its been quite the journey and Im just sucked in now. Never thought that it would so fascinating and definitely has helped my understanding of the layers of time we sort through. I decided to lay out what I had last night just to get an idea what i had, I felt like a kid laying out my hot wheels lol. I also grabbed a few photos of them in the wall where I pulled some from. They were probably between 15-20’ below ground, thats a guess its hard to tell. thanks

One of the busy work tasks I’ve been doing is going through all of the micro teeth and matrix... repeatedly lol I found two teeth from Cookiecutter Creek micros that I am flat out stumped on. No clue. The first one is larger, 6mm or so. I can only describe it as very flat. The cusp sits at an odd angle on an odd root. I am not even sure it’s shark. The second is about 4mm and I have no clue. I didn’t see anything in the paper describing Isistius and Squatina that stood out as a possibility.

Hello Gang. I'm not sure if fossiling takes your focus off what you should be doing like it does me but yesterday I was supposed to be clearing an area out to make space for an upcoming wood working project. Well that exercise turned more into opening boxes and looking at fossils stored there and reliving why I had brought some of them home. It was a good thing and a bad thing! As many of you know the Tamiami formation has a boat load of invertebrate species and its fairly easy to acquire a bunch of material quickly so here are several shots to share with you all of some of the variants I've brought home over the past several years---Sarasota County, Plio-Pleistocene. There are occasionally also some pretty nice shark teeth that you can run across in the various spoil finds. Here are several of the common types I've found..Mako, Tiger, Meg and Carcharhinus sp. types... There are a number of barnacles and I'm fascinated by the different types but its the associated attachments that they are found on that really gets my eye. I believe here's a Ceratoconcha sp. group that has latched on to a good sized bone fragment and a Chesaconcavus sp. on a coral branch. I've picked up lots of damaged shells and here are two gastropods with showing what I believe are some type of shell repair. The larger one somehow survived the massive damage..I've read about how crabs have sometimes inflicted these wounds so if thats the case the crab must have been fairly good sized one. The smaller guy has some small damage near the tip of the spire and along the aperature. I'm intrigued by just general shapes and coloration differences so here's a few examples of some gastropods Neverita sp. and Chesapecten sp. that came home. The last shot is my favorite from the day...a Vasum (Hystrivasum) that has sponge boring damage, a good sized Balanus sp. growing on the spire and if you look close you can see small boring clams still in their bore holes on the top left of the specimen just beneath the barnacle. All for now. Hope you enjoy. Back to woodworking! LOL. Continued hunting success to you all! Regards, Chris

The sample image here was collected directly from a Drag Line operator's windrow in a lime rock mine in Southern FL just outside of Naples around the Sable Palm area of the Big Cypress swamp of the Everglades in 1997. The specimen has been completely removed from the limestone petrol (lime rock low density ls) matrix. What is interesting is the general shape of the specimen and how this 5 million year old specimen differs from the present day specimen at the same general location. I am guessing the seas of which the archaic specimens existed in were more challenging to exist in general as the specimen appears more elongate than present day specimen possibly for navigational purpose in higher energy seas than say today. Consequently the respiratory flower on top seems to be larger than today's comparable specimen as a direct consequence in the different morphology.

I saw this and thought it was pretty wild as I've been poking around in the Tamiami here in Florida for quite awhile--not sure I've ever noticed one. I dont have full access to the pdf but heres the abstract and article in ScienceDaily. @MikeR Regards, Chris https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190722132520.htm Cosmic pearls: Fossil clams in Florida contain evidence of ancient meteorite Date: July 22, 2019 Source: Florida Museum of Natural History Summary: Researchers picking through the contents of fossil clams from a Sarasota County quarry found dozens of tiny glass beads, likely the calling cards of an ancient meteorite. Share: FULL STORY Credit: © trahko / Adobe Stock Researchers picking through the contents of fossil clams from a Sarasota County quarry found dozens of tiny glass beads, likely the calling cards of an ancient meteorite. Analysis of the beads suggests they are microtektites, particles that form when the explosive impact of an extraterrestrial object sends molten debris hurtling into the atmosphere where it cools and recrystallizes before falling back to Earth. They are the first documented microtektites in Florida and possibly the first to be recovered from fossil shells. Mike Meyer was a University of South Florida undergraduate when he discovered the microtektites during a 2006 summer fieldwork project led by Roger Portell, invertebrate paleontology collections director at the Florida Museum of Natural History. As part of the project, students systematically collected fossils from the shell-packed walls of a quarry that offered a cross-section of the last few million years of Florida's geological history. They pried open fossil clams, washing the sediment trapped inside through very fine sieves. Meyer was looking for other tiny objects -- the shells of single-celled organisms known as benthic foraminifera -- when he noticed the translucent glassy balls, smaller than grains of salt. "They really stood out," said Meyer, now an assistant professor of Earth systems science at Harrisburg University in Pennsylvania. "Sand grains are kind of lumpy, potato-shaped things. But I kept finding these tiny, perfect spheres." After the fieldwork ended, his curiosity about the spheres persisted. But his emails to various researchers came up short: No one knew what they were. Meyer kept the spheres -- 83 in total -- in a small box for more than a decade. "It wasn't until a couple years ago that I had some free time," he said. "I was like, 'Let me just start from scratch.'" Meyer analyzed the elemental makeup and physical features of the spheres and compared them to microtektites, volcanic rock and byproducts of industrial processes, such as coal ash. His findings pointed to an extraterrestrial origin. "It did blow my mind," he said. He thinks the microtektites are the products of one or more small, previously unknown meteorite impacts, potentially on or near the Florida Platform, the plateau that undergirds the Florida Peninsula. Initial results from an unpublished test suggest the spheres have traces of exotic metals, further evidence they are microtektites, Meyer said. Most of them had been sealed inside fossil Mercenaria campechiensis or southern quahogs. Portell said that as clams die, fine sediment and particles wash inside. As more sediment settles on top of the clams over time, they close, becoming excellent long-term storage containers. "Inside clams like these we can find whole crabs, sometimes fish skeletons," Portell said. "It's a nice way of preserving specimens." During the 2006 fieldwork, the students recovered microtektites from four different depths in the quarry, which is "a little weird," Meyer said, since each layer represents a distinct period of time. "It could be that they're from a single tektite bed that got washed out over millennia or it could be evidence for numerous impacts out on the Florida Platform that we just don't know about," he said. The researchers plan to date the microtektites, but Portell's working guess is that they are "somewhere around 2 to 3 million years old." One oddity is that they contain high amounts of sodium, a feature that sets them apart from other impact debris. Salt is highly volatile and generally boils off if thrust into the atmosphere at high speed, Meyer said. "This high sodium content is intriguing because it suggests a very close location for the impact," Meyer said. "Or at the very least, whatever impact created it likely hit a very large reserve of rock salt or the ocean. A lot of those indicators point to something close to Florida." Meyer and Portell suspect there are far more microtektites awaiting discovery in Florida and have asked amateur fossil collectors to keep an eye out for the tiny spheres. But no one will be recovering microtektites from the original quarry any time soon. It's now part of a housing development. "Such is the nature of Florida," Meyer said. Peter Harries of North Carolina State University also co-authored the study. Story Source: Materials provided by Florida Museum of Natural History. Original written by Natalie van Hoose. Note: Content may be edited for style and length. Related Multimedia: Images of the the microtektites Journal Reference: Mike Meyer, Peter J. Harries, Roger W. Portell. A first report of microtektites from the shell beds of southwestern Florida. Meteoritics & Planetary Science, 2019; DOI: 10.1111/maps.13299 Search withinThis JournalAnywhere Search term Christopher Meteoritics & Planetary Science Original Article A first report of microtektites from the shell beds of southwestern Florida Mike Meyer Peter J. Harries Roger W. Portell First published: 06 May 2019 https://doi.org/10.1111/maps.13299 Read the full text PDF TOOLS SHARE Saw this an thought this was pretty wild as I've been poking around in the Tamiami here in Florida for quite awhile. Abstract The Plio‐Pleistocene Upper Tamiami Formation (Pinecrest beds) of Florida is well known for its fossiliferous shell beds, but not for its extraterrestrial material. Here we report the first occurrence of tiny (~200 μm in diameter) silica‐rich microspherules from this unit and from the state. This material was analyzed using petrographic and elemental methods using energy dispersive X‐ray spectroscopy (EDS). The majority of microspherules are glassy and translucent in reflected light with some displaying “contact pairs” (equal‐sized micro‐spherules attached to each other). Broken microspherules cleave conchoidally, often with small internal spherical vesicles, but most lack any other evidence of internal features, such as layering. Using the EDS data, the microspherules were compared to volcanic rocks, microtektites, and cosmic spherules (micrometeorites). Based on their physical characteristics and elemental compositions these are likely microtektites or a closely related type of material. The high Na content in the examined material deviates significantly from the abundances usually found in micrometeorites and tektite material; this is enigmatic and requires further study. This material may be derived from a nearby previously unknown impact event; however, more material and sites are required to confirm the source of this material. Because of the focus on molluscan fossils in southwestern Florida shell beds, microtektite material has likely been overlooked in the past, and it is probable that these microspherules are in abundance elsewhere in these units and possibly throughout the region.

It appears that people can find Plio‐Pleistocene microtektites associated with and inside closed clams of the Upper Tamiami Formation (Pinecrest beds) of Florida. Maybe enterprising fossil collectors and citizen scientists could look for and find microtektites in other outcrops of Pinecrest beds. The paper is: Meyer, M., Harries, P.J. and Portell, R.W., 2019. A first report of microtektites from the shell beds of southwestern Florida. Meteoritics & Planetary Science. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/maps.13299 Blog post about micrometeorites in your house gutter Can you Really Find Micrometeorites in Your Gutter? Well... Phil Plait, Bad Astronomy. May 16, 2019 https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/can-you-really-find-micrometeorites-in-your-gutter-well Flecks of Extraterrestrial Dust, All Over the Roof The New York Times, By By William J. Broad https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/science/space-dust-on-earth.html Genge, M.J., Larsen, J., Van Ginneken, M. and Suttle, M.D., 2017. An urban collection of modern-day large micrometeorites: Evidence for variations in the extraterrestrial dust flux through the Quaternary. Geology, 45(2), pp.119-122. Open access https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article/45/2/119/195213/an-urban-collection-of-modern-day-large Yours, Paul H.

I love taking these trips to SMR Aggragates for 2+ MYA shells and an occasional vertebra fossil, Not a lot of time , lots of rain water around, and mostly smaller fossil shells, This was last Sunday and I also spent National Fossil Day helping out at the South Florida Museum on Saturday, When the Peace River is out of season, I look for hunting where ever I can. This pretty little Mako came my way on Saturday and some nice shells on Sunday. SMR is always rewarding. I have a bunch of larger shells to clean and sort. That can be fun also with a lot of matrix mixture inside the bigger shells. Enjoy, Shellseeker

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a topic asking for help with some mollusk IDs. MikeR kindly identified them for me, and suggested that they were from the Upper Pliocene Pinecrest Beds of the Tamiami Formation. Today I'm posting the rest of that batch of fossils. These were collected from the same site as the last bunch. This time, I have an idea of what they might be, I'm largely looking for confirmation or correction. My IDs are based entirely on the Florida Museum of Natural History image galleries online. All scales are centimeters, with half-cm marks. First, a conch. Is this Melongena corona? Second, a murex. Phyllonotus globosus? Third, a miter shell. Pleioptygma ronaldsmithi? Fourth, a wentletrap. Pyrazus scalatus? Fifth, a thorny oyster. Arcinella cornuta? I have several more that I'll post in the comments.