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Showing results for tags 'Microfossil'.
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From the album: Hell Creek Formation Microsite
These large lizards are kin to modern monitors like the Komodo dragon. The possess sharp, finely serrated teeth and long claws good for climbing and digging. They likely preyed on smaller animals like other lizards and mammals, and may have been the bane of parent dinosaurs as some paleontologists have suggested they could raid dinosaur nests. Varanoid “monitor lizard” fossils. A) trunk vertebra, missing a good portion of the process; B) tooth showing basal cross section silhouette and closeup of serrations. -
From the album: Hell Creek Formation Microsite
I found a few holostean-grade scales that haven’t been attributed to more precise taxa, and are referred to as holostean “A” and “B” in the literature. These are not gar and are something else. -
From the album: Hell Creek Formation Microsite
Lonchidion was one of the last of the hybodonts, a lineage of shark-like fishes spanning nearly 300 million years before they went extinct along with the non-avian dinosaurs. Lonchidion had barbed spines on their dorsal fins and a durophagous dentition more suited to grinding than grasping. Like most hybodont teeth, their roots are fragile and their teeth are only rarely found complete. In this deposit they seem to be fairly rare; I’ve thus far only found two. -
From the album: Aguja Formation
A very small tooth from a "baby" hadrosaurid. It has feeding wear, so clearly not embryonic.- 2 comments
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Is this a Horn Shark heterodontus anterior tooth? The tooth has the main cusp and two lateral cusplets with circular base. Small in size – 2mm across. Found in the Upper Eocene – Ocala Limestone Formation – location in Sumter County, Florida. Thank you.
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From the album: Hell Creek Formation Microsite
Mammals are always a joy to find - a rooted marsupial lower premolar. -
I dissolved limestone from Michigan in acetic acid and got some interesting things, among them these. The source for the limestone is unsure of their exact age. Ordovician-Devonian. Any ideas?
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From the album: Hell Creek Formation Microsite
A rooted tooth from a juvenile Leptoceratops, a smaller cousin of Triceratops. -
From the album: Hell Creek Formation Microsite
A fragment of a frog jaw, with telltale bumps on the labial surface. -
I've been looking and pulverized rock under a microscope and have found some interesting items. The first image is possibly a fish jaw, followed by a possible shark spine fragment. Any ideas on those 100% or the rest? Thanks.
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From the album: Hell Creek Formation Microsite
A representative sampling of the diversity captured in microsites - everything from Tyrannosaurus to mollusks.- 6 comments
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From the album: Hell Creek Formation Microsite
Acheroraptor was a small theropod (dromaeosaurid) "raptor" that lived in the same paleo-ecosystem as T. rex. Its blade-like serrated teeth possess diagnostic apicobasal ridges.-
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From the album: Hell Creek Formation Microsite
Gars are predatory fish, armored with diamond-shaped scales coated in a hard enamel-like substance. -
From the album: Hell Creek Formation Microsite
Myledaphus (a guitarfish/ray) teeth are quite common, as expected for a riverine deposit. -
From the album: Hell Creek Formation Microsite
Sections of ossified tendons from ornithischian dinosaurs. Especially in an energetic channel environment, these fragile structures are broken into pieces. You’ll notice the surfaces and ends of several of these are rounded from river transport prior to final deposition. -
From the album: Hell Creek Formation Microsite
A fragmented piece of fiery orange amber. Most amber from the HCF is quite small, this one was only a few mm in diameter -
In the annual TFF secret Santa I received a lot of cool fossils. One was a Mississippian aged bryozoan hash plate from the chesterian zone of the Bangor limestone. There are lots of interesting tiny details on the specimens so when looking through a microscope I spotted a tiny white sphere, only 150 micrometers in diameter. The question is, is it a fossil associated with the other bryozoans or is it just some synthetic foam or similar? The reason I ask is because it appears to be clean of matrix resting on top rather than imbedded. Stupid question? Maybe.
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From the album: Triassic
From the "dawn" of the Dinosaurs, this small tooth represents an early theropod. Unlike the other serrated archosauriform teeth present in the formation, this tooth is ziphodont - thin and labio-lingually compressed - the archetypical tooth form that most theropods adhered to since their beginnings.-
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From the album: Hell Creek / Lance Formations
This rare theropod tooth was found via screen washing matrix from a channel deposit. It's large for the species and from the front of the jaw. All of the denticles are intact - a spectacular specimen. Pectinodon (meaning "comb-tooth") is a tooth taxon, since no remains attributable to the genus beyond teeth have been found. Pectinodon seems to be a rare member of the Hell Creek fauna, with their teeth being fairly uncommon (though being so small, I'd guess that few people actively search for them). It was a small Troodontid theropod, with teeth that couldn't handle stresses as well as their Dromaeosaurid and Tyrannosaurid cousins (Torices et al. (2018)). This coupled with their small size suggest that Pectinodon was a small/soft prey specialist, preferring the rodent-sized mammals of the time, lizards, insects, etc. Some researchers have proposed omnivory as a possibility for Troodontids (cf. Holtz et al. (1998)). Troodontids famously are regarded as among the most intelligent dinosaurs for their large brain size / body size ratio. This notion serves as fodder for speculation that had the dinosaurs not gone extinct, Troodontids (Pectinodon being (one of?) the last) would have continued to grow in intelligence and develop sentience and civilizations. Troodontid teeth like Pectinodon can be easily identified by their small size, exaggerated, triangular, apically oriented posterior serrations.- 1 comment
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From the album: Hell Creek / Lance Formations
This is a very close cousin of ours - a eutherian (placental) mammal from the time of T. rex. This particular mammal has an interesting phylogeny, being positioned basally to insectivores, rodents, and primates. (See Lillegraven 1969)-
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I was looking at some of my micro fossils with my microscope today I have a small collection of Conodont elements Palmatolepis glabra Chappel Limestone, Lower Mississippian, Blanco Co, Texas
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From the album: Aurora North Carolina Micro Matrix Fossils
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Found this weird guy in the creek today... very small. Any help would be appreciated. IMG_0119.MOV
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From the album: Hell Creek / Lance Formations
A handful of teeth from a small ornithischian dinosaur. All recovered from a channel deposit in Montana; they show varying degrees of feeding wear and enamel loss from river tumbling. The two on the left are anterior positions, the rest are lateral/cheek teeth.-
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From the album: Hell Creek / Lance Formations
A river-worn, shed Ornithischian dinosaur tooth found in a channel deposit. Despite its rough shape, the prominent central ridge and denticles make me think it's Pachycephalosaurid.
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