Hello from the Museum of Biodiversity at the University of Notre Dame!

[MuseumofBioNotreDame]

I am a student working on the fossils in the museum!

[MuseumofBioNotreDame]

I am currently working on identifying fossils that came from the Hell's Creek formation. I have recently completed a project identifying thirteen ammonites that were acquired by the museum in the late 1800s.

 

Currently I am having a little trouble identifying a fossil. I believe it is from the Hell's Creek formation based on some information in the field jacket, and I think it may possibly be part of a triceratops, either t. horridus or t. prorsu. Hopefully this forum can help with that! (and hopefully let me know the best places to find information on fossil identification. 

[jpc]

Is the material you have skull pieces or not? If you are at Notre Dame, you may have access to Cathy Forster's PhD work on Triceratops species.  But  only skull pieces can be IDed to species.  

By the way, no apostrophe s in Hell Creek.  

 

 

[MuseumofBioNotreDame]

Hi jpc, thank you for the advice!

 

I will take a look at pulling those PhD works.

 

I have some reason to believe that the fossil in question is a skull fragment or frill fragment. The issue with my identification process is that the professor who was a paleontologist and who collected many of the fossils in the collection passed away suddenly years ago, without leaving any IDs or information for many specimens. 

I know for certain that we do have other triceratops skull fragments that I removed from relatively identical field dressings, but I am not 100 percent sure on this specimen.

 

I will post within the next week on the fossil ID forum chat when I am able to get better photos of the fossil.

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