Where can I take a bunch of unknown fossils to be identified (in CA state)?

[timlah79]

Hi all,

Fairly new to the forum. As I posted in the welcome forum Hello from Santa Cruz, CA with a tub full of fossils!, I have a tub full of fossils that I only know which a few actually are (see my photo in that post). There are somewhere around 50 fossils that I honestly don't even know where they came from, where they were dug up, etc. I've had a lot of help from other folks to try to identify a couple of them. However, as I've learned, if I truly don't know what part of the world/country the given fossil came from, it's very difficult to find out what the fossil actually is. I still have so many more in this tub that I would like to have identified. I don't want to waste anyone else's time on this forum by posting new threads and photos when I'm asking about fossils of which I don't know the origin.

 

So my current question is: Does anyone know of a museum, a specialist, anyone/any avenue in CA state (preferably near Santa Cruz 95062) that I could physically take all of these 50+ fossils to for identification, in the hope that if they are inspected physically that I may be able to figure out at least what some of them are?

 

My previous specific Fossil ID posts for reference:

• Unidentified, possibly lower femur bone from a dinosaur?
• What is this tusk / horn?

[FB003]

I would recommend to contact local museums to see if they have the time/manpower to put into it.  Unfortunately, I think you'll get much in the way of the same answers without a proper locality so specific ID is out in most if not all cases.  That said, nothing wrong with a generic ID! At least you can gather an idea of what it is. You can always post things that aren't generic looking chunk of bones.

[jpc]

don't take it to any ole museum.  Make sure there is someone trained in paleo at the museum.  I don't know where Santa Cruz is (SoCal, I assume) but the Cooper Center is in Orange County if that helps.  They do have paleo people on staff

[DokDeino]

20 hours ago, timlah79 said:

Hello from Santa Cruz, CA with a tub full of fossils!

So I took a quick look at this, and I think I can read a few of the labels:

"GALLIMIMUS" - A dinosaur from Asia

"TRICERATOPS" - A dinosaur from the western US (And parts of Canada, I think), East of the Rockies

"PSITTACOSAURUS" - A dinosaur from Asia

 

If I'm reading those right, there is no flippin' way any of those are from Washington state, or OR. You might have just bought a grab-bag of fossil bits that somebody slapped names on that they got from Google. I would treat any label in that box with the highest skepticism you can muster, especially if the seller said those bones were all from the Pacific Northwest.