Another Monster Fish!

[KansasFossilHunter]

On Saturday, November 16th a friend and I drove out to one of our favorite hunting sites in Gove county, KS. I had found fragments of pectoral fin and operculum elements (from a Xiphactinus) several months ago and wanted to further investigate the site.

We took turns digging into the solid chalk for about 4 hours, before I uncovered what looked to be the dentary of the fish. The piece was incredibly crushed and slightly root damaged, so I coated it in several layers of Butvar. Sadly, many of the teeth broke but can probably be saved.

To be continued in next post--

[KansasFossilHunter]

View of the dig:

[KansasFossilHunter]

The dentary (lower jaw) was very loose so we decided to extract it and leave the rest for a better time.

After left lower jaw is removed:

[KansasFossilHunter]

Outlined in red to better illustrate. The maxilla (upper jaw) and premaxilla are also present.

[KansasFossilHunter]

Just after I dug it up, in all it's ugliness:

Surprisingly, I was able to save many of the teeth (wait and see)

[KansasFossilHunter]

I'll reveal the prep work in a bit here

[Foshunter]

Nice find, hope the prep goes well---Tom

[Auspex]

Special kudos for the image with the red outlining; this makes it so much easier for me to understand what I'm seeing.

[KansasFossilHunter]

Special kudos for the image with the red outlining; this makes it so much easier for me to understand what I'm seeing.

Glad you found it helpful

[KansasFossilHunter]

Nice find, hope the prep goes well---Tom

So far so well. I'm looking to do some reconstruction on the teeth.

[masonboro37]

Exciting! I am anticipating it all!

[Doctor Mud]

Looking forward to seeing the finsihed product.

I see why you needed the consolidant - it looks mighty fragile.

Good luck with the prep.

[xonenine]

terrific report and photos, I can't wait to see the results

[KansasFossilHunter]

Here it is!

[KansasFossilHunter]

[Ramo]

Nice job. I was afraid it had bad "root-rot", but that looks very nice cleaned up.

Ramo

[KansasFossilHunter]

Nice job. I was afraid it had bad "root-rot", but that looks very nice cleaned up.

Ramo

Thanks! Hope the rest gets to looking this good when I get around to digging it up.

[Xiphactinus]

Awesome job! Came out better than I expected from the in the field shots. Well done!

[KansasFossilHunter]

Awesome job! Came out better than I expected from the in the field shots. Well done!

Thanks, Scott!

[sward]

Fascinating find and prep job! Congratulations.

[MarcoSr]

Really nice jaw! Great prep. Good luck with extracting and the prep of the rest of the specimen.

Marco Sr.

[squali]

Excellent job!! Thanks for showing the stages of discovery, extraction and final prepped specimen.

That jaw looks Bad.. as in.. to the Bone

How did you remove the jaw from the matrix without damaging the rest of the fossil?

When you did get it out what did you wrap it in to get it home?

And finally, What methods or techniques did you use to prep such a fragile piece?

[Fallingfossils]

Great job presenting the various stages of the find, much appreciated. Great prep work!

[Scylla]

Good job, thanks for sharing!

[Jeffrey P]

An amazing fossil. Big congratulations. Years ago I used to live in Denver and though fossil collecting was very much a back shelf hobby of mine I did venture once to Western Kansas to seek the famed fossils there. Almost all of the outcrops were on private land. At one small outcrop of chalk that didn't have barb wire in front of it I did find a small piece of fish, a few rib bones. I also saw some enormous oyster shells that were too fragile to collect. Besides that the only thing I found was a prairie rattler. You're very lucky to have access to a world class site that it is still producing extraordinary fossils. Thanks for posting.