Shark Vert. Prep Advice

[uncoat]

Good hello, I have been prepping vertebrate fossils using air tools for a number of years now. I have a pretty good idea of how to go about prepping most mammal and fish fossils with minimal trouble. Recently i have been prepping some shark material which is something i have much less experience with.. The matrix im working with is much harder then the actual fossil which has been giving me a lot of problems. Seems how ever careful i am, the fossil cartilage still wants to flake away when i get close to it with air tools.. Im guessing whatever i end up doing i will have to do a bit of painting and repair.

Im looking for any advice from any of you that have worked with this sort of thing before. Some of you crab preppers may know what i mean. A few crab guys i know have said that all the shark verts they have found, they have messed up prepping for similar reasons..

So are there any of you out there that have any advice on this sort of thing?

Here are some photos of what im working with. In some areas it preps just fine. Other spots are really sticky and seem to just chip away..

Any advice from any of you experienced in this sort of thing would be helpful.

Nick

[Al Dente]

There was a fairly recent post about large shark centrums (or is the plural centra?) found in Texas that was published in PLOS one. They used a 10 percent acetic acid bath to dissolve the matrix around the centrums. It looked good but I would be very hesitant to use this method. I would worry that the shark centrum would dissolve. Here's a short write up. http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/science-leptostyrax-macrorhiza-texas-02882.html

Edited June 18, 2015 by Al Dente