Fossil Porn

This is a beautiful, 3.35" long, trilobite (Crotalocephalina gibbus) fossil from Atchana, Morocco.  It has been prepared in a “flying” pose by removing nearly all of the surrounding limestone. This leaves it floating above the rock on a pedestal. The preparation takes lot of time but the results are quite spectacular.

9" Carved, Amethyst Crystal Geode Dinosaur Skull - Roar!

This is a fossil clam (Mercenaria permagna) from the the famous Ruck’s Pit quarry in Florida. The interior of the clam is filled with golden-yellow calcite crystals which are highly fluorescent under both short and long-wave UV. These fossils are Early Pleistocene in age, or approximately 2 million years old.

Ruck’s Pit was a small cement quarry, that for several years in the early 2000’s produced some amazing crystal lined fossils. Around 2006 the quarry was shut down, and filled in with water. While some material is still being found in tailing piles from he quarry, high quality specimens of these remarkable crystal filled fossils are becoming harder to acquire.

Just got in a big shipment of brilliant ammolite from Alberta including this amazing, 14” wide, complete ammonite. Getting it all photographed today and it will be up for sale on FossilEra.com shortly. Ammolite is the trade name for an opal-like gemstone composed of fossil ammonite shells.

We just got in a fresh stock of Petoskey Stones from Michigan. These stones are actually 350 million year old, fossil rugose coral found along the beaches of Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, as well as in rock quarries in the area. Like the fossilization process of other corals, Petoskey stones formed when the polyp of the coral and its openings filled with sand and silt as it petrified. Over time the soft tissue decayed and the calcium carbonate “skeleton” of the colony was replaced by silica, calcite, and other various minerals forming a fossil. The rocks containing this fossil coral were exposed and broken up into smaller pieces by glaciation. These fragments of fossil coral subsequently became rounded and polished due to the action of both glaciers and waves on the lake shores.

Xiphactinus was a huge, predatory fish that lived during the Late Cretaceous. It would have been a veracious predator, growing 15-20 feet long. When alive, the fish would have resembled a gargantuan, fanged tarpon. Fossils of this monster fish can be found in the Smoky Hills Chalk of Kansas. This is a spectacular 10" long, fossil jaw that just arrived and is now posted for sale on FossilEra. Just check out those fangs!

This is a very impressive, articulated skeleton of a small Oreodont (Miniochoerus gracilis) collected from the White River Formation of Converse County, Wyoming. This formation is Oligocene in age, making this fossil roughly 32 million years old! In addition to the exceptional and complete preservation, this unique fossil features the oreodont in burrow position, with front legs/arms tucked underneath its body. 

Why Do Fossils Come In So Many Colors?

Illinois State Fossil - Tully Monster (Tullimonstrum gregarium)

In 1955, a fossil hunter by the name of Francis Tully was exploring the spoil piles of a coal mine near Braidwood, Illinois. He was searching for fossils inside of 300 million year old ironstone nodules found in the Francis Creek Shale. Mr. Tully split one open to reveal something a very strange animal that no one had seen before. It had a long proboscis or snout on its head sporting a claw, spade-shaped fins on its rear and a horizontal bar underneath its head with an eye on each end. This prehistoric oddity would eventually be named Tullimonstrum gregarium (commonly referred to as a Tully Monster) and it would go on to confound scientists for decades.

Incredible, 30" Fossil Turtle (Apalone) - Green River Formation

This a huge, museum quality, soft-shelled turtle (Apalone heteroglypta) from the Green River Formation of Wyoming. It measures 30 inches long (tip of skull to end of tail) and is nicely centered on a natural, 45 x 38" slab of shale. One of the aspects that makes this piece so special is that there is almost no restoration. There is only about 1% restoration along repaired cracks. None of the fossil has been composited or reposition on the rock, and the matrix is original. This spectacular piece has wall mounting hardware installed, so it is ready to show off. These turtles are a very rare component of the Fossil Lake fauna. This one was collected from the famous 18 inch layer of the Green River Formation. This layer is known for it’s exceptional fossil preservation because it was deposited in a few low oxygen environment. Nearly all the fossils in this layer are still buried under the surface of the rock when found. In the quarries they collected this layer at night using spotlights at low angles. This creates shadows off of the raised portions of the rock which indicate a buried fossil. The rock must then be carefully removed using air-scribes and air abrasives, an extremely time consuming process.

The earliest fossilized lungs have been found in an ancestral bird species. About 120 million years ago, the Archaeorhynchus spathula lived in what is today China alongside dinosaurs, before dying in a volcanic eruption. The newfound fossil is unusual for its preserved feathers and considerable soft tissue, which show that this primitive bird’s lungs closely resemble those found in living birds.

“We don’t just have a skeleton,” said one of the nodosaur researchers involved. “We have a dinosaur as it would have been.”

Known as a nodosaur, this 110 million-year-old, armored plant-eater is the best preserved fossil of its kind ever found.

An amazing recent fossil discovery: a whole school of fish! A single slab of limestone from the Green River Formation in North America contained 259 fish of the extinct Erismatopterus levatus species. They lived between 56 to 34 million years ago.

Two Permian Amphibians (Sclerocephalus) - Pfalz, Germany

This is an incredible fossil amphibian (Sclerocephalus) plate. It is two Sclerocephalus, the larger 13.6" and the smaller 9.2". These are wonderfully preserved amphibians. Areas of skin, legs, and hands/feet can be clearly seen. The shale it is preserved on measures 17.0" x 15.5" and has been backed with fiberglass for stability. The fossil beds of Pfalz in southwestern Germany have yielded many spectacular Permian fossils for many years, but this location has been closed to collecting for decades - making such specimens increasingly rare on the market. The Rotliegendes series of mud and siltstones is renowned for its abundant fish and amphibian fossils and this stunning assemblage is a perfect representation of aquatic life that thrived in the area 285 million years ago.

Beautiful Basseiarges Trilobite With Partial - Jorf, Morocco

This is a beautiful, .9" specimen of Basseiarges from Jorf, Morocco. The rock from this locality is extremely hard with an almost glass-like texture making it difficult to prepare. This results in many specimens being “burnt” during preparation and loosing a lot of shell detail. Not this little beauty. This is also a partial specimen, running into a quartz seam in the rock. Trilobites were a very diverse group of extinct marine arthropods. They first appeared in the fossil record in the Early Cambrian (521 million years ago) and went extinct during the Permian mass extinction (250 million years ago). They were one of the most successful of the early animals on our planet with over 25k described species, filling nearly every evolutionary niche. Due in large part to a hard exoskeleton (shell), they left a excellent fossil record.