#fossilblr

Thanks so much for asking @insectsinthestars ! I felt like this required some photos!

I truly do not think I have a favorite, I tried to pick one but I could not. I love them all so much. Here are a few that mean the most to me though!

This blob of Bryozoans! This one is special to me because it is a chunk of just pure Bryozoans, it is actually super light and REALLY delicate. Every time I set it down, it sheds some particles. The fact that this survived the elements for potentially hundreds of millions of years makes my heart tighten up.

These are also the largest branches I have found, by far! (Bryozoa are tiny tiny animals that live in colonies, similar to coral)

Of course, I have to include my ONE trilobite haha. Yeah, that was a good day. I kinda love that it is just his little booty, hehe. Maybe one day I will work up the courage to attempt to chisel the rest of it out, I just reallllly do not wanna damage it. But yea.. man, do i cherish it

And I would honestly feel bad not including any Brachiopods, since they make up 80% of my fossils. But again, I really can’t choose a favorite:( I have a lot and I love them all. So these one’s are from the very beginning of my fossil hunting days (2019) and I can still remember finding them and crying in the woods :’)

Found a large partial fish fossil in the nature trade! The closeup on the right is of the bottom left corner of the fossil. Lil itty bitty fish beside a bigger fish.

Found an AMAZING store the other day that specialised in fossils (I Dig Dinos, for anyone in the UK), and this is the result. Now have a dedicated aquatic-critter-shrine-thing going on in my room.

The fossils are:

Top right - labelled as a Sarcosuchus tooth, but the owner thinks it may be an Eosuchus - in which case the tooth would be much rarer.

Second left - Megalodon tooth (beautiful detail, serrations still clear. A birthday present for my sister)

Third left - Spinosaurus tooth. Not technically aquatic, but believed to have done the majority of its hunting in the water. He gave me this one free!

Bottom left - unidentified fish skeleton from Lebanon (unusual, apparently). Approx. 100 million years old!!!

I cracked open that one from my last post and was rewarded with my favorite genus of Brachiopod, ✨ Leptaena ✨!! so beautiful..

Also I cracked open this mush

I managed to weasel this lady out!!

I am honestly not too sure what I am looking at in the 2nd photo, I am 93% sure this is half of a Brachiopod, so I am guessing those are the innards, so I am also guessing that that circle is the pedical, maybe? It is just so large?. I have never found one with the inside visible like this. And I just can not find any references I need .. anybody know?

Also another Leptaena was also in there

And an adorable Bryozoan sheet that makes me crave honey:)

And here is a better photo of the chisel project I was working on the other day! I am a little stuck on this one, I really do not want to damage the Crinoid, it seems so fragile..

Something upset me yesterday, probably more than it should have, so I leaned on my most reliable coping method: going into the woods, sifting through rocks on my hands and knees until the sun goes down, and letting Mother Earth give to me gifts that she left here just for me. It really clears my mind, all I can think about are the rocks in front to me and the sound around me and sometimes how my knees hurt, haha. And now I feel a little better.

I guess I haven’t been posting my fossils because they are not the prettiest or largest fossils, but nonetheless they are hundreds of millions of years old and they make me happy. Here is what the Earth gave me yesterday.

This rock has quite a few Brachiopods in it. I love when the rock has little ridges in it like this, when the fossils are perpendicular to the surface, it’s like a zebra. Also, sorry for the quality of the close up, I can’t find my magnifier (my room is very cluttered..) and the phone just does not like getting into focus on such small objects. I tried using a toy magnifying glass I had but it was so useless haha

This one is an array of things, Bryozoans, Brachiopods, Crinoids. I adore the squiggles of the Brachiopods shell:) In the 3rd photo you can see an imprint of a Crinoid columnal in the center and a Bryozoan branch just above it. I am going to break this one open later and see if there’s anything good inside.

More Bryozoan colonies. Just so cute. Amazing how such delicate things have survived so long.

THIS is the burrows of unidentifiable ancient marine worms :D

Looks like a shark, doesn’t it?!

Here’s another one! I just love burrows so much, they are beautiful, like art. I think also I love them so much because you can truly see the life. The movements those worms made. Where were they going? Unlike all of my other fossils, which are animals that are dead, these are just pure life. Same could be said for foot prints. (which would be a dream to aquire)

Breakage is recent (had it in a plant pot. Natural fungus from the plant/soil started destroying it. Oops.) it’s light, pretty porous by the look of it, but smooth like a basalt? My gut is saying this is coral or some other type of fossil. The hole in the last photo goes about 16mm deep at least and I can’t quite tell if it comes out the other end. The hole reminds me vaguely of a foramen and the porous texture could maybe be seen as bone-matrix-like?