Fossils

[Gamera]

Hi all,
Here is a pic of a very large front paddle bone from a plesiosaur I found this year on England's East coast, my hunting ground.
I am only 20 miles from the coast so quite easy for me to get there if the tide and other commitments permit.

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[artdecovampire]

Nice find. That would have been a pretty big animal in life. Is the thread for fossils you found yourself, or is it just for your favourite fossils? Its time I dusted off my collection.

[jeffbrown]

Nice fossil; I've heard of the fossils that you can find coming out of the cliffs there at the ocean side. I saw a iguanadon footprint someone found there once; it was almost two feet across. This makes me think of two questions; 1) I wonder how many people that collect the PS scenes also collect fossils and if its related and 2) After collecting for decades around Cincinnati why have I never taken even one picture of the fossils I've found. Other people have taken pictures of my finds and I even had one in a case at the museum center for a year. I also had one of my prehistoric kits in the same case there; it disapeared and I never got it back; I did get the fossil back. So I took a few pictures tonight; it was the largest trolibite in the middle that was at the meseum and the little tag that went with it. Largest whole trolibite I ever found and I've found between 200 and 300 so far.

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[Gamera]

If it is about fossils post it here!
Not for me just to show my finds or favorites, though I will post some more photos etc.
How about books or other sites people rate?

Having seen some complete plesiosaur fossils to compare mine against I believe that mine came from a Rhomaleosaurus cramptoni that comes in at over 20' !
The other smaller 12' ish plesiosaurs have much smaller paddle bones, but I am no expert.

I was always interested in Dinosaurs as a little kid and would go on fossil hunting trips with my dad and he would make clay model Dino's for me, until we found the Pyro and Aurora kits.
Not collected for about 35 years , but had a chance meeting with a collector this year at a car boot sale and hit it off straight away and just like that another hobby is re kindled.
Been out a few times over the last few month and found the plesiosaur bone just laying amonst some rocks.
It has been in the sea a while as one end is missing and it is quite worn.

G

[Gamera]

If collect in the UK check out locations at:

www.ukfossils.co.uk/

G

[artdecovampire]

Here goes. This is a partial mammoth tooth from the North Sea. Dredged up in the net by a trawler. My daughter and I bought it from a gift shop on the quayside. It still smelled of the sea and it had been brought up the day before with a couple of ribs and a femur. My daughter was so excited about it I had to buy it. It cost £10. Its where most British mammoth parts come from apparently.

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[artdecovampire]

This is an Ichthyosaur tail vertebrae my daughter and I picked up off the beach in whitby. Still in its matrix. Luckily it was flakey and quite soft so I cut it out with a Dremel and a friend polished it up.

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[artdecovampire]

This is an ammonite my daughter found in quarry in Whiltshire. Its not got public access but a friend of mine is an Engineer. He had access and took us in one weekend just to see the hole and my daughter spotted it straight away in a pile of broken rock!

[artdecovampire]

oops forgot the pic!

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[artdecovampire]

Needless to say over the last few years we have collected, bought and chipped out a bout three boxes full of fossils. The top three are my favourites because they have a history. But it all started with me and my father going to Birmingham museum and seeing the full sized T Rex that they built very early in the seventies. It was a huge wooden frame covered in chicken wire and plaster. It was in abig victorian domed room with an Irish elk and a triceratops skull. It was very realistic. Sadly they smashed it up a few years ago and installed a social history exhibit. Did anyone else see it or remember it? Perhaps I could find photo of it.

[Gamera]

Loads of Ice Age stuff comes out of the north sea from when Britian was joined to mainland Europe.
The north sea being a vast plain.
Most is dredge up during fishing operations by the Dutch although I have been told that recently this type of fishing has been band due to damage to the enviroment so consiquently less stuff will come onto the market.
Occasionally stuff gets naturally washed up on the beach.
I have found a coller bone of a small deer, but still looking for that mammoth find!

[Gamera]

Always wanted to visit the la brea tar pits.
Anyone been there, is there a local museum or anything?

[jeffbrown]

I lived in LA from 89 to 91 and I believe the Page museum at La Brea tar pits was the only place I actually went and visited while I was there; three times I think. the page museum is a bit small but it is nice. the couple things I can remember about it now were the 400 Dire Wolf skulls on a backlit wall. Mastadon, sabertoothed cat and dire wolf skelleton diplays and a glass front lab where you can watch the folks work. there was some kind of display set up that had tar in it inclosed in plexiglass with a couple steel rods stuck down in it so you could try and pull them out to see what it was like to be stuck in the tar. around the museum was the park with a path that ran through it to get to the digs that were going on and a couple places fenced off that were actual traps today. they just looked like depresions in the ground and if it wasn't posted youd never know the tar was right there. I saw a couple places out on the grass that looked like someone had just dumped a cup of old used moter oil on the ground; it was just seeping up out of the ground making new traps. When I was there in 1990 they had at least two pits open and being dug; you could watch them through the glass. they had a concreate silo that went down about 30 ft were they had dug and left the fossils in place so you could see how they were found. they had a sign on the wall with a drawing showing what was there which included two mammoth skulls and at least one sabertoothed cat skull plus all kinds of other bones. the "lake" out by the street with the mammoth models was actually an asphalt quarry in the 1900s that was abandoned and filled with water. because of the tar there is an oil slick on it and the natural gas bubbles up constantly. the "pits/traps" are still "active" and still being created. the one that was fenced off had a bunch of trash thrown over the fence into it including some beer cans and other stuff that I figure some scientist will dig up 1,000 years from now and try to figure out what they found. I do have some pictures from going there but they're in a box somewhere; I'll try and find the boxes in the next couple days and post them if I think they look good enough. I know I still have the musem pamphlets too but have know idea where they would be at this point.

[artdecovampire]

If anyone wants top see a decent, largish but well displayed collection of fossils. Manchester University Museum might be the place. You can see them below on my youtube site

www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7bo1hFGpz0

The centrepiece is a rex skeleton cast, full sized models of an ichthyosaur and a plesiosaur. Plus some giant, and I mean giant Ewok style tree stumps. Probably carboniferous horse tails.

Plus it has live lizards and other skeletons there too, and a whole host of other stuff and like most UK museums it free.

[artdecovampire]

PS Liverpool world museum also has a whole floor, allosaurus, megalosaurus, iguanodon and Quetxacaotolu()SP!)