Fossiles

[chieflittlehorse]

Is there anyone here who are into collecting fossils?

I got some from Sonaste, New Mexico about five years ago in a small river bed. Some look like a snail and another like a tooth.

I remember buying one at the La Brea Tar Pits, it was a part of a Saber Tooth Tiger.

I'm getting interested in a lot of subjects at the moment like Astronomy (Using telescope to observe the sky), Greek Mathematics, Geometry, and Ancient Civilizations. All on Youtube of course.

CLH!

[Altashot]

I've got a fossil of some kind of weird creature that's about 300 million years old.
Another one of a fish, that's in exceptional condition, about 60 million years old and some dinosaur bones.
I also like astronomy, cosmology, string theory and other space related topics. Even have 2 telescopes, a microscope and a bunch of slides and other scientific objects.
Oh, I have a piece of an iron meteorite that weight about 15 grams too in my collection.

M.

[MrWizard]

I am relieved to see this isn't about old locksmiths!

I have a few fossils called Ammonites that are similar to modern nautilus. I few pieces of dinosaur bones and a shark tooth given to me from someone that finds them off shore in Florida. And a large rock with many snail shells embedded in it.

I have a large collection of quartz crystals of all types and many other rare minerals. Spent a lot of time and money on these for years. Have done some very interesting experiments with them with amazing results. The electrical properties displayed by these from just coming into close contact with the human bio electric system and actual holding them is truly astonishing something I think everyone should try.

[Neilau]

A few years back, my wife and I used to do a bit of bush walking/fossil hunting. We were searching for and found a mudstone seam about five metres thick in the side of a hill near Canberra.

Won’t go into a long story.

Briefly; This site is an ancient under sea mud slide that trapped and preserved the local fauna of the time. In his case – 400 Million year old !!!! Dinosaurs became extinct only 66 Million years ago– the fauna preserved at this site represented about all the animals that existed at that time. Trilobites (small), cephalopods – (straight-shelled nautiloids about 1.5 to 5 inches), small bivalve shells and snails. We took some of our findings to the Government paleontologists who gave us this information and swore us to secrecy regarding the location of the site. Probably built over now.

I’ve posted a few photos of one fascinating example that we found. I have much better examples of the fossils but this one is unique for its story. There is a snail shell from the site on the left and on the right is a Trilobite that has a snail inside it!

What probably happened was that the snail was feeding on/in the Trilobite when the mud slide occurred and trapped them. The trilobite is not the best example that I have but you can see the ridges on its tail section. The fossils are very fragile (dried mud basically) and if anyone is interested I can dig out the better examples and post photos.

What I find remarkable is that the snail (and the bivalve shells) are exactly the same as today. Must be a pretty good “form” to not have evolved much in 400 Million years and the fact that they are still around. Something to remember next time you are in the garden.

For those of you that are interested – enjoy.

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[macgng]

nice! yeah, you know it is really weird that there are some organisms that still are exactly the same just living their life now maybe a lil bit different, but probably still just about the same as they did millions and millions of years ago.

the last few fossils i picked up were a piece opalized petrified wood and a piece opalized ammonite ... SHINY

here's a fun trick to play on ppl .... give someone a piece of coprolite, they ask you what it's a fossil of, you tell them, try to catch it when they throw it and wipe their hands off! .... fossilized germs man, can't be too safe