Thursday June 14, 2012 (part 2)


I found some amazing fossils today.  Brought a few of them home, and wanted to share photos.  These don't come close to doing  justice to the amazing colors on some of these shells.  Ed (my friend who is a paleontologist) gave me a tip on how to polish the shell a bit to bring out the shine even more.  Might try that when I get back home.  He also grabbed his book on ammonites and identified this first one for me as Jeletzkytes Nodosus, and dated it at about 74 million years old.  You can read more about where and how I found these on my previous post. 

My glorious ammonite.  The shell is a rainbow of shimmer.

You can see one puncture wound on this side.

Note the two bits of shell missing on the back here, you can see the tiny dots that Ed pointed out.

Front side of a bivalve.

Note the line of ridge marks towards the top.  These are the hinge teeth.

This large fragment is a delicate, shimmery purple color  that did not come through in photographs.

Back side.

This one is terrible fragile, and broke in two when I first touched it.

Rock with two separate fossil impressions.

Ed pointing to my ammonite in his book.