See you there.
Fossil Beach by Jasper Burns
In a new children’s book (3rd grade or so) by my friend, Jasper Burns, “Two children, John and Lucy, spend a month each summer at the beach at their grandmother’s cottage. They love to look for shells and watch the sea life. Mr. E., one of their grandmother’s neighbors, shows them some fossils he found at the inlet. John and Lucy go in search of their own fossils – and find much, much more!”
Great color illustrations and a sweet story of learning and discovery. I will be offering signed copies on http://www.millersfossils.com.
Buy Fossils. Fossils for Sale.
Buy fossils here. New fossils for sale going up on Millers Fossils this week and next. Come visit.
Tyrannosaurus rex
NEWS RELEASE: T. REX FOSSIL FOUND IN DELAWARE!!!
I’ve been at this for a long time, and I’m pretty jaded, but when I opened this box today, it took my breath away. Whether you collect fossils outdoors or with a silver pick, GOOD HUNTING
A reader asked me how he could get something like this and I told him these three things: Attention to detail Persistence Low credit card balance
Sigilmasasaurus, Spinosaurus, and Carcharodontosaurus
I was selling at a show this past weekend and a cool thing happened. A dinosaur paleontologist was cruising around and stopped to chat. I had three dinosaur vertebrae from Morocco for sale and we started talking about them. They were good sized but clearly not typical Spinosaurus, the most well known of the Egyptian dinosaurs and the largest theropod of all time, and I had just assumed they were Carcharodontosaurus. Long story short, he is actively involved with Moroccan dinosaurs and he was quite certain that the three verts were from the poorly understood species, Sigilimasasaurs, which was first described in 1996.
Sigilimasasaur, is somewhere in the Spinosaurus – Carcharodontosaurs mix and one of his current research projects is trying to better understand the beast. The verts were clearly significant and would be put into his museum’s collection and used in the paper he was going to publish if we could work out some arrangement. So, stay tuned.
Discovering Fossils
Sometime in 1994, I got the wild idea to write a book about fossils. Long story short, Discovering Fossils: How to Find and Identify Remains of the Prehistoric Past was published on January 1, 1998. Within several years after its publishing it rose to the #1 book about fossils on Amazon for various periods of time. Although I still get a royalty check twice a year I honestly haven’t checked on it on Amazon in at least 5 years
Well, I did check tonight and to my great surprise and delight, fourteen years after it was published it was still the 8th most popular book about fossils on Amazon.
I am…………………………………..
I
Creationism
I’m just sayin’
La Brea Tar Pits
The tar pits at Rancho La Brea may be the most well-known ongoing fossil site in the world. Since 1906 approximately 1 million bones have been recovered from 231 species of vertebrate animals. Additionally, 159 species of plants and 234 species of invertebrates have been recovered from about 55,000 years to 11,000 years ago. Dire wolves are the most common large mammals with about 4,000 individuals represented. The remains of over 2,000 individual saber-toothed cats rank second and coyotes rank third.
The George C. Page Museum is the center of all things La Brea. The museum recently redesigned their website and there are still some funtionality issues, but I wanted to highlight the blog section which is working.. I know of no other blog or resouce like it. You can actually follow along on an ongoing basis of the activity of this famous working fossil site with great photos and valuable content. It is a real treat.
Ebay and Megalodon Teeth
I’ve been on Ebay since 1999 as both a buyer and seller of fossils and such. I have one question:
Doesn’t everyone on Earth own a Megalodon tooth by now?
The Three Smilodons
Other than Dinosaurs, the so called saber-toothed tiger probably engenders more fascination about the fossil record than any other prehistoric animal. Over the last few years paleontologists and fossil addicts have pretty much eradicated the term “saber-toothed tiger” and rightly so because they were not tigers. Mission pretty much accomplished.
Many readers still remember The Three Tenors. One, Luciano Pavarotti, stood out in the publics’ awareness far beyond the other two – Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras.
Well, my mission is to begin to increase the publics’ awareness of The Three Smilodons. What is a Smilodon? Smilodon is the genus (and scientific) name given to a unique group of three kinds of saber-toothed cats known only from North and South America. The Luciano Pavarotti of Smilodons is the famed Smilodon fatalis best known from the classic ice age LaBrea Tarpits in Los Angeles. It is what everyone thinks of when you say “saber-toothed tiger (incorrectly), saber-toothed cat (correctly) or just sabercat.
Keep in mind, however, that there were three tenors and there are three Smilodons (meaning “knife tooth”) and just like there are many opera singers beyond those three, there were many types of saber-toothed cats over the last 35 million or so years.
Smilodon gracilis is the earliest known of the three in the fossil record and is only known from North America ranging from Pennsylvania to Florida to California. As the name implies it was a somewhat “gracile” form, if a sabercat can be considered gracile, especially when compared to the Pavarotti, Smilodon fatalis.
Smilodon fatalis is the La Brea Tarpit sabercat. Again, its name, fatalis, pretty much says it all. It was a large beast, and an amazing, wide ranging predator. Its’ fossils have been found from Florida to California to South America.
Smilodon populator, is the least well known of the three perhaps because its’ fossils are only found in the eastern part of South America. It is the stuff of nightmares, standing almost as tall as an average size person’s shoulders.
Depending upon your perspective, sadly or thankfully, all sabercats became extinct and have been replaced by the conical toothed cats (lions, tigers, jaguars, leopards, mountain lions, etc.) that are alive today. Why?