Collecting Dinosaur bones and dinosaur fossils

[amargasaurus cazaui]

 I had posted this in my thread regarding my upcoming trip to Canon City so if you saw it there, forgive the repeat. Two weeks ago while my family was in Colorado on Vacation they stopped in a rock shop there and purchased this large vert, and a few smaller pieces for me. The purchase of the vert was an accident, I had been asking about a different piece in the image my brother had sent. He grabbed this instead and my mom grabbed it for me. The specimen weighs 26 pounds, is obviously a large centrum, and has the foramen at the bottom where the spinal material would have been in life. The final picture is a seperate chunk they got for me as well and I have asked if anyone can identify the unique structures that are visible within the bone? If you can name them, you will also have a clue to what the bone comes from !! I think someone here should know this.












Foramen


    I sent my pictures to Dr. Ken Carpenter for his thoughts and he simply stunned me with his response.


"Regretably, the specimen lacks all the diagnostic features for a species identification and most of the photos are too close and show only a part of the vertebra, not the entire thing. What can be said from the photos is that:

1)  based on the color difference of inside and outside, the specimen was found lying on the ground where it bleached by the sun;

2) based on the color of the rock still filling the pneumatic foramen on the side of the centrum, it came from the Morrison Formation, hence is Late Jurassic (~150 mya);

3) based on the overall size  it is a medium-sized sauropod;

4) the presence of a suture between the lower part of the vertebra (the centrum) and upper (neural arch) seen as a "crack" on the cut surface, it is a young adult;

5) based on the rather short front-to-back length versus height it is from the seaqcrum or tail near the pelvis;

6) however, the flaring outwards structures on the side are located at the front edge of the centrum, which is for the sacral ribs, therefore this is a sacral centrum, not a caudal.

7) the slightly rounded posterior (rear) face  indicates the next vertebra had a "cup"-shaped anterior to receive the rounded face. this indicates this centrum is the last in the sacrum, otherwise it would have a completly flat face to attached unmoveably with the next vertebra.

The rounded posterior and small pneumatic foramen (assuming I understand the photo) excludes most Morrison sauropods, but not Diplodocus. Unfortunately, it is not possible to say which species"

[Dinomike]

Whoa!!! Coooool!

[amargasaurus cazaui]

The structures I was asking about are foramen within the bone...channels to allow air, blood and sometimes muscle and often found within vertebrae especially, although any opening through a bone can often be termed a foramen. As these are so highly pronounced in the side of the exposed bone, it is likely the fragment of bone is a piece of a vert. I made a sphere once with these in it, as well. The large vert has a hole at the bottom for the spinal material and this is called a pneumatic foramen......

[amargasaurus cazaui]

As I had recently posted in another thread, I made a trip to Colorado and purchased perhaps five hundred pounds of dinosaur bones. The material is Morrison formation and content is largely sauropod chunks and pieces mostly. Some I divided up to friends and some I kept as specimens and some I kept to have work done on.....here is my first project piece, a large piece of Limb-bone. As the piece retains most of the outer rind of the bone, I chose to have the upper surface polished and leave the lower as a natural , so people can compare the two ends. This bone is largely calcite, and softer, not the hard agate type bone so loved for jewelry and so forth.
First picture is the specimen before polishing and the others , after my friend Mark had worked his magic on the surface.
The material has alot of reds and oranges present and polished like glass.

[amargasaurus cazaui]

A new addition from this year's show, and something I had wanted for awhile ....a large section of triceratops frill. I got the piece at a very fair price, and it is nice, as it is not all broken and split and repaired as well. Notice the deep channels in the surface for blood vessels....the grooves are highly obvious.

[Megalosaurus]

Hi.
I love this thread. And I envy you because you have access to this wonderful places (and money to buy some pieces).

Anyway, I have a couple of "rocks" that I'd like to send pictures to a paleontologist to confirm that it is a fossil. First one looks like an amphibian skull to me, second one looks like a vertebrae of another animal. Both are no bigger than a child fist. I collected them in México in a rocky riber bed many years ago. May you put me in contact with one expert, or should I send the pictures to you to forward to him/her?

[amargasaurus cazaui]

Our own Dr Admin is of course a reknowned paleontologist himself...with several published papers to his credit. Aside from that, there are several people within the forum here that are well versed at fossils that may offer some valuable insight...I would suggest posting your images and asking for feedback here in the forum. A few members with fossil collections of their own could be quite helpful. I always tell anyone collecting fossils, be careful of "seeing images within a rock that fit your mental image of what something should look like" because in truth most fossils seldom look how you might expect. They may be compressed, distorted, incomplete, or placed in such a way within the material as to make a good verification very difficult....

[Pachyrhinosaurus]

Nice catch! How large is it? I've been eyeballing a few of these on eBay myself.

[amargasaurus cazaui]

Nice catch! How large is it? I've been eyeballing a few of these on eBay myself.

Measured across the widest parts it runs 3 1/4 inches wide....5 inches length and roughly 3/4inches in thickness....its a nice sized chunk. The paleo who was selling it had it lying in a box with other Triceratops bone odds and ends.....with a sign....choice, 3.00 each. I mentioned that it was frill and not a bone...and he laughed and said...3.00 please! Hard decision....there it is.I am sure the fact I had just bought a partial saltasaurus egg, for a heftier price helped ease it along however

[amargasaurus cazaui]

Sometime in the late 90's I was made aware by an ebay seller I knew well, that he had acquired or was marketing elements of an allosaurus he had helped acquire from privately owned land. As I had purchased many bone fossils before from him, when the pieces were offered I watched intently. I missed out on most things, as they bid away from me, but came away with a sort of pink elephant no one else wanted. It was a 20 something pound of sacral material ...two fused verts, with the ends sawed and polished beautifully. At that time the concept of flat rate boxes, was unheard of so the shipping price was rather high and the main reason many stayed away from the sale. Aside from that, the piece was largely obscured in matrix, with visible cracks and so forth.I won the piece, set it on a shelf and let another 15 or so years pass, always hoping to have it prepped and cleaned up. In the meantime I learned the dealer I had acquired the piece from had been selling so many nice things as he was trying to build enough funds for an organ transplant, which he failed to do...and he had quietly passed away.




You can see the visible vert ends, the neural processes and so forth.
The past weekend at the mineral show I was able to work with a paleo I met who agreed to prep the piece and I received my approval images yesterday....six pounds of matrix later, and some serious prep, with two small areas being slightly repaired for structural issues....it is finally a gorgeous ready to display piece from a fierce allosaurus !

[Halichoeres]

That's a hell of a story.

[amargasaurus cazaui]

I have a friend that takes regular knives, removes the scales and replaces them with ground and polished stone ones.....I supplied him some raw materials in trade for voila.....a dinosaur bone scaled knife !Notice the various patternings, and colorations...you are viewing actual cell pockets within the bone structure that give it this unique appearance. IN fact if you study one of the images closely you can detect a small formamen preserved within the handle, indictating this was, as I knew beforehand, from a large vert

[amargasaurus cazaui]

Small specimen I have obtained from the legendary Ernie Shirley collection....this is a tiny fragment but chosen for the way it reveals how bone weathers . The cell walls are softer than the infill of silica rich minerals within the cell pockets and weathers away to leave tubes of mineral silica where the pockets used to be, surrounded by webbing and walls. Gorgeous specimen despite the small size....

[amargasaurus cazaui]

I have a friend who with his group, own a dinosaur quarry in the Western united states..there are several collecting horizons, however the Jurassic area is centered over a long lost water feature of some type, choked with the remains of three large sauropods...likely all Apatosaurs. As the work proceeds they harvest intact bones, limbs, and other material intact enough to mount and sell . As these are common dinosaurs and would be allowed to just erode out over time, they are perhaps being preserved for some to enjoy. The level is choked with scattered bones, teeth and other material seemingly washed in.
  He is keenly aware of my collecting various pieces that demonstrate morphology or function and saves me a box of it as they go..normally processes from the larger verts , that are riddled with air pockets and a nightmare to prep .
  I acquired a new box recently, and here are some of the pieces. it always amazes me how intricate the processes are for these guys.....

[amargasaurus cazaui]

Current plans are to build a crate and have sent to me a large field jacket containing two massive body verts.....150 pounds total within the jacket, which measures 2 1/2 feet across by 3 1/2 feet long. Matrix is a hard clay type material which can be removed with a sharp steak knife....scrape, clean, consolidate and glue, expose more, clean.....you get the idea. Eventually with enough work they should be able to be removed from the jacket, intact and displayed.Stay tuned......

[ZoPteryx]

Wow, that's quite a project!  Those are some really cool specimens too. 

[amargasaurus cazaui]

Thanks Zopterxy....I love collecting bones and so forth...it always makes unique conversation pieces.

[Vidusaurus]

Yeah this is cool and all but 100% of this should be in the hands of scientific institutions for preservation and study.

[amargasaurus cazaui]

In a perfect world I would agree with you. However, we aren't living in that place nor reality. If you have ever visited or worked within a dinosaur quarry in the Morrison formation you are already acutely aware of a problem....simply put, there are far too many common and well known dinosaurs that are already well understood, weathering out of areas they could be collected, and not enough resources to even begin to do so.
  Take for example Como Bluff in Wyoming....you can park your car, and take a hike through the protected areas. Within a few miles you will begin noticing perhaps a half dozen sauropods weathering out in various areas....either too poorly preserved or just too common to expend the resources to collect. Consider, the average sauropod can be 75-100 feet and massive....it will require 10-15 years of backbreaking work by a team to tease free of the sediments and then prep. Even then, most of those exposed are either apatosaurine, or camarosaurus, and quite common. Most institutions simply lack the manpower and resources to collect specimens that are going to be weathered out, poorly preserved in many cases, incomplete, and generally animals already well studied. So these massive guys sit and weather and crumble and die to become once more part of the sediments....because people fail to understand the issue.
   The quarry I deal with has 3 apatosaurines directly in the middle of the quarry, and quite a bit of susrrounding material that has washed in. The site is visited reqularly by local palentologists who watch and check what is being quarried and examine the finds. The entire quarry lies on private ground and the fossils were weathering away into the dust and desert around them. It has been well established the animals are fragmentary, known species, and not worth an instutions time or efforts to collect.
  One area of the quarry offers a more recent plateau to collect from, with some cretaceous fossils.....the group recently uncovered a large slab containing a nearly complete horse. The paleos felt it might be worth study and prep, and the team PROMPTLY donated the specimen to the museum .
   A similar thing can be said for Hell creek and its fossil beds. You can walk a few miles and find multiple triceratops, and hadrosaurs weathering out. Most are too badly gone to save much from.....with a lot of work and prep you may tease loose a few bones or a jaw, perhaps a femur, but the majority is crumbly, often so badly gone that it explodes when touched. When someone takes the time and effort to remove and save one of these specimens they are not hurting science, they are saving an otherwise lost treasure.
   Does abuse occur? Of course it does, and sadly it gives the entire hobby a poor name. Sadly there are also documented cases of the scientists and teams entrusted to handle such sites, looting, vandalizing and stealing themselves, although I am sure that is not the norm for most of the people studying this area.
    While I used to agree with what you are stating, it simply is not realistic, nor to any degree currently possible. Museums lack the resources, and manpower, and sadly its far cheaper to purchase a resin replica than go to the field, spend ten years and recover an Apatosaurus skeleton and then bring it back, prep it entirely, and mount it .
There are some decent commercial collectors who make the effort and follow the rules. They do provide a service in prepventing the loss of fossils otherwise likely to crumble to dust.
   Nevermind the types that were private collectors and found Sue, and so many other great specimens that science has been allowed to learn from.

[amargasaurus cazaui]

Was finally able to catch up with my friend the knife-maker and secure my own piece. I did send home more material and will be getting another knive to add to my shelf once it is made.It is a slow proess ...trading, slicing, creating, etc, but eventualy yields results....meantime, I got to bring this one home !