Griffin's fossil collection.

[Griffin]

My middle school music teacher hunted local (north east USA, around NJ) fossils for a hobby and would always give me some of his haul every time he came back.

From left to right. Whale vertebrae and some kind of a Sea Cow bone.


Snail shell casts and a big bivalve

Left to right: Trilobites, horn coral, snails with a bivalve impression.


The top 4 rows are exculively shark teeth. The last two in the fifth row in the horizontal position are bony fish teeth. On the bottom are crab claws and then snail shell casts.

Some more mollusks and horn coral in the middle.

Brachiopods and a large crab claw on the lower left.

Big mass of gastropod casts and impressions. This one is pretty cool.



These he found somewhere else. Probably out west somewhere. They are gastrolithes (stones swallowed to help with internal digestions much like in some modern birds) from a sauropod.


Ok now these fossils i bought. This is an ammonite.

Hadrosaur tooth


Spinosaurus tooth


Tyrannosaurus Rex tooth replica.


My little set up.

[Horridus]

Great stuff. I was expecting a Spinosaurus tooth in there as they seem to be common as muck - indeed I have 2 of them (well, one (which looks like yours) is a lot more convincing than the other, which is pretty tiny...). That big rock with the various gastropod impressions is fantastic. In fact, so's the big trilobite rock. A really nice collection.

[Griffin]

Thanks a bunch! I really love my collection. Especially the ones that were locally found. Yeah I actually bought that spino tooth recently at a reptile show believe it or not. You are right they are fairly common there were at least 2 others there. There was also vertebrae from some unnamed perminan amphibian and an entire 8 inch long skeleton imbeded in a rock of a small marine reptile (which also didn't have an exact name but it looked sorta like a Nothasaur). The skeleton was $250. I was happy with my spino and hadro tooth purchases. You can find the weirdest knick knacks at reptile shows haha.

[sepp]

very very cool! that edmontosaurus tooth is superb!
thanks for sharing

there's a store downtown that has this great crab shell fossil, it's the entire top of the shell. it's several hundred dollars if I remember correctly, but I want to get it sometime...

[Griffin]

Sounds sweet. and thanks for the compliments.

Guess I'm glad I got all my crab fossils for free!

[crazycrowman]

Very nice collection!!!

Do you frequent shark river/big brook ? I go a few times a year. If you haven't been you should go, I bet you'd love it.

I love Calvert. That is where I am close to now, and do most of my picking these days. I have a hefty collection of meg teeth thanks to that place Those snail shell curls next to the Exogyra (which looks like Big Brook material) look like the Ecphora sp I am used to seeing down at Calvert.

"and an entire 8 inch long skeleton imbeded in a rock of a small marine reptile (which also didn't have an exact name but it looked sorta like a Nothasaur). The skeleton was $250."

I bet it was a fake, (and no, probably not even a composite, like "archeoraptor" was, but a 100% pure fake) Almost all those things you see for sale are. Same with "dinosaur eggs" - so many fake fossils for sale out there, one has to be extremely careful not to get suckered into buying junk, as junk predominates that market.
www.paleodirect.com/fakekeichousaurfossils.htm

[Griffin]

Wow that fake you showed on the link is very similar to what I saw. It was at the Hamburg Reptile show. I hope the teeth I bought arent fake too.

[crazycrowman]

Maybe I am just jaded, but in my experience, any expo or show you go to is full of junk vendors, so you have to be careful, and know what you are buying - the more you know, the safer you are as a buyer.

The teeth you have are almost surely legit, (They are dirt common for the "lower grade" specimens of the spino teeth, (that said, yours is fairly nice, and because of that would cost more then many of the ugly ones I see all the time) all coming out of Morocco, and for the most part aren't worth faking, and decent inexpensive hadrosaurid teeth are not that hard to come by either - again, I would have expected to pay more for that one - its nice quality) - Being that its at the Hamburg show, and the only one vendor is there, (I have looked at his prices before, and can assure the chinese fossils he was selling are nothing but JUNK), his prices were probably somewhat inflated.

The "cheap" little fossils are often legit - (though sometimes not the case, again, Morocco & china) and spino teeth, sharks teeth, smaller imperfect trilobites, many brachipods, etc, you are pretty safe with.

Rock and gem shows are MUCH better places to buy fossils, at least regarding competitive pricing. Be warned, there are just as many slimy, scummy, scammers at those, as there are selling WC and sick herps as healthy CBBs at herp shows. To be fair to the rock and gem resellers, some of them honestly believe what they are selling is legit - Most don't buy to resell while searching for authentication - they look for the cheapest price, buy, and flip. It just happens that often the cheaper materials - are fakes. Where they get slimy is when they ASSURE you what you are buying is 100% real, and act offended when you call them on that not being the case.

Generally any "higher end" Chinese or Moroccan fossil is seriously suspect, and really unless you know what to look for, err on the side of caution - Those aren't the only fakes though, and generally, if the price is too good to be true, and all - it is.

Mind you, there is nothing wrong with buying a cast, (I have many, and prefer them to real fossils in many cases) or something like that fake Chinese Keichousaur, or composite Moroccan trilobite (AKA “bondo bug"), if you like the look of it, and know its a fake, and have it as a replica piece, but paying more then, at most, 50.00 for a really nice fake one is a complete waste of your money.

Some of the fakes seem quite convincing. I know EBAY is brimming with fossils, and so many of them are overpriced junk, or flat out fakes. Many people who collect fossils don't know how to identify real fossils, or know what to look for, (and in the case of a good fake, it can be VERY difficult to tell, and requires much more serious authentication - some are made partly from real specimens patched together like the composite case of "archeoraptor", making things even more confusing and difficult - And generally that's what the folks selling fakes count on. I am pretty good at identifying fakes...and when in doubt, unless the are willing to give me a money back grantee after genuine authentication...I just won't buy.

www.paleodirect.com is actually a good site to buy from. I have never been disappointed with my fossil purchases from them, and you don't have to worry if what you have purchased online is going to be the same thing you actually ordered when it arrives.

www.fossildealers.com/fossil-fakes-and-frauds.html

Minerals too...
geology.com/news/2009/guide-to-common-mineral-fakes.shtml

(I'd be careful about that crab sepp - Ive seen bucket loads of those things as fakes too, with prices in the 2-300.00 category.)

[Griffin]

Ok thanks well its good to know that the ones I bought were at least real. I'm looking at that paleodirect site you put up. They are selling same size teeth for over 100$ at the least! The ones I got were for much cheaper.

[crazycrowman]

^ Well, the ones you got were cheaper - they are almost surely not the same quality teeth, and also don't have a authentication cert, nor do you really know actual locality data on them. Quite a big difference. For the casual collector, that probably no big deal, and the cheaper ones make more sense - for someone who wants fossils that retain some scientific value, these things are VERY important. That said, most of my spino teeth were the cheap, generic ones too. Just not the 4.5" specimen.

Paleo Direct, or similar authenticated dealers are good places if you want to buy something "fancier" that is something commonly faked - say a dinosaur egg. That way you know what you are getting.

(Collecting yourself is always a good way to do things, that way you can collect the specimen, and the data