Can you remember your first?

Rubecula

Can you remember your first fossil?

I was sitting there on the chair earlier today and I started to think back. The first fossil I ever found was a mass of Crinoid stems in limestone. I think I still have it in a box somewhere.

Never found a dino fossil though, but I have a few Brachiopods and things of that ilk.

Could always save up and buy one, but it is much better to find your own.

Anyway, My first the Crinoid

Alvin T. Grey

I found mine in work. We have some decorative gravel around some of the buldings here. One day I was standing there gazing at nothing in particular when I noticed what looked to ne a shell in one of the pieces of gravel. It looks like a cross section of one of these
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/uk/images/indepth/portland-roach-top.jpg

I have no idea yet what you call them (the long cornucopia shaped shellfish) and because I didn't find it in situ, I have no idea of the provenance.

But it's my first.

Adam Khor

I don´t remember what was my very first one (possibly a fragment of glyptodont armor, or some petrified wood, cuz that's the stuff I find most often), but the one I consider as my first "big" find is an almost complete vertebra from the neck of a Pleistocene horse.
Yeah, I wanted to find a Smilodon, but they are rather rare, you know...

I still have the horse vertebra in a box, collecting dust (although not as much as it would be in the desert)

Rubecula

Adam Khor wrote: »

I don´t remember what was my very first one (possibly a fragment of glyptodont armor, or some petrified wood, cuz that's the stuff I find most often), but the one I consider as my first "big" find is an almost complete vertebra from the neck of a Pleistocene horse.
Yeah, I wanted to find a Smilodon, but they are rather rare, you know...

I still have the horse vertebra in a box, collecting dust (although not as much as it would be in the desert)

Where did you find that? South America? I assume it was South America as you mention the Smilodon too.

Adam Khor

Rubecula wrote: »

Where did you find that? South America? I assume it was South America as you mention the Smilodon too.

No, it was actually in Mexico

Alvin T. Grey

Me.

Talk about stupid. I looked at it agin. It's not a fossil. It's bad building practices.

Being encased in what looks like mortar is a giveaway.

/facepalm......

:(

So, it's about 100 - 200 years old. No more than that...

I'll post a picture as soon as I finish moving in to the new house.

Wibbs

My first was a lower carboniferous solitary coral. Then a couple of crinoid stems got my interest up. It was all downhill from there.

Yitzhak Rabin

Wibbs wrote: »

My first was a lower carboniferous solitary coral. Then a couple of crinoid stems got my interest up. It was all downhill from there.

Well, there was also the possibly pre-human axe-head that couldn't have belonged to a pre-human, so most likely was deposited by a retreating glacier.... somehow...

Alvin T. Grey

Yes, I fell for it. Guess it just goes to show that sometimes your eye sees what it wants to see and disregards the rest.

Adam Khor

Well at least you didn´t pay 50 bucks for a "dinosaur tooth" that ended up being a fish tooth! (A cool, sabertoothed prehistoric fish, tho, so I wasn´t really that mad)

Alvin T. Grey

At some stage I'll show an example of how it was made. A park near where I moved to has a ruined (no surprise) building with sea shells embedded in the mortar.

Alvin T. Grey

Alvin T. Grey wrote: »

At some stage I'll show an example of how it was made. A park near where I moved to has a ruined (no surprise) building with sea shells embedded in the mortar.

After a little research work, and some luck, I found this while looking for possible fossil sites in Derry. Its from The GSi back in the 1700s.

MEMOIRS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
OF IRELAND.
THE GEOLOGY OF

THE COUNTRY ABOUND
L 0 N D 0 N D E R R Y

Reference has already been made in this Memoir (p. 69) to the
enormous quantities of shells taken from Lough Foyle’s banks, or
from what me soirietirnes known as shell-islands, for agricultural
purposes. The shells are still obtained and carted inland for
several miles as a substitute for lime upon the land, selling at $1
per boat-load. In the enlarged edition of Boate’s “Natural History
of Ireland” (1726), p. 161, a conimunication made by Samuel
Nolyneux to the Royal Society is included, dealing with this
practice in some detail. On p. 163 we read that, near Lough
Foyle, “about 30 years ago they made lime of the shells and
manured their land with it ; but a poor countryman, that out of
laziness or poverty had not provided to make lime, threw the
shells unbiirnt on his land ; his crhp proved 8s good as his neighbours
; and the second and third crop better, and all took the
hint, and have used them so ever since,” i.e., urrburnt. Sampson*
states that ‘& the shells are chiefly oyster, mussel, cockle, and
cockspur,” and. further that the farmer generally bespeaks one
or more boatloads; he lands them himself, paying at the rate of
6d. per barrel of six bushels . . . two barrels form load to
a good horse; from 30 to 60 barrels are given to an acre.”
Turritella shells, mentimed as ‘‘ cockspur” by Sampson, occurin
this deposit in amazing abundance, and, in parts of the banks,
are considerably free from admixture. Generally, however, they
are the prevailing compor,ent of a mixture of sand and-frarmients oE
mussel, cockle, oyster, &c.; and, as well as being use3 for the
lard, they are also conimonly used as gravel for entrance-paths
to the farm-houses built on the low ground.

And they found their way into building materials as a substitute for lime in mortar. Hence where I found it.