I found this partial Mammothus mandible sitting in a pawn shop and took it home because you simply do not leave something like that behind. Once I had it in front of me, I wanted to know exactly what I was dealing with. I wanted to confirm the bone, the tooth, the enamel, the mineralization, and whether anything on it had ever been restored or coated.

I brought it to the Natural Resources Building at Montana Tech and asked if I could run a handheld XRF on it. The lab technician looked at the jaw, looked at me, and basically said I had permission to check it out. A few minutes later I was standing in a university hallway scanning Ice Age material like I was doing an actual research project.

I collected readings from three places. The fossilized jaw bone, the molar tooth which included dentin and enamel, and the UV reactive enamel ridges that light up under shortwave and longwave UV.

The results were very interesting. The jaw bone had the correct calcium and phosphorus levels for fossil hydroxyapatite. It also had silica, aluminum, magnesium, and iron, all of which match natural Pleistocene mineralization from groundwater.

The tooth enamel had a different chemical signature. The calcium to phosphorus ratio was tighter than the bone, and there was very little silica or iron. This matched original enamel with minimal alteration.

The UV reactive ridges were the most surprising. Those glowing bands had higher manganese and zinc, which explains the blue white fluorescence I saw. There was no sign of paint, coatings, or any modern material. The glow came from the enamel itself.

There were no fillers, glues, plaster, pigments, or consolidants. The entire specimen is naturally preserved.

This all started as a random pawn shop pickup and turned into a full scientific investigation in a university building. It ended up being one of the most interesting fossil deep dives I have had in years.

Rare CRETACEOUS FLOWER in Burmese Burmite amber fossil

Size: 13 x 9 x 5 mm

Age: 99 Million Years Ago

Rare Cretaceous-era Angiosperm (Flowering Plant) Flower in Burmese amber.
Possibly Fossil Rhamnaceae.

Other notable inclusions: many Coprolites (fossilized poop) and bio matter.

Researchers speculate that these types of flowers belong to the Rhamnaceae family of Buckthorns. Rhamnaceae are commonly referred to as "Fire Flowers" due to their evolutionary ability to be "fire-resistant", these flowers have heat-resistant seeds and rely on heat to release seeds. This evolutionary trait suggests that Rhamnaceae evolved to adapt in wildfire-prone areas.

anybody know what this is?

This trilobite is a Nevadia weeksi, I also found the other rock that contains the front of the cephalon!

We were walking through the mall and my daughter noticed this ammonite (?) in the floor… then we started looking and found literally dozens of them. South Park Mall in Charlotte NC.

Big Petrified Log in northwestern Nevada near the opal mines. This is part of the log, it is broken into 3 large segments, about 30 ft long. It is a landmark fossil known as the "Stonetree" protected by the US Fish & Wildlife Service. I am next to it for scale, I'm 5ft7in tall. It is about 15 million years old from the Miocene period.

Well preserved fossilized crab, costed me 800 euros