A Few Newbie Questions

[PaleoPutz]

well, your profile shows "northeast oklahoma". googling is free, so google "oklahoma +rockhounds", "geologic map of oklahoma", "oklahoma fossils", "oklahoma +fossils +localities", "tulsa +fossils", etc. etc.

find the rockhounds and fossil fanatics within your area. they're out there. make friends with them and ask them to help you figure out how to find better fossils.

oklahoma is a good place to find fossils.

You sort of made my point.. people are the best way to go. A geological map of this area isn't much good because this entire area is a formation. Unless you know exactly what to look for I don't think I would have much luck. Fossil clubs are great, randomly searching the internet is not so great. Many of my searches online for fossil hunting have taken me to the same place... Black Cat Mountain and the Ardmore area. Both of those areas are privately owned/leased.

[Harry Pristis]

Never, never COAT bones or teeth with glue or shellac, particularly avoid shellac.

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Harry, what's your take on shellac?

I forget who once commented to me that he had seen thousand of bones coated with shellac after being out of the ground for 100 or 200 years (obviously in museum backrooms) that were fine, but we only know how they hold up for 20 or 30 years preserved with "modern" chemicals.

From the FLMNH website: "Consolidants, or hardeners as they are more commonly called, are often the collector's first line of defense against deterioration of specimens in their collection, especially those specimens comprised of poorly mineralized bone so often found in the Pleistocene river deposits or coastal marls of Florida and the rest of the Southeast.

By definition, a consolidant is a resin which has been dissolved in a solvent. Common solvents are water, acetone, alcohol, and toluene. Consolidants are generally available in two forms: 1) pure resins, and 2) emulsions. Pure resins consolidants are resins which have been dissolved in a solvent, such as Butvar (polyvinyl butyral) granules dissolved in acetone.

Consolidants dissolved in acetone should only be used on dry specimens, since even a small amount of moisture in the specimen can react adversely with the consolidant destroying its desired properties. Museums in the U.S. and Europe stick with a few tried and true consolidants which are known to have a low tendency for crosslinking and which do not lose their consolidant properties over time. Chief among these are polyvinyl butyral (Butvar), a thermoplastic resin, and Acryloid B-72, an acrylic resin. PVA (polyvinyl acetate), used as a pure resin is still available, but most users have switched to Acryloid B-72, which is harder, more durable, and exhibits less flexibility.

Pure resins are mixed with their solvents to form a very thin, watery solution which is then applied to the specimen (or the specimen is immersed in the solution). Thin and watery should be stressed. The idea is to get the resin where it's needed, and in order to penetrate the specimen's surface and carry resin down into the interior of the fossil bone, the consolidant must be thin or else it will be deposited on the surface of the bone only, like shellac or varnish used in the past. Those treatments may have protected the surface, but did little to strengthen the whole bone." (emphasis added.)

[fig rocks]

So Fig ammonites are in the governmental registry. So if you sell it you have to transfer title.

That's right Seldom you get the papers with it when you sell it. There's lots sold up here with no papers but they're not crossing any borders. I was into customs a few weeks back to get some papers and the agent showed me a whole pile of pretty ones on the floor that had been confiscated from people who had tried to send them out of the country without permits. He said he was happy to see I was doing it the legal way! This just applies to whole fossils, not cabs or jewelry.