Gallery
These photos are from my Instagram feed and get updated every week.
A cool little Miocene fossil crab I found at sunset tonight. It has the the thinnest layer of rock on it so should be an easy prep 😁
Challenging prep on the nautiloid, the shell is heavily fragmented so needs constant consolidation. Imagine broken eggshell and the air from the air scribe keeps blowing the bits away 😫 Swipe to see a few more pics of it.
The process of gluing back together a split concretion containing a very large Tumidocarcinus crab. The concretion weighs about 60kg (130lbs) and was found split in two after it had rolled out of the cliff. The crab has a really unique orange tint to it. I glue it back together so that it is easier to prep, it is very difficult to prep it first and then try and match all the piece up. In this case, half the carapace was on each side which would have made it impossible to prep. There is a good chance the leg tips will be present in some of the legs 😁
Found a cool little crayfish today. Amazing detail on that tail, I havent tried prepping one yet and they look really delicate. Might be worth trying acid on then. Has anyone had experience prepping a crab or crayfish with acid?
I see some shark verts sticking out 😀 found this the past weekend in pouring rain, made the soaking worthwhile. I really hope there are some teeth hiding in there as well!
Giveaway time on my YouTube channel. Go over to YouTube.com/mamlambo and watch the prep of this crab, subscribe and guess the weight of the prepped fossil to win it 😁
Haast eagle bones on display at the Canterbury museum this morning. This was the largest eagle that ever lived and weighed around 15kg compared to the 9kg of the Harpy eagle. They preyed on Moa and probably anything else that took its fancy. Cant wait to find me one of those talons 😁 There is also a monstrous Moa layer out, it's probably a good 3m+ long. I find photos of actual specimens really useful to figure out what bones I find. Have a look at the size of those TMTs! Pretty sure these were the ones that the Hobbits caught a lift on 😀
I went out to explore a new area today and happened across this fossil. I suspect it's a nautiloid of some type, looks to be hollow which is quite weird. Let me know if you recognize it 😁 It almost looks pyritized 🤔
My tiniest crab prep yet! Someone sent me this concretion from the States containing a tiny vulgaris crab. Just need to do the landscaping and a bit of tidying up.
Busy revealing the little brother of my other vulgaris crab 😁 the prep is going well on my tiniest crab yet, not much rock to remove but it has it's own challenges, such delicate legs in there!
I found this strange fossil yesterday and was hoping the shark tooth experts out there could shed some light on it. Could this be a partial root?
Before and after prep photos. Swipe to see the result... Quick little prep of a mystery bone I found about a year ago. I was hoping there would be a joint hiding in the rock but looks to have been broken as well. Oh well, at least now I know 😁 and it is a good looking piece of bone. Does anyone recognize it? It reminds me of a cetacean tooth with the long root.
New fossil prep video uploaded to my YouTube channel. Swipe if you want to see the spoiler 😁 it was a very soft sediment so I could prep it completely manually using a small screwdriver and a toothpick. There was indeed a crab, or half of one, hiding in the rock. Not sure on the species, does anyone recognize it?
Fossil skull selfie! Here is that Eocene bill fish skull I found recently. Swipe to see what I think might be a related section of skull I found close to it. The video of me finding it is on my YouTube channel, link in the bio. I took it past the local museum and they reckon it's one of the biggest fossil fish from New Zealand they have ever seen!
Something I haven't seen before, it's from a oceanic, mid-miocene deposit and looks like the imprint of a coral. Does anyone recognize it? You can almost make out the "stem" at the bottom.
The most photographed concretions in New Zealand, the Moeraki boulders! Cretaceaous era concretions with veins of calcite throughout them, great fun to climb on 😁 Some of them are broken, allowing you to peek inside, no fossils that I could see!
Does anyone recognize this? It looks like a coral but could just as easily be a trace fossil or some geological feature. It's harder than the surrounding siltstone. #
Edit: Looks like it is a bill fish!! I think I've just found a dolphin or whale skull!! Its my most random fossil find ever. I stopped to have a break from driving, walked onto the beach and there it was! Thought it was some petrified wood at first! I might be imagining it, but the one part looks like an ear bone! 😁 I'm still buzzing from finding this!! 😆 Edit: thanks @trevor.clarke4 and @a_fools_experiment for the ID of bill fish!
A beautiful, large fossil bivalve we just found on the beach here in South Canterbury. I don't often find them undamaged and this large 😁 the siltstone is nice and soft as well, not like the rock I usually have to work on.
New video up! 50+ small fossil shark teeth and some other fossils. It's up on my YouTube channel. I've also started a Patreon page with some additional videos every month and will feature updates on some of my secret projects 😁