Episode 397: How to find fossils. Resources and groups that can help you get started looking for fossils. Plus, which tools to bring, how to identify a rock from a fossil, and places you can go to collect them.

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Some resources to help you find fossils:

• FOSSILS: A Guide to Prehistoric Life, a book with many helpful photos and descriptions, plus links to more resources. source
• myFOSSIL, a website that’s “building a community of amateur and professional paleontologists.” source
• The Fossil Forum can help you ID fossils. source
• A PBS webpage listing where you can find fossils in each US state. source
• Fossil Explorer, an app that covers fossil localities in England, Scotland, and Wales. source

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The dinosaur of the day: Saurornitholestes

• Dromaeosaurid that lived in the Late Cretaceous in what is now Alberta, Canada and the U.S. (Montana, New Mexico, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina)
• Looked similar to Velociraptor, walked on two legs, had sickle claws, a long tail, and lots of feathers
• Had a shorter, taller, wider, skull than Velociraptor, and had pneumatic nasals
• Velociraptor also had a longer, lower, more narrow skull
• Velociraptor legs were about 15% shorter than Saurornitholestes
• Considered to be a mid-sized dromaeosaurid
• Estimated to be 5.9 ft (1.8 m) long
• Weighed about 22 lb (10 kg)
• Had longer legs and was more lightly built than other dromaeosaurids
• Had a relatively large brain
• Had a large olfactory bulb, so probably had a good sense of smell
• Agile and fast
• Probably had feathers
• Had curved, blade-like teeth
• Had large teeth in the front of its jaws
• Some of its teeth may have been for preening feathers
• Two species: Saurornitholestes langstoni and Saurornitholestes sullivani
• Type species is Saurornitholestes langstoni
• Named in 1978 by Hans-Dieter Sues
• Saurornitholestes sullivani named in 2015 by Steven Jasinski
• Genus name means “lizard-bird thief”
• Species name “langstoni” is in honor of Wann Langston, Jr.
• Species name “sullivani” in honor of Robert Sullivan, who found the partial skull in 1999 in New Mexico (Clive Coy found the nearly complete skeleton in 2014)
• First fossils found in 1974 by Irene Vanderloh in Dinosaur Park Formation
• Holotype includes teeth, parts of the skull, two vertebrae, ribs, parts of the tail and a part of the hand
• Holotype was less than 30 bones
• May have been the most common small theropod in Dinosaur Provincial Park (based on lots of teeth and bones found)
• More Saurornitholestes teeth and bones have been found than Dromaeosaurus
• Four additional partial skeletons found over the next 25 years, for a total of five skeletons, and not much known about the skull until a specimen found in 2014 (less than 1 km from where the holotype was found)
• That specimen is nearly complete, except for the tail, and shows the skull of Saurornitholestes was shorter and deeper compared to Velociraptor
• Fossils also found in the Oldman Formation and Two Medicine Formation
• Tooth found in Mooreville Chalk in Alabama, and teeth and part of a foot found in North and South Carolina, in the Tar Heel, Coachman, and Donoho Creek formations
• In 2020, John Wilson and Denver Fowler referred skull material found in the Judith River Formation in Montana to Saurornitholestes (which shows it was “biogeographically widespread and occupied both inland and coastal environments across the northern portions of the Late Cretaceous Western Interior of North America”)
• Saurornitholestes sullivani found in New Mexico in the Kirtland Formation in 2014
• Different from Saurornitholestes langstoni because it had a larger olfactory bulb
• In 2019, Phil Currie and Dave Evans studied the skulls of Saurornitholestes langstoni
• The 2014 Saurornitholestes langstoni specimen is “virtually identical to the holotype where they can be compared”
• The 2014 specimen was at least 8 years old and almost mature, based on histology
• Found that the holotype of Zapsalis (a dinosaur named in 1876 by Cope based on a tooth found in Montana) was actually Saurornitholestes
• More Zapsalis teeth have since been found in other formations
• Genus name Zapsalis means “thorough pair of scissors” and species abradens name means “abrading”
• Currie and Evans said there may have been at “least two major faunal interchanges between Asia and North America during the Cretaceous”
• North American dromaeosaurids probably came from a different lineage than Asian dromaeosaurids, which also means Saurornitholestes and Velociraptor were distinct from each other
• Saurornitholestes considered to be Velociraptor langstoni by some scientists
• Because the skull wasn’t known for a long time, Paul in 1988 synonymized Saurornitholestes with Velociraptor (many people didn’t agree)
• In 2006, Robert Sullivan named Saurornitholestes robustus (species name refers to the thickness of the bone), based on fossils found in New Mexico
• In 2014, Dave Evans and others found Saurornitholestes robustus to be an indeterminate troodontid
• Holotype didn’t have any diagnostic dromaeosaurid characteristics, and have some features found in troodontids, and the size of the specimen was more similar to better known troodontid fossils found in Alberta
• Had a “puncture and pull” feeding method
• Angelica Torices and others looked at the teeth of several coelurosaurs to study their feeding behavior (Gorgosaurus, Dromaeosaurus, Saurornitholestes, Troodon)
• Found that microwear patterns were the same on the small and large theropods, so the biting movements would have been similar in all of them (puncture and pull, where they sink their teeth in and move back or pulled their heads back to pull out flesh)
• Found the “Troodon” teeth were built in a way they couldn’t handle struggling prey, or else they’d break, so Troodon probably went for small prey
• Saurornitholestes had distinct serrations on the teeth
• Serrations on the back edge of the teeth were larger than those on the front edge of the teeth
• Had a flat tooth with long ridges at the front of the mouth, for preening
• A Saurornitholestes tooth was found in a wing bone of a pterosaur, probably a juvenile Quetzalcoatlus (which was much larger than Saurornitholestes, so may have scavenged)
• Aase Roland Jacobsen described a Saurornitholestes dentary in 2001, and found three toothmarks on the surface. Two of them made by serrations from another dinosaur’s teeth (too different to be Saurornitholestes, and most likely to be from a juvenile tyrannosaurid like Gorgosaurus or Daspletosaurus, which were also in Dinosaur Park Formation)
• Bruce Rothschild and others found in a 2001 study that only 2 of 82 Saurornitholestes foot bones had stress fractures, and 2 of 9 hand bones had them
• Other animals that lived around the same time and place include ankylosaurs, ceratopsians, ornithopods, theropods, oviraptors, as well as turtles and fish

Fun Fact:

Contrary to popular belief, you can sometimes find fossils in Igneous rocks & metamorphic rocks (not just Sedimentary rocks).

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