Bob's Fossils

Before the Dinosaurs

My Collection

Welcome to my fossil web site. Here you will find pictures and descriptions of the fossils in my collection. I only collect fossils from before the dinosaurs. So that means mostly fossils of Paleaozoic age but also includes early Triassic and pre-Cambrian fossils. I have a strong preference for whole body fossils. For example, I'd rather have a complete small fish than the tooth of a big fish. There are far more trilobites than anything else in my collection, but you'll find a little bit of everything.



If you would like to provide feedback or ask questions about my fossils, Contact Me.

Using the Site

To find a fossil, drill down in the taxonomic hierarchy on the View Fossils page until you reach the Binomial Name of the individual fossil. Click the fossil name to see its details. On that page you also have a link to a list of the fossils, if you want to search for them by name.

When you click on a clade in the View Fossils page it expands to the child clades just below it. If there is only one such child clade that automatically expands to the clades below it, and so on, until you reach a point where there are two or more children and thus another choice to be made.

A clade can have direct children at more than one level. For example, go to Animalia -> Arthropoda -> Trilobita -> Asaphida. That expands to suborder Asaphina, and because there is only one suborder, that expands to superfamilies Anomocaroidea, Asaphoidea, Cyclopygoidea, Remopleuridoidea and Trinucleoidea,.But you will also see family Monkaspididae near a double green arrow. That is because that family has not been placed under any superfamily, but is in suborder Asaphina.

On the View Fossils page you will find some links to notes about specific clades, indicated by a blue dot with an "i" inside. You can see all those notes listed on the Notes on Clades page.

The Taxonomic Guide has general notes on taxonomy and some specific notes on how fossils are categorized on this site.

Other Notes

Unless otherwise stated, all photographs are copyrighted and are available for use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License. If you use any of these photographs you should credit this site.

If you calibrate your screen with the sizing page (Calibrate Screen) you can see most fossils in actual size. (You may be surprised how small some of them are.) There are also high resolution photos you can view on screen or download. The high resolution files are very large; it can take a long time to download them.