What to Do After You Find a Fossil

Wrap it before it goes in your bag, note where you found it, and don't clean it until you're home and have good light. Those three steps cover the immediate field response for most finds. What comes after depends on what you've found and where you found it — but the process is more straightforward than most new collectors expect.

The two things that matter most in the minutes after finding a fossil are protecting it from physical damage and recording its provenance. Both are easy to get wrong under the excitement of the moment.

Getting it home safely

Tissue paper is the standard wrap material — it's soft enough not to scratch surfaces and absorbs some shock without embedding fibres into delicate detail. Wrap each specimen individually. Don't stack unwrapped fossils loose in a bag: they will abrade each other on the way back. A small plastic container or rigid lunch box gives extra protection for fragile finds.

Write the site name, date, and any formation information on a small slip of paper and put it inside or attached to the wrap. Once the specimen is home and cleaned, this is the only remaining record of where it came from. Provenance information is not recoverable later — a fossil without a known origin is significantly less interesting scientifically and less credible for identification purposes.

Identifying what you found

Start with the physical characteristics: Is it segmented? Coiled? Flat and blade-like? Does it have repeating structure (like a crinoid stem)? Most common fossil types are recognizable once you know what you're looking for. A hand lens at 10× magnification reveals surface detail that makes identification much easier.

The most useful identification resources are:

The Fossil Forum (thefossilforum.com): an online community of experienced collectors who will identify photographs within hours. Post a photograph with the site location and the formation if you know it. The location matters enormously — the same shape means different things in Ordovician limestone versus Jurassic shale.

Natural history museum identification services: the Natural History Museum in London offers an online identification service. In the US, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and many state natural history museums will examine specimens brought in by members of the public. Most university geology departments will do the same informally.

Published field guides: Collins Gem Fossils (for UK material) and various state-specific guides give photographs and descriptions of common species by formation.

When you need to report a find

In the UK, you are not generally required to report common invertebrate fossils collected from public foreshore. If you find an unusual or potentially significant vertebrate specimen — anything with articulated bone, a partial skull, or material that looks like more than one individual — contact your nearest natural history museum. The Dinosaur Isle Museum on the Isle of Wight requests voluntary reporting of significant finds from their coastline. Museums rarely take possession of legally collected material without compensation, but they may want to record and photograph it.

In the US, significant vertebrate finds from BLM or National Forest land must be reported to the relevant land management office. Removing them is a federal offence under the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act of 2009.

Your options after identification

Most finds go into a collector's display or storage. If the specimen is common and you have duplicates, club swaps and fossil shows are a reasonable route for trading or selling common material. For anything of potential scientific interest — an unusual species, a specimen from a poorly documented formation, or material with exceptional preservation — contacting a museum or university geology department is worth doing even if you don't intend to donate it.

Donation is always an option. Museums accept well-documented specimens, particularly those with clear provenance from formations they have limited representation of. A donated specimen goes into a permanent scientific record that benefits future researchers. The donor is typically credited in collection records.

Where to go next

The beginners guide on GFH covers what to bring on your first trip, the basic rules for collecting, and how to identify common finds. For identification help specific to UK Jurassic material, the Dorset guide and Yorkshire Coast guide describe the specific fossil types found at each site.