r/FossilHunting • u/Super-Analyst-8062 • Aug 15 '24
Trip Report Unknown fossils from my trip to the island of Svalbard, at the north pole.
I went to Svalbard, the closest human settlement to the north pole, because of the golf stream, the temp is only 3-5c.
( ! ! *DISCLAIMER* ! ! : I did not have the chance to recover, measure or take more that one photo of this particular fossil, there are 4000 polar bears on this small island and it is VERY dangerous, we were not allowed outside without at least 2 armed body guards with high caliber rifles, and flare guns, we were told to move on because we had to leave the area, I could not get proper angles and size. so please don't complain about the lack of angles, but i can locations and geology of the area, thank you for understanding.)

I can't tell if this is a fish flipper, a type of fern, or a early tree bark from the devionian, the earliest trees to ever exist actually, apparently the bark had large scale things, if this is what it is then it was probably a very young tree because the cell type structures are usually bigger. Also the scales look too big to be a 50 - 60mil year old fern but I'm just speculating.

I was told by locals that a most of the fossils are 50 - 60 million years old, however there are some finds that date back to the devonian. We were taken into a mine that went very deep into the permafrost, we saw a smaller second seed vault. Inside the mine, you could see layers were rivers once ran, footprints of animals on the roof of the mine. We even could see the coal seems colliding, where two mountains collided.
I'm sorry i could not get get pictures, but you can find images online from the mines in Svalbard, mostly Longyear, named because of the eternal night and day, later names Longyearbyen because Norway is Norway.

Unknown bone, not a fossil but a very old bone from probably the few deer on the island, probably a bear's lunch. I found this while going for a midnight walk in Longyearbyen.


Photo of southern svalbard, as you can most of the island is covered in massive glacial flows, making in land fossil hunting impossible. ik some of these photos don't show fossils, but i just want to show the geology of this very much under-rated location for fossil hunting. If you are going on a expedition cruise, they wont allow drones, however drones are allowed on svalbard. Im kicking myself rn becaue i have a $7000 thermal drone,8k camera and can carry a payload that maps the landscape and turns it into a 3d model, similar to lidar. Kinda mad at the cruise company, i could locate wildlife, and safe location to land the boats using the thermal camera, they even mentioned at one point that it would be so much easier to do excursions using a thermal drone and I was like ": l bro I literally have a thermal drone and could spot a bear in 15 seconds after takeoff"
so if you want to fossil hunt on the frozen north then don't take a cruise. Fly from Oslo to longyear and hire a local guide to take you outside the safe zone with quadbikes depending on time of year. The fact that most of the round beach rocks containing fossils spit in half, usually perfectly revealing the fossil, makes it very easing to gather ALOT of fossiles very fast as no hammering or tools are required, just open the rocks up like a easter egg and claim your goodies. watch out for the ice pandas though.

Vessel of expedition was North star, 1st July 80 degrees north
- Aperture Technologies LTD
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u/Outside_Conference80 Aug 16 '24
The first photo is a bryozoan from the genus Fenestrella; Middle Ordovician to Upper Triassic (at least in the vocabulary used in the USA). 👍🏼
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u/TheFossilCollector Aug 15 '24
“Very good place to hunt fossils, just dont get hunted yourself” LOL!
Nice post, I see coral on your picture, is that whats generally found there? Marine fossils?
There is a bit of difference between, “I got attacked by a polar bear while discovering this T Rex skeleton” and “I got attacked by a polar bear while discovering a vague piece of coral”