Recent prep results, numbers see text

You might have noticed, I´ve deviated from my usual schedule of posting an article about every 2-3 weeks…
There are a couple of reasons, none bad, which have kept me from posting.
Reason number 1 is that commitments from my daytime job have kept me unusually busy for January and February and this will stay that way at least until mid march,
so you´ll have to wait for  a new full article until about 3-4 weeks time.

Reason number 2 is I´ve been working on several full articles, but due to my perfectionism I was not satisfied with what I could have posted…

In the “unfinished posts” queue is the first part of the Dactylioceras article, dealing with the lower toarcian Dactylioceras species.
When looking at some of the ammonites I was photographing (every little prep fault  somehow gets exaggerated when you look through a lens…),
I found that most of them needed some form of re-prep to comply to the same standard I´ve been trying to adhere to for the book.
This is for example the reason why #7 in the photograph, a Dactylioceras (Orthodactylites) clevelandicum,  went back to the top of my prep queue :
The inner whorls needed some more attention with the fine air pen and the air abrader – it had been found in 2002 and basically went straight to the drawer at that time.

Reason number 3 is I need to clean up my prep slate before I go for my traditional spring collection tour to make space for potential new finds,
so the proportion of time prepping was higher that the one on writing…
All of the ammonites (and other fossils) have been prepped last weekend, in case you´re wondering what they are here´s the list :

1. Dactylioceras (Orthodactylites) tenuicostatum,  7 cm
2. Double of Dacytlioceras commune, 5 & 4 cm, thanks to Dr. Mike Howarth for helping to correct my inital thoughts on this one…
3. A Plagiostoma sp. bivalve, 6 cm,  from the apyrenum subzone of the middle lias, a “first” for me, I´ve never seen one before from the Yorkshire lias…
4. A combo of Amaltheus stokesi (5.5 cm) , Amaltheus bifurcus (2.5 cm) , Amaltheus wertheri (2 & 1 cm)
5. Pleuroceras hawskerense, 6 cm
6. Dactylioceras (Orthodactylites) semicelatum, 5 cm
7. Dactylioceras (Orthodactylites) clevelandicum, 9 cm

Another article that´s in the “unfinished posts” queue for a long time already is about pathologies on Yorkshire coast liassic ammonites, for the simple reason that
literature about pathologies was somewhat thinly spread across a wide range of publications, most of the time with few pictures (so important for the amateur collector !).
But thanks to Prof. Dr. Keupp from FU Berlin this has now changed (http://www.geo.fu-berlin.de/geol/fachrichtungen/pal/eigenproduktion/Band_12/index.html) :
A brand new copy of his almost 400 page thick, large format, just released new atlas on cephalopod palaeopathologies has landed on my desk, I had only very little time to study it yet, but what I´ve seen so far is
spectacular (pictures galore !) and will surely set the scientific standard on this topic for years to come (unfortunately it is currently only available in german).
So through this new publication my “sick ammonites from Yorkshire” post will take a giant leap forward and will be published after the first part of the Dac post…

AndyS