Tucson '07, day one

I have some rather mixed feelings about the Tucson gem and fossil show this year. For one thing, I'm bummed that I've missed alot of it. The show is winding down and many of the fossil dealers have already left. Another thing is that somebody beet me to two fossils that I was prepared to spend several thousand dollars on. They were a small and a large Archialosaur (or Agialosaur depending on which dealer you ask). It turns out that the people who had the smaller one last year bought the larger one that I had seen and then sold them both a couple of days ago. They both went to private museums, but the large one went to the Black Hills institute, which means that casts will be available relatively soon.
After a mad dash around town, I found one guy who had an agialosaur (his nomenclature, not mine) with what definately look like intact gut contents in the form of an undulating concretion running between the ribs down to the hips. The rarety of the gut cast bumped the price up well out of my price range. The biggest dissapointment is that the guy absolutely refused to let me take a picture of it on the grounds that if somebody does buy it, then they'll want to never see it elsewhere in cast or photographic form. I.e. he caters to people who sequester their fossils rather than sharing them with the world.
That somebody beet me to what I wanted doesn't mean that I didn't spend anything today. My grand total for the day was $922.62, although I very nearly spent more. My two big purchases were a mosasaur skull (jaws not included) and an eocene sea turle carapase, both from Morrocco. Other items purchased today include Madagascan ammonites, a dried gliding gecko, two crabs from different parts of the world, an opalized clam, Globidens sp. teeth, a butterfly collection, snake skeleton, Deltadromaeus sp. teeth and others.

Photos to come when I get back to Fullerton