Texas

About 95 % of Texas is private, so nearly all Texas collecting — the Cretaceous ammonites and echinoids of the Austin Chalk and Glen Rose, the Eagle Ford and Pen fossils of the Big Bend region, Permian material of the Red Beds, the Pleistocene of the coastal plain — happens with a landowner's permission or on road cuts and construction sites where the practical rule is permission from whoever controls the site. The fossils belong to the landowner, who can sell or give them away.

The beds of navigable streams and the Gulf beaches below the mean high tide line belong to the State (the General Land Office manages them). Casual collecting of loose material from a public gravel bar is common and not obviously prohibited by statute, but the Texas Antiquities Code (Natural Resources Code Chapter 191) protects landmarks and artefacts on state land and the Antiquities Committee has authority over “paleontological” sites on state land; anything more than picking up loose surface material is a permit matter. Verify locally: the current Texas Historical Commission and GLO position on hobby collecting in riverbeds before relying on it.

Texas Parks and Wildlife rules (Texas Administrative Code Title 31, §59.134) prohibit removing fossils, rocks or minerals from state parks; Dinosaur Valley and the Waco Mammoth site are look-only. Big Bend and Guadalupe Mountains are national parks and closed.

Private pay sites (the Post Oak Creek and North Sulphur River area is a mix of public access and private banks; the Ladonia Fossil Park is a city park that allows collecting) are the reliable options; ask on arrival and keep the receipt or the written permission.