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Got this jacket into my prep lab yesterday night, and couldn't stop myself from starting in on it today. The specimen is likely a Gomphothere scapula, with most of the articulating end intact. The matrix is a very poorly cemented sandstone, when exposed to surface conditions it becomes essentially loose sand but a few inches deep it gets decently solid. Most of the prep I did today was just using a dull small chisel to push away the matrix

We got back out to the scapula jacket yesterday! The jacket we put on during a lull in the blizzard held exceptionally well. Fair weather for a change this time, the rancher had been joking about inviting us over whenever his land needed some rain (every time we've shown up before we've been rained our snowed out). We took our sweet time undercutting the jacket just to be on the safe side, then got it flipped and in the car in about an hour and a half of work.

I found this today in a coastal Early Pleistocene deposit in South Carolina. I was thinking mammoth when I found it, but now I think it may be something else? It doesn’t have the characteristic rows of a mammoth tooth.

I've written trip reports before about volunteering with the Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH) at their various dig sites in Florida. The currently (very) active site is called Montbrook for a small town that used to be in the area (but is no more). Here are a few links from FLMNH which provide some contextual information about the site: https://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/museum-voices/montbrook/ https://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/florida-vertebrate-fossils/sites/mont/ https://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/museum-voices/montbrook/2016/09/07/why-montbrook/ The site has yielded an impressive number of specimens and is very important scientifically as it provides the best view of Florida fauna from the late Hemphillian (Hh4) North American Land Mammal Age (NALMA) from approximately 5.5-5.0 mya. The other significant locality for this age is the Palmetto Fauna a couple hundred miles south of the Montbrook site. More info here for those interested in the stratigraphy: https://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/florida-vertebrate-fossils/land-mammal-ages/hemphillian/ https://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/florida-vertebrate-fossils/sites/palmetto-fauna/ Here is a link to my Montbrook posting from 2016 showing the couple of times I managed to get out there--the last time with TFF members Daniel @calhounensis and John-Michael @Brown Bear: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/63056-volunteer-dig-with-the-flmnh/ Now, enough of the links and time for a few pictures! The Montbrook site has changed quite a bit over the last year since I've been able to get out there. We had plans to return to Montbrook last October but Hurricane Matthew was an uninvited guest to Florida that week and the dig site was tarped down and the dig cancelled. Thankfully, the hurricane left my house untouched (didn't really even get rain or wind of note) and didn't mess-up the Montbrook site but we did miss an opportunity for one last trip to Montbrook in 2016. When we returned in February 2017 it took some time to get my bearings. The deeper pit to the east where several gomphothere skulls, tusks and long bones had been removed did not weather the rainy season well. This section has been backfilled with about 5 feet of sand and clay from the higher levels during the summer rain storms. For now they will concentrate digging on the main pit to the west and hope to get back to the lower "elephant" layer some time in the future--though the prep work to remove the overburden and get back to the original level will be significant. So much material has been moved from the upper western dig area that it was hard to picture exactly where we had dug nearly a year ago. I'm still not quite sure where we were in 2016 as the site has evolved greatly since our last visit. On Thursday and Friday there were mostly just a few volunteers who could make it to the site on weekdays--mainly retired folks or those with flexible schedules like us who could volunteer during the week. On Saturday there were a lot more volunteers and the dig site became a bit more crowded so you had to be aware of others digging sometimes in the grid square adjacent to yours. Here are some overall site photos I took on Saturday and you can see the line-up of cars that brought a full capacity of volunteers.

https://tecake.in/news/science/nine-year-old-mexican-boy-discovers-1-2-million-year-old-fossilised-stegomastodon-skull-34274.html Nice article, but the author has a problem differentiating New Mexico from Mexico. Enjoy!

Hi Everyone, Looking for a little help identifying a tooth I purchased at a recent Florida fossil show. It was labelled Mastodon but I was wondering if it might be Gomphothere? It was found in one of the rivers in Florida I understand which means it could have been either as I understand it. Couldn't find an easy identifier online. Thanks in advance Tom

Hello, I need a little help identifying these Gomphothere teeth. The first one is Miocene age, from Bosnia and Herzegovina. I am not sure where the second one is from. Thanks in advance! Sincerely, Jay

This tooth most likely came from the Khorat Plateau of Thailand which seem to find abundance of Gomphothere teeth there. Although this tooth seem to look a little different than the usual Gomphothere tooth I see, so could it be a from different creature or simply a variation of the tooth or preservation state that make it looks a little different from what I am used to, what do u guys think? Thx

Hi forum, I recently acquired what is supposedly a tusk from a gomphothere collected in Bosnia. It does look to be same shape and relatively the same size as other tusks I've seen, but you be the judge. I've never seen a gomphothere tusk available anywhere before this one. Are they uncommon to find? Thanks! Lauren

Hey guys, new to the forum but here is my collection focused on proboscidea but I collect other things mainly Oligocene mammal teeth and jaws, I don't have anything titanothere yet though.... also some dinosaur bones like my ceratopian jaw hinge, I've identified all of my fossils are except for the white gomp tooth on the stand, I think it might be Chinese platybelodon. anyways here it is. thanks -Rylawz

I found this tooth, and what I think is a distal toe bone from a proboscidean in the Peace River last week. I have some doubt about my ID because I have read that the distal bones from the proboscideans don't fossilize well at all, and are very rare. I think the tooth is too complex to be from a Mastodon, and a Gomp tooth is also a rare (too old) find for the area.