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So ive been walking caspersons beach at night quite a lot and last week i really got the hang of what days and times are best to go looking based on tides. I went searching two nights in a row and found a ton of stuff! There were some awesome sandbars that made wading for larger fossils super convenient. I found a horse tooth, bison tooth, two partial mammoth teeth, a whale ear-bone, and a bunch of other stuff including a nice little meg. Take a look

First,I hope I’m not doing this wrong, but had trouble posting in Fossil ID for some reason. I hunt a several mile portion of the Arkansas River in Tulsa, Ok. I’ve previously gotten help with identification from the University of Oklahoma on a number of Bison bones, vertebrae and horns, as well as bones from smaller vertebrates. However, that’s a lengthy process, so I was hoping for suggestions on what this bone may have belonged to. It’s shiny because it’s been coated with clear enamel. I’ve had it for several years, but it just occurred to me that it’s dissimilar to my other Bison bones. Obviously, there was some deterioration before it began to mineralize, and one end is missing which makes it very hard to ID. Any help or suggestions is much appreciated! I can take and add more photos if anyone wants, just let me know what angles, etc. Thanks!

Some finds of the year

Hello everyone. My husband and I found this today while combing the creek bed of the Escondido Creek located in Encinitas, California, USA. We believe it is a tooth. It looks quite old, however I am not sure whether it is fossilized. We are not fossil hunters or collectors, just everyday amateurs who stumbled upon this find. Any help identifying it would be greatly appreciated, thank you!

Hello, My 6 year old son found this in a remote central Indiana creek yesterday. We looked a little online and it looks similar to a bison tooth but was hoping for some expert advice. We love the colors and were surprised how well it was preserved. We came across this site and wanted to see if anyone had any information. He was wading in the creek looking for shells and just pulled it out of the water. Thanks for any information you may have along possible age. He is so excited and can’t wait to show his teacher on their next video call.

Greetings, About 2 months ago, I found this in the Kansas River, under a submerged stump at the end of the sandbank. The location was on the South side of the River just north of DeSoto, Kansas. I found it along with another large vertebra which I will also post separately. As it started to dry out in the dry indoors of winter (despite the humidifier on my heating system), it began to flake apart...the surface patina that is. The measurements are as follows: 11.5" (L) x 3" (W) at its widest width. I suspect it is a bison, since these are the most common. I just don't have a clue as to age. Secondly, is there a way to prevent the further flaking apart? Thank you all kindly in advance. PS: having trouble shrinking enough images to the required size limit.

Hey everyone, So I found some old bones as I was out hiking yesterday (a good way to social distance ). I have a suspicion they may be bison, but I realize I am in ag country were cows are plentiful. I found a scapula, a chunk of upper jaw with teeth, two femurs, and one mandible. I have been trying to possibly identify them but I have no way of proving anything without some help. I grabbed a cow skull, scapula, and mandible at a friends farm to help compare. I guess I should also point out that I believe these have fossilized- they are heavy and the burn test seemed to yield no burnt hair smell. Photo 1: Fossil Scapula (left) vs Cow Scapula (right) So the scapula I found is bigger but I don't believe that is conclusive evidence. Photo 2: Fossil upper molars (left) vs Cow upper molars (right) It appears the fossil molars are larger than the cow molars.... possibly indicating a larger bovid (aka Bison)? Photo 3: Fossil mandible (below) vs (Broken) cow mandible (above) I know the cow mandible is broken (and the opposite side as the mandible I found) but it is shorter and has more bulk at the bottom of its lower jaw curve. Not only this, but the dentary also appears different. Well everyone, what do you think? Just a regular old cow? Or something more unique? Thanks!!!

The kids and I were recently on a sandbar in the Kansas river and came across some bones. I believe there are bison bones, though some may be more modern. the first is appears to be a vertebrae.

My mom is in town escaping the colder weather in Chicago and visiting the Boca house probably for the last time (we're moving to Gainesville, FL in a few months). We'd been talking about taking her out fossil hunting on the Peace River for some time but the last couple of years have been relatively short fossil hunting seasons with the water level on the Peace remaining too high for most of the normal "dry season". This year her visit corresponded well with perfect conditions for an outing on the Peace. The last time we were out was during the week between Christmas and New Year when our friends had their daughter in town. The river was about 2.5 feet higher then and we couldn't get to the deeper site that I wanted to visit which has chunkier gravel with lots of dugong rib bones and a chance of finding some larger fossils. I went walked into that site up to my shoulders and decided that spot was a no-go for that trip. Conditions this visit were much more conducive for hunting in the chunky gravel. Here's the trip report from our last visit: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/101024-peace-river-trip-before-the-new-year-decade/ We rented our canoes from Canoe Outpost as usual and put in at Brownville Park for our normal 8.5 mile run back down to Arcadia. We hoped to meet up with new forum member @Jen Morris but the timing didn't work out. We had a schedule to keep and had to move down from the big well-known gravel bed just downstream from Brownville to hit some other spots and still be able to get the canoes back before 5:00 p.m. (we were in with 5 minutes to spare). This trip we took our friend's granddaughter, Destiny, with us to fill out a small flotilla of two canoes. Destiny had been wanting to fossil hunt the Peace since moving back to Florida from the Pacific Northwest. After to abbreviated fossil hunting seasons in South Florida this season all the planets aligned and she was able to make the trip with us on her quest to find a meg tooth (a common goal for first time fossil hunters in Florida). We spent nearly 4 hours at the well-known and well-hunted gravel bed just down from the boat ramp at Brownville Park and it took us some time to prospect around and find some productive gravel. A couple months back on our previous visit we did pretty good here with a horse tooth and camelid tooth (but only tiny meg fragments). Though there were not the usual "bomb craters" and huge discard piles that we usually see at this site in the river indicating lots of recent hunting pressure, we had to prospect around quite a bit before we started finding more than just the common tiny shark teeth--even turtle shell and dugong bones were being elusive. Just before our planned lunch break around noon (cold leftover homemade pizza from the night before ) we hit paydirt with Destiny shouting out when a nearly complete meg showed up in her sifting screen. That was matched in kind pretty quickly when my mom joined the Meg Club a few minutes later. We decided that we had worked this site well enough for the day and decided to put a little more distance behind us and paddle for a while to get a bit closer to our destination in Arcadia. We made it down to the spot with the chunky gravel. This is a spot on a large sandbar. Previous to Hurricane Irma the top of this sandbar was just that--sand! The gravel area was limited to a small strip on the leading edge of this sandbar where the bottom rose up from much deeper water. It was a limited area but has delivered interesting fossils from time to time (like over 2 dozen cetacean tympanic bullae in a few hours). Post Irma we found the site deeper with the top couple of feet of sand peeled off and transported further downstream. While this makes the site more difficult to access during deeper water, it revealed that the gravel seam along the leading edge was just the margin of a much more extensive gravel bed that covers much of the top of this presently lowered sandbar. It is deeper on the upstream side and shallows as you walk downstream on it. Though the temps were very warm--near if not reaching 90F (32C)--the rest of our group didn't feel like venturing into water over waist deep and so I used my fiberglass probe to hunt around for some gravel in the shallower depths. It took me a bit of prospecting till I found the sort of very chunky gravel that this site is famous (to me) for. At this site it is not uncommon to dig up a chunk of matrix rock filling the entire shovel. These bowling ball boulders are shot-putted away from where we are digging a far enough distance that we are not soaked with the ensuing kerplunk of a splash. We turned up some additional nearly complete meg teeth and enough dugong rib bone pieces to pave a driveway. The finds here are less frequent with the smaller shark teeth being almost absent. The gravel is generally much larger here golf ball to softball size and so there are fewer but larger finds to be had. We scored a nice glyptodont osteoderm to go with the partial Holmesina osteoderm we found at the first stop. Destiny scored a really nice bison tooth and a very cool pharyngeal crushing plate covered with phyllodont enamel teeth from a wrasse or bonefish. It was getting toward the end of the day and the Earth's gravity had quite obviously undergone a recent local surge as the shovels of gravel and sand were getting noticeably heavier than they'd been at the start of the day. We had just about run out of time to be able to paddle our way down the last stretch back to Arcadia and our cars which awaited us with towels and a dry change of clothing. We were finishing up our last few screens and where I was digging the gravel was tapping out to just sand and the annoying sticky gray clay that makes digging and sifting a pain. I looked upstream and noticed that I had without realizing it worked my way about 20 feet from where I had left my probe to mark where I had first found this nice chunky gravel. I decided to return to where I had first found this nice chunky stuff and finish my last couple of screens there. While digging in this larger material you have to get the tip of your shovel down between the larger pieces of rock. This usually requires putting one foot on the edge of the shovel and leaning in some body weight while wiggling the top of the shovel around as the tip navigates down between the rocks so that you can scoop up a full load into the sifting screen. Quite often the bowling ball size chunks that pave the bottom here will fall off the shovel or become uncovered by digging around them and they will need to be pulled up and tossed away so digging can proceed. I could feel one loose piece that was located directly between my feet. I could detect a bit of the shape with one foot on either side and it seemed familiar (yes, I have feet that are trained to detect fossils ). The water was just shallow enough that I could bend down and grab hold of it with one hand. I told Tammy to pull out the camera. She gave me that look like "Really?" and I nodded my head. In hindsight, it would have been more funny as a video clip but we ended the day with a special find so my mom would remember this Pie Day (3/14) on the Peace River--a nearly 7 pound (3 kg) Colombian Mammoth tooth! Here are a couple of post-trip photos of some of the other interesting finds. A really sweet Glyptotherium and partial Holmesina osteoderm, a nice piece of softshell turtle carapace, and what appears to be part of the jaw of the Long-beaked Dolphin. Cheers. -Ken

It was a good day on the Peace River yesterday. Started out a bit cool at 60 degrees but got up into the high 70's by the afternoon. I was pretty much prospecting as I moved farther north up river from the area I had been hunting for the last few months. This required a portage of my equipment and inflatable kayak over a set of rapids. It went well and I was back on my way in under 10 minutes. I came upon an area that showed signs of previous hunting and decided to check it out. I started probing and found a large gravel bed. So the digging began. I got numerous small shark teeth of all varieties in just about every pile I moved thru the sifter. First nice find was a horse molar followed by a partial deer antler. Working the area all day added a nice variety of finds. Turtle shell, mammal ear bone, unk vert, eagle ray tooth frags, whale tooth, shark teeth - hemi, bull, lemon, tiger, partial megs and more (over 300 shark teeth/partials). Nicest finds in my opinion are what I believe to be a bison metacarpal and a tooth that seems to be either a whale tooth or some kind of feline incisor. I found the bison metacarpal when going back to the kayak for a break. The water was so shallow and clear I spotted the bone sitting on the river bottom as I neared the boat! I will post additional photos of the bison metacarpal and possible whale tooth or feline incisor in the ID section for help with the ID. I got so involved with my discoveries the time slipped away and I started back about an hour later than usual. With the portage again needed to get back I was running late and this prompted a phone call from my wife checking to make sure I hadn't flipped the kayak or gotten swallowed by one of the local gators! Thankfully, cell reception is pretty good on this section of the river! If I hadn't answered I don't how long she would have waited to report me missing! Can't wait to get back out there!

I found this skull sticking out of the bank along the Tongue river in Ashland, Montana on the Cheyenne Indian Reservation. If anyone has any information I would love to find out more! Thanks.

Hello. Is this tooth a cow or a bison tooth? Let me know if you need any more pictures. Thanks.

Had to get back to the Peace River today. Eight days since the last trip and I was getting anxious to get back to the spot where I found the partial tusk to see if i could find more. It was a warm day but overcast and windy, so the wetsuit was in order again to combat the water temp and the breeze. It made for a comfortable day of digging and I was able to spend 5 1/2 hours in the water. First check of the river bank when getting out of the kayak yielded a nice 3/4" Hemi getting the day off to a good start. I then worked my way back to the area where I found the piece of ivory tusk on my last visit to start sifting. The second sifting of the day yielded a horse molar and a few small shark teeth. Then up came a chunk of ivory tusk 8 1/2" x 4 1/4"! It looked just like the piece from last time. I then pulled up what I think is a vertebra, but looking closer I will need to get a full set of photos and post it in the ID section for review. As the day progressed I was lucky to come up another definite vertebra, a bison upper molar, a glyptodont dermal scute, eagle ray tooth plate, what looks like a fragment of a mammoth tooth with two long roots, a mastodon tooth fragment and an assortment of shark teeth. Along the way I also pulled up two more sections of the tusk - one 3"x5" that I was able to fit into the larger piece and another piece 2"x 3 3/4" along with several fragments. I will try and compare the piece of tusk from the last visit to the one found today to see if it could be one in the same. Possible it could be a pair? Here are some photos of the best of the day.

Found this in the river having a hard time figuring out if it's an old cow or Bison jaw

Decided I needed to get to the Peace River today due to negative weather heading this way. Cold front bringing rain in tomorrow night that will probably raise the river above searchable levels for several days. Temp was 55 degrees on arrival with an expected high of 80. Put the wet suit on and was glad I did. Water level was down a few inches from my last trip but the current was still moving pretty fast. Got to my target site at about 8:30 am and dug/sifted for 3 hours with very little luck. I only came up with a hand full of small shark teeth, 2 gator teeth and a small caliber bullet. Taking a break at 12:30 I was contemplating calling it a day or heading down river to find a new site. Luckily, I decided to stay in the same general area. Opted to try a past spot that had good results but had appeared to be emptied out on my last try. Due to the water level this meant climbing the bank and walking through tall grass for about 100 yards to circle back to the river at a spot where I could get back in. This is where the wetsuit actually paid off big. My past walks through the tall grass here had always resulted in getting bitten on the legs by red ants. No problem today! After getting back in the water I immediately started pulling up some small shark teeth and then a nice horse tooth came up. Things were looking up! In the next hour and a half I found a nice Megalodon, Alligator scute, Antler, large turtle shell piece, a nice Hemi, a bison (?) astragulus, and then best of all an 11"x3" piece of fossil Ivory! Sure glad I decided to make the trip today and stay in the same general area! Pictures of the highlighted finds below. I tried to get a close up of the Schreger lines on the ivory, hope you can see them.

My husband and I took advantage of the extra low tides and headed to McFaddin beach to do some looking. We found the usual amount of quality seaglass, and nice sea shells but we also found some bones and teeth. I think most of the teeth are bison but a couple are pretty worn and hard to tell. One tooth is a monster! We are mostly curious to see if anyone can tell what the large bone might have belonged too.

I got this from a friend about 2 months back. Lately the black coating on it has been flaking off. I am not sure what it is and was curious if I should remove it or do I need to stabilize it with something?

Found 8" below the sod in a bank that was cut down for stagecoach crossing by the surveyors of the Butterfield Trail in 1865. Just the end was exposed. This is in an area known to be an annual Cheyenne summer hunting camp in Southern Gove County, Kansas. Piece is very heavy, not like a dry or even a fresh bovine metacarpal. Thank you for your help.

I work for an ecological restoration company and I work in rivers all the time. I find weird things from time to time, but I am stumped. Please help I know it’s a “petrified tooth” but I don’t know what it is from. Any ideas?

I came across this online and wondered if it was indeed an antiquss or a modern bison? It claims it is a fossil

When I picked up this bone and pieces my thought was bison. Reviewing it I’m not so sure, so will I defer to the experts! I was disappointed though to see this had been run over by an ATV on the sand bar... also sad to see really how polluted our water ways are...

I’m excited about this find, not only is it a fossil, form what not totally sure, but I also believe it is a tool! You can see the marks from where it has been carefully cracked. On the flat side of the bone, you can see where it has been flattened as well. If not a tool then certainly harvested bone marrow. This was found in an area close to other Clovis finds.

To me this seems to be a toe or foot bone of some sort but from what? Found in an area where bison, mammoth have been found. thanks for looking and any educated guesses!

Hello - found this damaged bone on a rock bar in southern Minnesota. A triangular piece is broke off the the proximal end. However looking at the other end, which seems intact, it does not look like bovid which is what I usually find...