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One of the few things I collect are capybara fossils. One of the other things are mammal verts and large shark verts. But of all the capybara teeth I have I have never seen a vertebra from one of them. Does anyone have any that I can see?

I am spending a week in Florida with my son in Ormond by the sea. It is attempt to get some time to just relax, with little to do. On Friday, I went hunting for fossils. We hit two locations, one downstream , one upstream. Went downstream first...fewer small shark teeth than normal, a few large tigers, armadillo osteoderm, a antler stub, a couple of worked flakes, apple snail, fishing weight, turtle foot pads and 4 plus plates of a Capybara. I like to hunt in deep water because it helps my back. A significantly large gator was taking too much interest and so we left. The Capybara tooth So, we went to the Upstream location (at the end of the day we wanted a downstream ride). A few white rooted teeth from the Peace River... I am wondering if these are dated to the phosphate mines where other white rooted teeth are found.. I like the colors here, Love the Tilly bone, IF only I could date a layer from what we found.... There was a post about Dugong in Washington State, but it could not be... no dugong in Washington, but this one seems similar, and it is dugong.Provenance counts.. do not lose it.. So , you are asking Where is the fossils to be IDed ? I am willing to settle for... Is it rock?, Is it bone ?

I found this yesterday in a local creek, my first thought was capybara, any help? Thanks!

Out with my most frequent hunting partner. With the cold weather turning warmer, and the river dropping, we have been prospecting sites that proved productive in previous seasons. It does not always pay off.. sometimes the locations have been covered by feet of sand or the gravel we were digging in last year has been carried downstream to parts unknown. Today was sunny and warm, we checked one location for 90 minutes followed by another and both were good (lots of small shark teeth) but not great.. We moved to a third location that we had hunted extensively in previous years and once again it has some real potential for finds that are new and rare.... This was my first hint.... I have found 1 equivalent and 1 better in 15 years.. They tend to be fragile in the churn of the Peace River... This was next, once again rare for the instance. I believe it is an Osteoderm, but what mammal and where on the body is it positioned? Then this Cetacean ear bone, I need some time to try and ID but more likely , I need @Boesse to validate any ID I make.. Then , while I was thinking about Cetaceans... This showed up in my sieve... There were many Hemis, Aduncus/Contortous, half a shark vert, many in good shape. I will sort them tomorrow. My partner found a fish tooth, very small Armadillo edge vert, and at the end of the day contributed this rarity... I am jealous. At 3 inches, I think it may be from a big toothed whale.... One of those great days on the Peace River... I am indeed fortunate...

Last August, I found a broken bone. The unbroken part reminded me of a Rhino astragalus. I posted a Fossil_ID thread but not much feedback, The following week I did some internet searching for fossil astragali... and found this one for sale by @PrehistoricFlorida. I thought that I found an ID match !!! This Capybara astragalus has many characteristics of Rhino , also Cutting to the chase, a member PMed me on some of my Capybara finds Friday and I started searching the internet . I found another fossil on @prehistoricflorida 's website.. This time an Eremotherium fossil. Did you get a good look at this 3 inch Eremotherium medial phalanx, compared to my August find.... Could it be Sloth rather than Capybara? and by the way.... here is a look at the bones in a sloth claw... and the bone next to this claw (P. harlani ??) is also a Sloth medial phalanx !!!! Some times you have to take a circuitous route to a fossil ID... So what say you? Did I find Capybara or Eremotherium or something else?

My friend gave me these tooth. The information that I got is they are from Pleistocene of Florida. But not ID for the species. I just wonder are these belong to beaver, giant beaver or giant capybara because all of them have fossil in Florida land. thank for reading!

i Should have asked when I first found this. I really would like a display that does justice for this capybara skull. I know some of you either make them or know someone who can. So.......

Found in Peace River. I think maybe beaver??? or capybara??? or could be totally wrong about everything.

Collected at low tide this evening.

...at least for me for this season. I'll be out of the country over the next two weekends and then off to Greece on vacation for most of June so I'll likely not get another chance at hunting the Peace River this season unless something really unusual happens with the weather. I expect rainy season to have started by the time I'm back from Greece and the Peace will likely be several feet higher that it is at the moment. Currently, the Peace is as low as I've seen it this season. During a heavy drought several years back I've seen the Peace about a foot lower than it is now which made for a long trip from Brownville to Arcadia with a lot of time out of the canoe pushing it over shallow sandy areas. Yesterday, we had to get out a number of times and that combined with the headwind we fought all the way back to Arcadia meant we had to allocate more travel time which left less time for digging and sifting. On the (Canoe Outpost) bus ride up from Arcadia to Brownville we spotted a couple sitting the seat in front of us who looked to be new to fossil hunting on the Peace. They had loaner sifting screens and a shovel from Canoe Outpost and I figured we might help introduce them to a fun (and addicting) passtime. We hadn't planned on spending much time at the large (well-known and hard-hit) gravel bed just downstream from Brownville but changed our plans to help Mike and Samantha (if I haven't misremembered their names by now--names, not my strong suit). After a brief stop before the main gravel bed we stopped at another area with very chunky gravel that is even closer to the boat ramp at Brownville. This area is well within walking distance from Brownville Park and I suspect it gets hit hard by walk-ins. Lots of gravel to be found at that spot but it wasn't even giving up small shark teeth so we soon moved down to the primary gravel bed near Brownville. I gave some tips and pointers on how to hunt the area and let them use our larger sifting screen with 1/4" mesh while we poked around with the 1/"2 mesh sifter trying to find an area that was producing fossils. The gravel bed at this location is virtually from bank to bank and runs for somewhere between 100-150 feet so it is not a tiny area. Even though it is large it is by no means cryptic and it attracts lots of attention. Evidence of holes and piles litter the bottom here (till they are erased like a big Etch-a-sketch each summer during flood stage). The big trick to hunting this site is to find some place where you are not digging through someone's spoils. Prospecting lots of sites in this location till you hit an area that is producing some nice finds is the best way (IMHO) of working this location. We poked around without much luck till we found an area that my probe told me had some gravel under a topping of sand. Within a few minutes digging there I pulled out a rather large chunk of giant tortoise (Hesperotestudo) carapace that should have been identified and kept by any previous hunters. This made me feel more certain about spending more effort in this spot. Before long we were pulling out some larger shark teeth (and fraglodons) as well as a few other things like gator teeth and mammoth and mastodon tooth fragments. Every so often I'd bring over some donated finds to our new "students" so they could start to understand the diversity of finds that can be pulled from the Peace. I continued to dig in the spot we finally landed on as it was giving up a variety of small prizes which were useful in demonstrating the types of things to look for in the Peace. Shark teeth are relatively easy to find and identify but more obscure fossils require obtaining a search image to be able to spot effectively. Shortly after I had shown the river's two newest fossil hunters a small piece of mammoth tooth we pulled something interesting out of our sifting screen. Tammy got to it first (she works the sifter while I man the shovel). Initially, she thought it was an odd piece of turtle shell (a good assumption as the Peace has lots of varied pieces of turtle and tortoise carapace). She had picked it up and was holding it sideways. I took it from her to look closer and upon rotating it saw the occlusal surface. "Horse tooth," I said instantly seeing the crenulated enamel ridges on the top of the tooth. But something was odd about it--it just didn't look right. Lower horse teeth are more narrow and elongated (better to fit into the narrow lower jawbone) while upper horse molars are more squarish. This piece wasn't quite square nor was it as elongated as a lower tooth should be. It was the right size for an Equus molar but the square peg just wasn't fitting into the round hole. Finally, the penny dropped and I excitedly understood why this horse molar looked so odd--it wasn't equine at all! It was mammoth--BABY mammoth! I went over to show this new find to our fossil partners do jour and while I was explaining to them how you could tell it was mammoth (by the very characteristic bands and loops of enamel sandwiched together with layers of cementum) Tammy came over and said, "Guess what I found?" I hadn't a clue--the Peace can give up a wide variety of items. She held out in her hand another chunk of baby mammoth tooth--one entire loop of enamel. It only took a few seconds to verify that this piece fit neatly into the chunk we had just found--the tooth was growing! You can be sure we dug around in that spot for another hour or more but never found another scrap of this tiny tooth. Likely it had previously fragmented on its path from where it was eroded out of the river bank to the spot we recovered it. The two pieces had probably recently separated but didn't make it far from each other--they may have even separated just with the agitation of shaking the sand out of the sifting screen. I'm glad we were able to reunite this pieces. Still, by no means a complete baby mammoth molar but a good size chunk and my trip-maker for the day. I had originally planned on skipping past this location and prospecting some other gravel spots we have hunted in the past but haven't tried for several years. I'm glad the decision to instruct some newbie fossil hunters paid off so quickly with fossil Karma. Before too long our new acquaintances headed off down river and we soon gave up our search for any more of this molar and continued down as well. On the way down we spotted a large gator in the same spot as we saw one when we were there last time. It looked to be about the same size (9-10 foot) and I suspect it was the same individual in its current favorite sunning spot. We prospected a bit here and there but had spend so much time near Brownville that we wanted to make it down to our favorite spot near Oak Hill. We stopped again at this location to hunt for a bit because it has chunky gravel and sometimes gives up nice prizes. Mostly, it's just big chunks of matrix with lots of dugong rib bones and very few shark teeth but this is the same spot that gave up two nice gator osteoderms last time out. The water is quite low without much current at the moment. If fact, the wind that was blowing steadily from the south was actually pushing my sifting screen upstream. You can see from the photos below that the water is also quite cloudy as there is a major algae bloom going on presently. This is making the normally tea-colored clear river water quite opaque and greenish. Vertical visibility is less than a foot. This lack of clarity is not impacting fossil hunting too much but it makes the paddling downstream more difficult as it is making the sand bars and deeper water channels more difficult to discern. Hidden logs below the surface are also more difficult to see making for more dangerous navigation. We had to think more while traveling but since we know this stretch of the river pretty well we didn't have major difficulties. Here I am enjoying the Peace for my final trip of the season. This second stop of the day didn't give up any large prizes but did produce a nice diversity of items. The second find of the day was this tiny jaw with several molars in place. It looks to be something from the a rodent or lagomorph but I'll need to spend more time getting an ID on this.

Pretty sure this is part of a capybara tooth. Am I right? Found in the Peace River

I was out hunting the last 2 days with friends. I enjoy the experience. Sunday was far more productive. Here is a large bone. I found 2-3 of these with similar quality. Maybe I will find an equivalent LARGE tooth to be sure, but usually I think of these as Proboscidea.. Hosenose for short. If there is any reason to think otherwise, please enlightening me on the additional possibilities. Mostly I leave large indeterminate bones in the river. Sometimes I take them for auctions or fossil digs for kids. I have questions on this one.. Note the large amount of muscle attachment bone modification.. Can this be used to narrow the bone ID possibilities? Is this normal or pathological? I found just little teeth in the morning, along with these larger bones but in the afternoon I came on strong. A Capybara molar, the first in 4 years about 1/2 the size or less of the 2013 find. A couple of Megs and a very nice Hemi!!!