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Hi there! Thank you for welcoming me to the group! I have a friend who will be arriving from Japan July 21st. The last time he was here he went on a dig with another friend and found some fascinating samples! He is a keen fossil hunter. He will be staying near Barrie for most of his time in Canada. However, if needs be if he can travel to Toronto. I have two questions: 1. Is there any type of fossil hunt or excursion that will be taking place on the weekend of July 28th? 2. If I am unable to take him fossil hunting during the week prior to the 28th, is there someone who will be going fossil hunting that weekend who wouldn't mind having this lovely individual accompany them? He is keen, kind and very interested in this field of study. Any leads or information is greatly appreciated! Kevin

Spent seven hours in the field today. Not much to show for it other than the usual, but I thought I'd show the process on how I extract a big rock. I am of the belief that there is no rock so immovable that my use of persistence and force cannot dislodge it. This one has been one of many that I have flagged for future extraction. First step was to clear off the debris to get a sense of just how big this one is. You can't make out the depth on this one yet. The next step was to exploit a crack to pop off one of the upper pieces.

Hello everybody This will be a bit longer and I hope you stick with me. So I've planed on opening this topic for quite a while now and I think it's the time to go now. Maybe it's stupid, maybe not. Let's just see where this will go. With 31 and no kids (not yet) it's the best time to do this now. I won't get younger and you never now how long you can just leave for vacation as you like it. I was already three times in the US but never did anything with fossils (as in digging or visiting museums). So why not just go to the US, dig up some stuff and enjoy the most beautiful Dino fossils out there. We have some nice museums in Germany / Europe, but nothing compares to the museums in the US. Inspired by a lot of TFF Members and their great field reports I just want to dig for one time in my life at the Hell Creek Formation and visit some museums there. I'm aware that HC Formation spans mainly across MT, WY, ND and SD. I'm looking mostly for Dino teeth of any kind as they are small enough to actually bring them back to Germany. I have no interest in finding big bones or fossils like that, because 1. I don't know how to recover them correctly and 2. I can't take big and heavy fossils onto a plane back to Germany. I'm planing to do this trip at some point in 2020 and dig for several days and just enjoy the US. I have no problem with driving long distances by (rental) car. So to summarize it: a ) Visting museum with lots of Dino fossils. b ) Digging up Dino teeth at HC and return with them to Germany. So I'm trying to organize this topic with different questions 1. What's the best time? What time of the year has the best weather conditions for going out to dig? And is there a "tourist time" that I should avoid? As in a lot of people digging at the same spot. 2. Where am I allowed to dig? The most difficult and important question. Can I dig as a private person / foreigner on US soil and can I keep these fossils? Do I need specific permission? I'm aware it can depend on the state, the property and who allows it or doesn't allow it. Just seraching the internet is not very helpfull to find specific information at what specific strip of land I am allowed to dig. So the easiest way is that someone just shows it to me like "look, here you can dig and keep your stuff, here you can't do that" In the end I need someone to tell me at what very specific locations I am allowed to dig. 3. Just go with a guided tour? On the web there are several guided tours for digging in the HC Formation. This would sure be the easiest way, but most tours don't allowed you to just keep your fossils. You have to buy your own found fossils in order to keep them. With this I just can buy teeth on the web. Also the trip itself costs money. And the tours are only at specific times. I want more independence deciding the specific date and have just my own freedom (within the law). But maybe someone has a good tip for me. Maybe someone knows someone who does some tours or anyone from there who can help. All legal issus aside, I need to find the actuall HC Formation within the land. Pritty sure I won't find anything if I just get out of the car somewhere and start digging a hole in the ground This would be a rather expensive and big trip for me. With flying across the atlantic I need to know where to go and what to expect. I can't waste any day with searching around where to dig. I need to know this in advance. 4. Where to get proper equipment? I can't bring any big/heavy tools or stuff like this, as I'm traveling by plane. Any idea what to do? Just buy some cheep tools for this tour once I'm in the state? 5. Where in the HC area are the best museums? Simple question. I wonder what great museums are out there. 6. Can I board a plane back to Germany with fossils? All the great fossils don't help much if I'm not allowed to bring them to Germany. I don't know if I could get in trouble at the airport with US border patrol / TSA / Customs if I want to leave the US with fossils. Do I need a receipt? A confirmation of any kind, that I bought / dug up these fossils legally? Or do they just not care? Is it just like a souvenir? Some contries view fossils as a national heritage. How does the US handle this at airports? If you made your way through my sluggish english until this point: Thanks! I hope I didn't make myself a fool with this and the trip is not possible anyway because only scientific people are allowed to dig there, but I just hope this trip is possible in some way for me. Any help and tips are very welcome. I think I'll fly from Munich to Chicago and then start my trip from there to the west. But I'll have to see where I end up with. Maybe I fly somewhere else and head to HC.

Howdy All! Been a couple of months since I have posted anything. Work has kept me more than busy with travel. BUT, I wanted to share a quick day trip to my dig site yesterday in northern Cincinnati. I explored far left into the hillside I am excavating to see on the surface what Gastropods, Brachiopods and Bryzoa I could see and I was happily surprised that I found the mother-load! This area of my site was covered by a lot of growth and the runoff of water was less than in other areas I have been digging. I have attached a couple of pics and some real quick finds I cleaned up last night... sorry about the pic quality, I do not own a fancy camera. I love when I am lined up with conference calls and I can enjoy my hobby why listening to statistical analysis (actually mostly ignoring). I will try to save more pics in the comment sections. One specimen has me confused. I found a number of trilobite pieces throughout my day and collected around 25 hash plates with several in them. I have yet to clean them up. But pictured below (if it lets me) is what appears to be the bottom portion of a trilobite but I'm unsure.

Can anyone help me with the water levels at Greens mill run? Going to make a trip there in the next couple days and I want to make sure it’s not super high.. anyone in the area seen if the 10th street bridge is high or the park?! Please and thank you!!

So today Ive went down to the bay that I was planning to find fossils in for awhile, only to come back empty handed (I couldnt reach any of the shale quarries and just decided that its layers are too flat to house fossils anyways). Being a Palos Verdean, There are small pockets of quarries which are generaly unprotected by preserves (usually alongside roads, sometimes beaches). Palos Verdes has a rich history of Miocene-Quarternary fossils, but much of the fossiliferous zones are protected by preserves. Because I cant really go far just to find fossils, I can only hunt in the small pockets I can find. Ive studied some geological maps and do know where the according-to-theory fossiliferous shale are, I just dont know how exactly to find fossils without destroying the place and getting under a legal flat. Are there any tips and tricks for this kind of fossiling?

Wanted to share a map of potential spots to hunt for fossils in the US. Not complete by any means but it's a start! Just planning our fossil hunting road trip this summer and though others might be doing the same Happy hunting!

This is a shark tooth right? Imagine my surprise when I found it this evening while at my artifact dig site about 5 feet below the surface in eastern MO. Common/uncommon?

Toby (my 10yo son) and I at the site for a group #BlackFriday #Fossil hunt #optoutside #outddoorresearch, Nov 25, 2016 There's a particular creek/ditch site my son and I like to frequent. It's not the easiest site and not always as productive as we'd like, but it's a good site nonetheless. I've been studying the stratigraphy to better Vertebra understand what could be there as I get to know the species of the fossils we find. We have found a number of things from micro shark teeth like tigers, to bigger items like rib bones and other bone frags, various Partial whale/dolphin skull vertebrae from sharks and fish, marine mammal teeth and bones, and more. I've even consulted one of the paleontologists at the College of Charleston, where I'm studying to become a geologist. It appears to be Chandler Bridge and I'm looking into what is underneath it (what we walk on in the creek). It's super hard and I was told by more seasoned hunters yesterday it's likely either marl or limestone. This would be consistent with our finds and with the idea of a marine/estuarine environment. It would be interesting if the marl/limestone underneath is Ashley formation, though. That would mean we are a bit older in the timeline than thought. Chandler Bridge is late Oligocene (~23-24 mya) and Ashley is early Oligocene (~26.5-30 mya). The top section of the site has a lot of artificial fill, however, so there is no telling where it comes from. After storms I have found a huge mako and huge Angustidens tangled in the roots only a foot or two from the surface so it had to be artificial fill. Odontoceti tooth Rib bone However, lately when we go we've seen something pretty horrible going on. Normally, the fossil hunters we encounter are good, honest folks. They are hunting for personal collections or to make some money and are pretty good about taking care of the sites they hunt at. After all, if we do not take care of these sites, they will be destroyed and stop producing fossils. There's the logos of the matter, right? There is also the logic that if we destroy sites, that are public lands, those that administer and care for them can shut us out, much like the town of Summerville was compelled to do. It is my understanding that some fossil hunters were so - um, "enthusiastic", shall we say - about their hunts, that they were digging into banks (which I usually refer as creek and ditch walls as many are very steep and deep) that they were breaching private property lines and risking other people's properties. So basically, just take care of the sites and they will take care of you. Makes sense, right? Well, guess what, folks - it's happening here. One of the several dig outs I found Looking for micros despite the fall When I first went to this site in about Aug/Sept of 2015, I had spied it on Google maps as a new fossil hunter (and am still quite the novice). Another experienced hunter told me it had promise but was a site he didn't like to go to for various reasons. I decided to give it a go. I went alone as I tend to do when checking out a new place I'm unfamiliar with. I'd rather not have my child with me in such a scenario. When I arrived, I walked to the edge of the creek bank and my use of the word "wall" couldn't be more appropriate. It was a nearly 90 degree vertical 15-20 foot wall to the bottom. I found a spot with what I thought to be some decent hand and foot holds and started my climb down. However, when I put my full weight on the foot holds, the wall gave out and fell straight to the bottom. I was pretty scraped up from the thorny flora overgrown on the wall but didn't break any bones, so I went ahead and did my little fossil hunt for a couple of hours only coming up with some micro shark teeth. I would later learn that I had a blown disc in my neck. See, I already had one fusion in my neck about four years prior to this and apparently a disc below that fusion had herniated. I suspect, though admit it is only conjecture, that this fall caused the disc to give out because I began to have symptoms just after this fall. While conducting my hunt on this particular trip out, I saw that people had been digging into the bottom of the wall and wondered if I had been climbing above such a spot, which caused it to give out when I tried to climb on it. It was some time before I returned to that site, in part due to the fact that I was diagnosed with that blown disc and required surgery in December 2015 to fuse more vertebrae. It was disheartening. I can only have one more fusion and I'm only 39 years old. It's depressing to think about. Therein lies my pathos. Many people have other various emotions tied to fossil hunting and how to go about it. I've found it to be a very charged subject, for sure. Black Friday 2015 there was a group hunt. I was going to join them, however I had just received that diagnosis of a blown disc and didn't want to risk further injury. I gave the organizer of that hunt the location and warned about the difficulty I had getting to it. I had also let him know that there was a massive wash out in one part because of the "Thousand Year" flooding in October 2015 (I may write another blog on why that phrase was massively misused). Apparently, there were some really cool finds, or a really cool find there, so after my recovery, I went back. I went with my son and it was overall uneventful - no falls thankfully. Angustidens teeth I found that day I did find a nice Angy (and a second at another site) but then we only found a couple of micros. We met and conversed with a seasoned hunter that IIRC was there with a group he brought on a hunt tour. There was a lot of digging but nothing that seemed very destructive and certainly nothing that was undermining the slopes that would cause them to fail. We chatted and I learned a few things. It's always nice to talk to people that have been doing this for so long. Angustidens teeth I found that day Later, in I believe April 2016, I took a friend of mine on his first fossil hunt and he killed it! The Odontoceti tooth and the rib bone above were among some of what he found there that day. The water level was low compared to the previous times I had been there and he's pretty adventurous, so we went places at that site I had never been before. We also found a spot to climb out of and now, Toby and I use it to get into the creek. It's not steep at all and it's not as deep there either. Well, I've only been twice since I started at CofC in August and that has been this month, November 2016. We've had some great finds, especially since the water is really, really low (we've had nearly no rain at all since Hurricane Matthew hit in October). However, the practices that are being used by one or more people at this site recently leave utter destruction. I'm not exaggerating when I say that either. It was so bad when we went yesterday for the group Black Friday Hunt that the creek was almost blocked off as both banks had been horribly undercut and the rubble nearly met in the middle of the creek. This isn't a natural erosion process. This is clearly the work of a human or humans; you can clearly see the shovel marks in the bank. This is far worse than even the dig outs that I witnessed when I first was here that caused me to fall and blow a herniated disc last summer! What may be another real kick in the pants is that this undercutting is not well understood by me as they are not sifting what they are leaving behind. We have even pulled micro tiger shark teeth out of the huge chunks of rubble they left behind. It's confusing and I don't understand it. I can only assume they are looking for very large teeth. The biggest I've found are 2-2.5 inch Angustidens. There are no megalodons that I've ever seen and Angies and Megs are not in the same time period. Angies lived in the Oligocene (appropriate for Chandler Bridge and Ashley formations) and megalodon lived during the Pliocene and Miocene Epochs. As far as I know, they did not overlap so there shouldn't be any megs here, especially if this is closer to the Ashley formation than I thought. This undercutting is extremely destructive and dangerous! It will cause these slopes to fall and the banks will wash out again after we have heavy rains. Maybe that is what the person/people doing this hope to achieve? However there is a massive flaw in that thought process. Several, actually. First off, it will cause other fossils to be lost. I get it, people want the big boys. They want 2-3 inch Angies, they want big whale teeth, they want full skulls - but by doing this, when it rains, when this slope fails and collapses, all the other fossils will be washed away, the likelihood of finding any "big boys" will still be slim, more sediment will be in the creek covering the fossils that are settling and being deposited by the water in the bottom of the creek (where we have found our great finds, by the way), and you are destroying the area. This may very well get tools and digging banned everywhere we hunt. Then what? What will you do then? I hope you are reading this. I hope you are hearing what I am trying to say. I get you probably don't care for the environment as much as others but I hope you hear your bottom line shrinking. As the people that live there start to see this, they may very well go to their city and county councils and follow Summerville's model. Or they may go with what other area's outside the Lowcountry have done and ban hunting altogether. And that is sad. There are not enough paleontologists here to find all that needs to be found. Whether they are in people's personal collections, up for sale, or being donated to museums, it is far better that people are out finding fossils and bringing those bones to the light of day than for them to remain covered for the world to never see again. Here comes the ethos: no matter your philosophy there should be the inclusion of proper care of the sites where you hunt. If you dig into the banks/walls of creeks and ditches, please consider slope failure in your process. Remember that other people use these places and a slope failure can harm, even kill people. There are massive crevasses in the slopes now and cracks appearing in the top where people walk and ride 4x4 vehicles. There may be service vehicles accessing this dirt road as well. This is extremely dangerous! Aside from that, destroying where you hunt will not provide better fossils. It will close off the site and keep fossils buried in the rubble that is left behind instead. View from the top of the bank - you cannot even see the slope has been undercut When you sift gravel, make sure live creatures such as fresh water claims and dragonfly nymphs are immediately returned to the water. After sifting, if you toss the gravel onto the bank, please return it to the water after you are done for the day. How can the gravel capture more fossils from the water if it's sitting on the banks? Aside from those smaller creatures we have also encountered deer, snakes, and seen evidence of dogs, raccoons and other animals. Remember this is their home. Please, respect that. Destruction of their habitat will affect how they survive (such as relying more on going towards human homes for food sources). If we tread more lightly and leave their ecosystem in tact, they can keep their own food sources and shelters without needing to encroach on ours. And please, for those that don't understand, it's not necessary to kill a snake just because you see it. Snakes will prefer to escape so give it that chance to get away. You will be fine. I know this has been a long read and people prefer short status updates instead. But this couldn't be condensed more. I'm a somewhat "wordy" person and am working on trying be more concise; however, this had several points of view. People fossil hunt for many different reasons and I hoped to appeal to everyone's points of view without making it sound like this is how all fossil hunters behave. We don't. This destruction is caused by one person or a very few number of people. But the rest of us need to make sure we are educating people about why this sort of destruction is unnecessary and uncalled for. I am not trying to be rude, "holier-than-thou", or trying to offer a lecture (though I clearly have). I just wish to inform. I hope that I have. Please feel free to share and comment. Thank you.

This is a trip out to our leased fossil property to dig a Titanothere skull on 9/14/14… See more of this and my trip to the Northwest Nebraska Rock Club show and swap here: http://www.thecrawfordfossilmuseumandgallery.com/?page_id=369 Sorry, the link is fixed now...