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Pulled out this interesting tooth from possum creek. It's been identified as Isurus retroflexus and I'm wondering if anybody here has seen similar examples from Gainesville. I haven't heard of any. Next steps: find a great white, sand tiger, and cow shark tooth!

Found this tiny tooth in a Gainesville creek. Looks like it has a cusp on one side. Could it possibly be a juvenile Great White tooth? I looked on elasmo but I don't see anything that quite fits the profile of it. It's about 12mm in length.

Started going through some of my older finds and thought I’d try to identify some of them. These are all found in Gainesville, Florida creeks. First one is just a chunk of bone, not sure if it’s even identifiable. My guess is part of a scapula because it’s somewhat flat and curved. Second is a small bone, maybe a carpal of some sort? And third, I’m thinking is a partial alligator tooth. I can see a small bit of enamel left on it, but the enamel seems to have some ridges on it which is confusing.

Found this weird guy in the creek today... very small. Any help would be appreciated. IMG_0119.MOV

I originally thought that 1 might be some piece of turtle, but it looks very strange to me up close. It is divided into many tiny cells unlike any bone I’ve seen before. It also seems to have a generally geometric shape, with the top end pointed outwards and the bottom end having two concave divots (terms “top” and “bottom” refer to the orientation in the numbered picture). Im quite sure 2 is either to a great white or megalodon. Normally I would say great white due to the general lack of a bourlette, but it is so small that I’m uncertain. I do not know if 3 is identifiable, but I was already posting the first two so figured I might as well include it. I have never found a bone with a long indent running along the middle of the outside of the bone. Just thought it was curious.

I'm not aware of any other similar teeth to hastalis occurring in the Gainesville/Hawthorne formation area but I've never had one with this shape before. Thanks, Ben

Found this in a creek out hunting today. I learn towards horse but my friend swears camel. What do you folks think?

While searching for Information today, I came across these news flashes on the University of Florida Museum of Natural History website. I found this additional info related to the 2nd item, I am posting to give @digit an opportunity to comment on both... I had recently heard 2nd hand from a Sheriff deputy in Polk county that there is an effort to pass a similar ban on all Peace River feeder creeks in Polk county. I am sure it will be a contentious topic but easily passable since I think most people, not fossil hunters or land owners adjacent to creeks do not consider it a priority either way.

Could not identify these little pieces myself. Obviously 1 is more of a weird type of rock formation, but I was wondering if anyone knew why it looked like it was made of all those little capsules. 2 is most interesting to me, I honestly have no idea. 3 seems to maybe be a pieces of sediment that got something pressed into it and it hardened as a print? Not sure.

I'm trying to find new fossil hunting sites. I know that hogtown creek in Gainesville has some areas where you can find small megs and horse teeth, but I am not sure what parts of the creek they are in. The only area in hogtown I have been too has only centimeter or less long teeth, though there are hundreds. Does anybody mind sharing any sites in hogtown or just in Gainesville in general. Feel free to PM me or tell me what forum I should have put this in (I know it's probably not this one) thanks!

The Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH) at the UF campus in Gainesville, FL is presently running an exhibit called Fantastic Fossils at the display museum on campus (where the butterfly enclosure is located). There is a variety of interesting fossils in the exhibit but the most interesting part (though I'm biased) is the "live lab" where visitors can watch the paleontologists, students, and volunteers (like me and Tammy) do our work. I'm presently prepping a large rhino skull (Teleoceras n. sp.) from the Montbrook site. At some point in time we're going to get a large flatscreen hooked up to the digital microscope camera and I'll be picking matrix on the big screen. Jonathan Block Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the FLMNH was over in Jacksonville, FL this morning for the morning broadcast of their local news (WJXT). The host was predictably upbeat and chatty (verging on geeking out on fossils) but Jonathan did manage to get his message across and show some interesting specimens from the Montbrook site. My friend in Jacksonville sent me the YouTube link after he watched this on this TV this morning. The picture that opens this segment had him laughing (made me smirk as well). That goofy image of me has been getting a lot of use. Anybody in the area is invited to stop by and see the Fantastic Fossils exhibit. It's open 7 days a week during the normal museum hours. https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/exhibits/fantastic-fossils/ Cheers. -Ken

Hello! I’ve been tracking my surrounding areas in the last year finding new spots that yield great things. And I’ve seen several people I’ve met in passing hit Gainesville with great success! I’ve read that there were some newer crack downs on fossil hunting in the city limits and I’m reaching out for any further information or even any local hunters willing to get out and breathe some smooth fresh air this Sunday, December 12th? This may be one of my last hunts for a while due to a beautiful life addition coming up! Ive done plenty of reading up on Hogstown and Rattlesnake but I’d love any local information! thanks a million! here are a few Teeth I picked up the other day here in Panama City Beach with the dredging going on just off shore

Earlier this year I was fortunate enough to meet up with @digit in Gainesville Florida where he very graciously provided my wife and I the opportunity to do some matrix fossil hunting in a local stream. We sieved for a good long time collecting many nice shark and ray teeth as well as other items out of the large portion. At the end we nearly filled a five gallon bucket with gravel that we ran through essentially window screen in the creek to get out the silt and clay. My original trip report can be found here: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/114209-north-florida-fun/&tab=comments#comment-1264293 Back at Ken's house, he was nice enough to sort the bucket of matrix into sizes for ease of picking. We then ran the matrix through 3 stacked sifters since we had already picked out anything caught by the 1/4" screen in the stream. The coarsest material from the sifters would have been caught by the 1/8" screen so (1/4" - 1/8" range). The next finer size range would have been (1/8" - 1/12") and the finest would have been (1/12" - 1/20"). We bagged it up into 3 gallon ziplock bags of coarse matrix, 1 gallon bag of the medium and about 2/3 gallon of the fine matrix. Once home, I dried it out and began the picking and identifying process See some links below for my ID questions and some answers. Thanks to all those that helped. http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/119245-florida-mysteries/&tab=comments#comment-1309402 http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/119097-gainesville-shark-teeth-question/&tab=comments#comment-1305867 http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/119485-small-florida-sharkrayfish-teeth-help/&tab=comments#comment-1310743 So far, all this you have heard or seen before as numerous folks, including Ken, have made many nice posts about sorting and picking matrix for micro-fossils. Some of them are pinned under this Micro topic. What I wanted to impart with this post were the results of my picking efforts, or at least the start of it since I have not gone through all of the matrix by a long shot. But I think I have gone through enough to give a reasonable summary of what can be found in this material. After I have gone through more of it, I can always update the info. You can also search on the forum and find many other excellent posts from members that have looked at this material, but I don't think I have seen a complete summary of what can be found (if I missed it somewhere, sorry). I am not going to post a bunch of pictures of what I found in this thread because I have placed many pictures in an album. Feel free to check it out if interested: My procedure was to pick though the matrix and remove anything that was a fossil, whether I knew what it specifically was or not. After that, the first thing I did was a volume calculation to see what percentage of the matrix is fossil material. Out of the coarsest matrix, the fossils made up 3.2% of the volume, they were a bit less in the medium material (1.9%) and even less in the fine material at 1.1% When you put it all together (remember there is a lot more of the coarse stuff) it comes out to 2.6% of the bucket was fossil material. To me it seems like a small number when I think that in nearly every small scoop I put under the scope I would find numerous fossils. It of course is really only all that interesting if one can compare it to other matrixes, but it gives one an idea of what to expect from this material. My next step was to sort and identify everything. Easy to say, but that was the hardest part since this matrix was new to me. I should be able to do future batches of this stuff much more quickly. Once that was done, I counted the number of specimens of each fossil type and just made a simple spreadsheet of each matrix size. So what did I find? Here is a sample from the coarsest matrix: Keep in mind, most of these fossils are not complete specimens. So for example, while there are 608 Mylobatidae ray teeth, only a small percentage are whole teeth, but if they are in that category there was enough present to be able to ID it. You can see there are over 16% that I know are fossils, but not good enough to be part of one of the listed types or even good enough for me to figure out yet what they are. With more time (and knowledge??) I can probably ID many of those, but that is for another time. Were there differences between the three sizes of matrix? Yes, and I lumped the list of types shown above into broader categories so you can see how the four classes of material (I included the hand collected stuff) compare: And lastly, if you put everything together, you can see what type of fossils you are likely to find in the 2.6% of matrix from the creek: lots of rays, lots of sharks and a smattering of other marine material. That's all. Not sure if anyone else will find this interesting, but I'm sort of a data guy, so it was fun for me to look at it this way. Thanks for looking.