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Last week, my hunting partner picked a tiny tooth out of his sieve and asked me what I thought it was. We were hunting a location that predominately provides Miocene and Pliocene fossils. It is about 6 mm square. Everyone should understand the limits of their capabilities. I am not a scientist, paleontologist, expert on the Hemphillian North American Land Mammal Age, or fossil predators of Florida. I do know a very few of such people. Any comment I would make on this tooth should be taken with a grain of salt. SO, I sent photos to Richard Hulbert, who is a Scientist, Paleontologist and does know things about Florida fossil predators. His response: I decided to add this thread to share the insights in Richard Hulbert's reply with interested forum members. But also to provide a higher level insight to those seeking an identification on TFF for a prized fossil. I get great joy from the act of identifying a fossil, mine or someone else's find. I hold nothing back and many might correctly say I speculate too much. Identification of some fossils ranges from extremely difficult to impossible. Sometimes , it just can not be accomplished by the skills & knowledge we bring to bear. We all need to learn to accept this last point, while treasuring the times TFF identification is possible. Jack

So, I volunteered to help excavate Gomphotheres or Rhinos or something from 6-10 myas under the guidance of Richard Hulbert and the University of Florida's Paleontology department. Yesterday was the last day of the October, 2017 to May 2018 digging season. It is intended to avoid the wet and rainy season. I am pleased that my work would help advance the dig, but I volunteered because I thought that I would enjoy it, and I did. I was given great directions and I arrived at the site just before 10 am. It was on a Horse/Cattle farm out in the middle of rural Florida. It was basically flat land leading to a hole surrounded at various points with Sandbags. Richard distributed volunteers to work on the accomplishment of 4 tasks: Excavate and Plaster Jacket 1 Rhino Adult Skull, 1 Gomph Baby/Juvenile skeleton, 1 Rhino baby skeleton, a femur and humerus from 1 or 2 Gomphs. I was assigned along with John, to assist an experienced volunteer, Susan in working on the baby Rhino skeleton. The Skull had not yet been found. After 2 hours of scrapping and digging around the skeleton mass with a screwdriver, we had the start of discovery trenches. If we found any small bones (usually toe or ankle bones, fish vertebrae, catfish spines, and some turtle shell and bones), we bagged them separately. Had we found anything that might be part of our rhino, we would have left it for inclusion in the plastic jacket) . Here is a photo of Susan and John as we were digging: The Rhino is between them. After about 2 hours, we reached a problem: Both trenches, mine and John's had bones in them: Richard came over to advise. I was trenching on the left, Richard's foot is next to the start of a Gomph bone going UNDER the Rhino skeleton. On the right, John s starting to uncover many bones. Richard suggested that I dig under and around the Gomph bone to see if it ended shortly and whether we had a possibility of extracting it without damage to the Rhino. He suggested that John pursue a slightly different path trying to avoid the bones. Unfortunately, John exposed the baby Rhino's bones above but could not find a clear path and I could not find a way to extract the Gomph bone. Because this was the last day and we had little or no flexibility, Richard decided to repack the baby rhino with sand, then sandbags, then more dirt/clay and finally a tarp to attempt protection from weather and floods in the wet season.. Well, maybe next time. However, the other 3 tasks were completed !!! Here is that other Adult Rhino Skull excavated, trenched, in the process of being plaster jacketed. Wrapped in a plaster jacket. After the plaster dries, Richard used a sledge hammer to drive 2 shovel heads under the Adult Rhino skull, and break thru the underlying sand and clay. Then roll it over into a steel web meshing, still a couple of steel rods thru the web mesh and get 6 pall bearers to carry the remains up the hill to the Museum van. I was one of those 6. We had a nice day, overcast to keep it a little cooler. I left at 3 pm with a 5 hour drive home. The driving rains started at about 4 pm and continued for the rest of the day. All in all, a great weekend.

Over a month ago I mentioned the opportunity to volunteer for a dig with the Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH). In addition to the Thomas Farm sinkhole locality, this year a new opportunity opened up on a small-scale sand mining operation on private property. Some interesting bones were uncovered and the university's vertebrate paleontology department was called to come have a look. They did some initial digging and uncovered rhino and Gomphothere bones with some of them partially articulated. This sounded exciting enough for me to check into. Here's the link to the earlier posting just in case this excitement is infectious: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/60662-volunteer-opportunities-with-the-flmnh/ My wife Tammy and I had planned on going in mid-March but a scheduling conflict for the weekend we'd chosen made us move it up a few weeks. They did most Saturdays but not every Sunday and we wanted to make best use of the weekend so we chose the 4-day block of time from March 3-6. We drove up from South Florida the night before and booked into our hotel in Ocala. Following the well-written directions from Dr. Richard Hulbert, we found the quarry and joined the volunteer team precisely at the appointed time of 10:00am (they work from 10:00am-4:30pm). We were introduced to the layout of the site and picked up our tools: flat-blade screwdriver, small trowel, pill jar for small finds, small plastic bags for finds that come out in pieces (to facilitate reassembly), and a larger bag to contain all of our finds. We decided to work together on a single square meter of the plot and so Dr. Hulbert found us a grid square where we had room to work from both sides. It was a square that was partially leveled and our job was to complete the leveling and recover whatever fossils lay within. Some of the other squares had interesting finds visible in them. One had a plaster-jacketed partial alligator skeleton (with skull) and another that was being worked on had Gomphothere (shovel-tusker elephant relative) bones including several associated ribs. The area we were digging in had been turning up lots of snapping turtle remains and as we progressed in our grid square we found more. Here's a look at the work site:

Exciting times in Florida. The Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH) has announced the volunteer opportunities for 2016. More information can be found directly from their website: http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/vertpaleo/volunteering/field/ This year the Thomas Farm site will have a limited opportunity for field work--April 4-8 which is a Monday-Friday (no weekends). The reason for the minimal field work at Thomas Farm is actually for a good reason--they are focused on a brand new site! A new fossil site (on private property) southwest of Gainesville near the town of Williston is showing signs of being spectacular. Unlike the random disarticulated finds at the Thomas Farm sinkhole, the new site seems to contain some associated skeletons. They have already found gomphothere and rhino and there have been signs of llama, horse, and some carnivores. Additionally, there is a high diversity of turtles (6 species so far) as well as fish and gators. The sign-up for Thomas Farm won't be till early March but the extended field season at the new site is already underway (started last Saturday). The link above contains an application form with the schedule of days that they are digging at this new site. If you've got the opportunity and interest to see a brand new site as it is uncovered, don't miss this opportunity--you'll regret it later if you do. I encourage any TFF members looking for a rewarding volunteer experience to give this a try. If you do, you are, of course, obligated to take lots of cool photos and post a trip report here. I'm going to try to make time for the short Thomas Farm week and I've already put in for a block of time in mid-March at the new site. If I have the time I'll try to make it up for a second trip to the new site before the season is over on May 13. Don't delay--volunteer opportunities to work side-by-side with experts like Dr. Richard Hulbert don't come along every day. [End of infomercial] Cheers. -Ken