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Out yesterday hunting in an area that has taken a lot of hunting pressure.. Why? because it is easier to get there which is why there has been hunting pressure. During the day a couple of groups came by. The 1st question by the first group was "Did we know that there were Alligators sometimes spotted in this section of the river?". The 1st question by the 2nd group was " Were we afraid of the Alligators?" I recognized that they were trying to warn us and just smiled. There is a movie in which Anthony Hopkins asks a question " Why is the rabbit unafraid ?" Here were my finds of the day. We recently had the water depth go down so the bottom of the river is more accessible. Still we moved 2-3 times before finding some gravel that contains fossils. The depth there was about 5 feet, slightly above my chest. As @Balance said in a recent post, I believe in hunting the deep spots. Not a lot for digging 5 or 6 hours, but more than enough to satisfy me. The ones I know... 1) Holmesina osteoderms.. I like finding these , especially when in good shape. Here is an artist rendition of what Holmesina looked like. The largest ones weighed 500-600 pounds. 2) Fish Articular ... I would not have recognized this , except 2 weeks ago I found what I thought was an ear bone , but turned out to be a fish Articular... Looking at the picture, I would guess this articular was from the right side jaw... 3) Turtle Osteoderm... We used to call these the "Peace Sign" . I guess vendors still do and sell on the Internet under that name... No Genus, no species, just turtle. They also do not identify the specific location in the carapace. I am hopeful that @Plantguy or @digit might have some insights here. 4) Barnacle. I just saw an identification by @Al Dente on Goose barnacle. I wonder if this is also a goose barnacle 60 miles from Salt water. 5) Deer tines.. I found these 2 in the same sieve and for a while was thinking that might be my best find of the day... I have found numerous deer tines, mostly they look like the top one which I think is from a yearling. What is it with the bumps on the 2nd tine ? Is this just a tip broken off a much fuller rack of an adult male ? OR Does it indicate a different species of deer ? or can these bumps appear on a yearling tine ? 6th) My find of the day Maybe 4-5 years ago , I became interested in the Symphyseals of Sharks and attempted to find photos of symphyseals of sharks I might find in Florida !!. In my searches, I ran across this photo from Fossilguy.. Correction: Hemipristis does not have Symphyseals, just Parasymphyseals It turned out that I has lots of those Parasymphyseals from the lower jaw and (maybe) ?? a very few broken and worn versions of the Parasymphyseals from the upper jaw. Nothing improved over the last 5 years, On Easter Sunday, I got a present !!!!. This one will get its own Riker... just so I do not lose it... I had a great day... Lots of exercise, lots of sunshine with a couple of friends, excellent finds. I hope you had a nice day also. Jack

Out hunting yesterday, Sun shining with friends and my friends were finding lots more than I.. it happens. However, I always find somethings interesting. An Equus tooth showing traverse HSBs Posterior end of a dolphin jaw Some Galeocerdo mayumbensis, which I guess ages the site as Miocene... and just before it fell thru my sieve.. captured this Bull ? or Dusky tooth... So, now for the Fossil ID requests.. First, a very small Osteoderm... I found at least 2 Holmesina osteoderms in the group photo above, but this one seems to me not to be armadillo. This is about an inch !!! but screams Glyptodont to me.. I would like to hear from those who have found glyptodon osteoderms, what they think about this one. If consensus is Glyptodont, where on the carapace does this small osteoderm appear ? and the 2nd ID request.. Many know that I like to find ear bones, periotics, petrosals, bulla, whatever.. Is the white blob on the left edge of the photo an ear bone or just a blob of mud concretion... I will provide some additional photos to help evaluation. To me, it seems like skull material around a periotic/petrosal... I was thinking 1/2 of a dugong periotic, but I imagine that @Harry Pristis or @Plantguy have actually found those and may be able to bring some light on the topic.

Below is an armadillo scute from Venice Beach in Florida, stated by the seller to have belonged to a Glyptotherium floridanum. However, it is my understanding that the scutes of another large Pleistocene armadillo, Holmesina, are also rather common in Florida, and the scute does look a lot like scutes identified as having belonged to the latter. Thanks in advance for any proposed ID's Othniel

I collect armadillo fossils. All of my fossils have been purchased and I have been able to identify most of them using the internet. The attached photos are from bones I purchased labeled Holmesina carpals. Both seem to be the same bone, one from holmesina septentrionalis and one from holmesina floridanus (my guess). They are both river finds from Northern Florida, USA. I have not been able to find a photo or diagram showing this bone. Does anyone have a photo or diagram showing this bones position in the skeleton. If these bones are not from the Holmesina genus, I would like to know that also.

I believe this is a Holmesina osteoderm (my first), but please correct me if you think otherwise. From a north Florida river. Thanks! -Zach

Fun trip to the North Sulphur River Texas. I really like the giant coprolite and Holmesina armadillo scute. @GeschWhat

Over the past few years, I have been collecting(purchasing) various bones of the giant armadillo, Holmesina septentrionalis from the internet. My goal is to eventually build an entire skeleton. Since I live in Colorado, purchasing bones is my only choice. Recently I purchased a left astragalus bone and decided to try and create a right astragalus with my 3d printer. Using my iPhone, I took about 50 pictures of the bone at various angles against a white background. Using Agisoft Metashape and Meshmixer software, I was able to create a 3d image of the bone. This took some trial and error. YouTube instructional videos were very helpful. The 3d image was then loaded into Cura software and printed on my Ender 3 Pro printer. See image of the final painted bone. On the left is the original bone, on the right is the new 3D printed bone.

Location: South Texas Found: Gravel, sand, low water Estimated time: Pleistocene I've been searching through info on scutes, osteoderms, reptile fossils, and types of turtle shell and plastron parts because we seem to have a lot of those in our area, but I'm having a hard time telling the difference. These are my best guesses, and I'm hoping someone can educate me on the differences. FRAG 1--I think this is a large turtle/tortoise scute fragment, but I'm not sure how to tell the difference between neural, costal, central, etc. FRAG 2--I believe this is an osteoderm (because it looks like skin instead of part of a shell?), but I'm not sure the type. Maybe alligator? FRAG 3--My husband thought this may just be a rock, but I thought it looked like a fossilized shell plate of a turtle. It's relatively thin. We see a lot of these on the river. FRAG 4--This looked like another osteoderm to me because it has a similar texture on top to Frag2. But it's much thinner and the edges are more defined. Any info would be a big help! Thank you. --Brandy

I've posted this fossil a few times on the forum to mixed results, lacking a definitive answer. Through some more in depth internet searching I now believe this fossil which I found back in February of 2018 on the Peace River in Florida is a worn osteoderm belonging to Holmesina or a close relative. I want to see if others agree with this idea. It's about 2.5 cm across.

The North Sulphur River was picked over but I still managed to have some good finds.

I hit my honey hole at Post Oak Creek Texas again. I found a few good Ptychodus teeth, another crustacean and my first giant armadillo scute. it was worth the 5 hr round trip.

After a long long wait, the periodic heavy rains that have repeatedly pushed the water level of the Peace River up and out of range for Florida fossil hunters, our "dry season" is finally starting to act like the non-rainy part of our year. Tammy and I got out two weekends ago with a group of SCUBAnauts from the Tampa/St. Pete area. While checking the levels right before that trip, I visited one of my favorite spots along the river to see if it would be accessible for the group. The water two weeks ago was nearly a foot higher than at present but even with the higher level the locality worked for the group (11 canoes of kids and their accompanying adults). I like this site because it has more chunky gravel which results (on rare occasions) in finding larger items. I've pulled substantial chunks of mammoth molar from this site several years ago--as well as a gold wedding band (no inscription) and a gold tie tack (no Jimmy Hoffa jokes, please). The main draw though is dugong. Though fossil hunters who've spent any amount of time on the Peace generally have their share of the solid rib bones from these cousins of our modern-day manatee, newbies to the concept of fossil hunting in Florida never fail to enjoy these large and substantial items. Tammy and I went back this weekend without the crowd of two dozen we were guiding on the river at the end of March. We went on a Sunday and the river was reasonably quiet and peaceful. We met another couple on the bus ride up to the put-in and gave them some tips on hunting the river as it was their first time. They were the recipients of many fossils and fraglodons that (while interesting) would probably would have either ended back in the river or handed out to kids in passing canoes. I was prospecting around my "dugong" site (that's what it is called in my GPS ) and could feel with my feet the little pits and piles of chunky rubble left over from our last visit stripping out countless dozens of dugong ribs now scattered in the nascent collections of those we took down the river on our previous visit. Most of the site is still too deep to get to even with the river 10" lower than last time. The air and water temps were much more pleasant than last time and it didn't take as much motivation to walk into chest-deep water. I dug for about 4 hours and had little to show for it other than a bag of nice specimens of dugong ribs (to reload my "paleo paperweight" gifting stockpile). After a break back at the canoe for a drink and some more salty snacks, I ventured off in the direction where I used to dig but which was now probably too deep to dig. En route to that spot I passed a rise in the bottom that was so steep that it looked like I was walking up submerged steps till I was only thigh deep in the river. My trusty probe--which I carry like a walking cane, probing the sand with each step to test the subsurface composition of the river bottom--detected the delightful crunchy sound indicating some substantial gravel deposits not far below the sandy covering along the bottom. I did a test screen from this spot and was rewarded with a nice little Whitetail Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) molar. These are not as common (in my experience) as the Equus horse molars that are occasional finds in the Peace. This one came complete with a reasonable portion of the roots intact and will bolster my meager number of these in my collection. A few screens later would end up bringing in my trip-makers and the high point of the afternoon. While picking through the contents of that screen I spotted the very distinctive shape of a peg-like tooth from a member of the order Xenarthra ("strange joint") aka Edentata ("toothless"). I have just a few similar but larger teeth from ground sloths which are highly valued by Florida collectors. A few years back I found a similar but smaller peg tooth that turned to be from the armadillo Holmesina floridanus. I assumed this tooth might be from a larger individual but was pleased to learn more in a quick response to my query from Dr. Richard Hulbert from the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville, FL. Richard confirmed that the peg tooth was from a Holmesina but that it was from the larger (2 meter long) species, Holmesina septentrionalis, that roamed Florida from the middle to late Pleistocene (500,000 to 11,000 years ago). The smaller H. floridanus that preceded it was in Florida from the late Pliocene to the early Pleistocene (2.5-1.5 mya). Contained in that screen was a very oddly shaped bone with curved parts and flat articulating surfaces. I assumed this was one of those odd bones in the leg like the navicular bone that I hear about but haven't seen enough examples of to fully understand or recognize. Richard commented that, the odd-shape bone that appeared in the same sifting screen was, coincidentally, from the same species (H. septentrionalis) and that it was an astragalus which articulates with the navicular so I get points for being close. Then he added something that made my whole morning: This is actually a rare find, especially in the southern half of Florida, for which we do not have a single H. septentrionalis astragalus in our collection. Please consider donating it. I quickly replied that I'd set this aside and would bring it up with me next time I visit Gainesville (where Tammy and I are looking for our next house). You can bet I'll be keen to get back up to the Peace to see if any other Holmesina bits might be hiding in the gravel nearby. These two items are likely not associated and it was probably just luck that I'd come across two very different items from the same rare species in a single sifting screen. If the two pieces were closely related in the skeletal structure I'd believe that they might from the same individual but I believe this is probably just a happy coincidence. A couple more hours of digging in the same area turned up no further identifiable bits from this species but you can be certain that I'll devote some extra effort to that spot next time on the river. Enjoy the wrinkly finger tips in the in-river photos below. Cheers. -Ken