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My wife and I managed to make one last trip to the Peace River on the last weekend of 2013 to see if the river had any belated Christmas presents for us. We worked a bit further upstream from where we normally hunt and were rewarded with some nice finds for our efforts. It was overcast and the temps were in the upper 70s so the conditions were perfect for two long days of shoveling and sifting. I've been in the river in March when the (air) temps barely broke 50 and standing in the water all day took perseverance (and a smidgen of insanity). I've also been hunting toward the end of the dry season in late May or June when you seem to spend most of your time re-applying sunscreen and hydrating yourself so you won't pass out and risk becoming part of the fossil fauna in the future. This weekend, though, was quite pleasant (I did get sprinkled upon several times on Sunday but as I was half submerged it really didn't matter much). The largest find of the day was huge vertebra which I'm thinking might be proboscidean rather than cetacean. At roughly 5"x4.5" by about 3" thick all I know is that it came from something bigger than a bread box. We found lots of small fragments of mammoth tooth in the area but I hesitate to say that any of that is associated in any way with the vertebra. I'm hoping some experts here on the forum might steer me in the appropriate direction for a possible ID on this monster paper weight. One of the things I love about spending a weekend wading through the Peace River sifting through the gravel is that you never know what you will find. The fact that the sea level has changed through the ages means that the Bone Valley fossil bed region has repeatedly been: a high and dry plain inhabited by large mammals, a swampy wetland with its accompanying gators and turtles, and a shallow marine environment with dugongs and fishes (including many shark species, most notably the megalodon). Because you are sifting through gravel from beds that have mixed fossils from all these different ages means that you can pull a smorgasbord assortment of fossils from all these time periods in a single sifting screen. This unpredictability is a major part of the charm for me and a large part of the reason the river calls to me in the dry season when conditions are right. We scored pretty well on the mammal front this time. In addition to the huge vertebra we found what appears to be a deer astragalus (ankle bone) as well as some pieces of what look like deer antler. We had many fragments of different species of horse molar but as I have a few nice specimens already in my collection I tend to leave these behind. We did find one molar that was mostly intact which I kept mainly for this trip report. We scored nicely on horse incisors this time adding a few nice specimens to my collection. Another small fragment we kept just to see if we could identify it is likely part of a bison or camel molar but we may never get a confirmed ID on such a small piece. The mammal tooth of the day though was a sloth molar (the first identifiable sloth fossil we've ever found). This was found a few minutes after the giant vertebra and soon eclipsed that find (bigger is not always better). In addition to the mammals we scored some nice gator teeth including a large stout one measuring about 1.25" in length. There were lots of pieces of turtle carapace that came up in our sifting screen but I've only kept in my collection a few distinctive pieces that you can show to somebody and they can immediately identify as turtle shell. The ones we turned up are still in the river for others to try to find--catch-and-release fossil style. We did pretty good on the marine fossil front as well. In addition to the usual assortment of small (even tiny) shark teeth I did turn-up one of the smallest meg teeth I've ever found. This little guy is around 1.3" long but is a perfect little gem with nice coloration which will join the few larger teeth that I've pulled from the Peace in a place of honor among its larger kin. I've long since stopped collecting ray tooth plates and tail barbs (unless they are nicely preserved intact specimens) but I have a fondness for the dermal scutes/denticles (spines or thorns). We found two interestingly shaped ones on this trip. I saved a couple of pufferfish mouth plates as they were reasonably intact as well as a nice fish bone and (sadly) a partial fish vertebra. I also kept what appears to be a partial sawfish rostral tooth as I don't have many of these in my collection yet. Something (hopefully) new for me on the marine front is what appears to me to be part of a crab claw tip. It has a rough surface and a slightly hooked tip but as I haven't seen one up close before this may be the result of an overactive imagination. All in all a great way to end 2013 and though the year is almost over the fossil hunting season is just getting underway on the Peace River. I've been lurking on this forum for some time, drooling over the trip reports of others and trying to learn about fossils from the posts on this forum and I thought it high time I joined the fray and posted something of my own. Cheers. -Ken