Search the Community

Sometimes I am chasing plentiful and unusual fossil in difficult locations as far as I can get from other fossil hunters. Once in a while, I return to those thrilling days of yesterday year, hunting what are now heavily hunted areas of the Peace River between Arcadia and Bowling Green. A little while back I did that... returning to old hunting grounds seeing what changes had occurred. I had a wet suit on, it was cool but sunny. There were few people that day on the location I chose. The gravel was still there, just not containing too many fossils. I was either digging deep through layers of unproductive gravel or searching for thin layers of gravel rolled downstream by the summer floods or looking for places where the summer flood moved sand off deeper layers of gravel. The only one that "worked" this day was the 1st.... dig deep. Get down under the gravel easy to dig. and that idea was semi_successful The finds of an 8 hour day of digging... . There were some 30-40 additional small unbroken teeth. I keep the smallest teeth for a collector friend and my daughter get the less common Megs, Hemis,Tigers, etc. I will keep and maybe reuse the fishing lure, replacing the hook. This is far less than I used to find 8-10 years ago, and it may not seem like much for 8 hours on the rock pile, but I am easily pleased. Among other items: 1) Concretions containing an oyster and an echinoid, 2) A Gyypdont tail Osteoderm, relatively rare find 3) 2 Turtle spurs/foot pads, 4) A couple of large fish "ballast" bones 5) A Equus earbone 6) Some distressed Megs 7) A fish vert that may be modern 8) 3 Dolphin ear bones in bad shape 9) some sawfish rostral teeth 10) A dolphin jaw bone But what about the identifications? Can @Al Dente or @Sacha comment on whether this is an Abertella ? I have found a number of individual Drum fish teeth in various bone valley locations.At 16 mm in diameter, is this one of them. My next largest one is half this size. Comment on the size of drum fish teeth, and whether they have reduced in size since the Pliocene. Finally, a fossil I thought I recognized, but now not so sure.... certainly unusual, but Sloth does not have enamel. So, a sunny and cool day, birds were singing, some interesting finds.... you can go back to visit places associated with good memories, and sometimes make a new one.