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7 feet at Zolfo makes it very difficult (dangerous) to hunt the Peace River. I just got off the phone with my fossil hunting partner. Likely we'll go Monday trying those shallow spots we marked during season. That is because we are more stubborn than Bighorns. Makes me think back to Tuesday. We tried a location that has produced some miocene finds, but we had been there many previous times, and ignoring small teeth, there were few finds. Might be a croc tooth, but I would not argue if someone said gator. The reason I made this a FossilID thread This fat rooted small tipped dolphin tooth are rare.. My first fragment at 23 mm length and only 50% complete. My friend @jcbshark found an associated group of similar but larger teeth 3 years ago, but I know of no other examples from the US Eastern coast. Requesting examples and comments on fat rooted small dolphin teeth. @Al Dente @MarcoSr @Boesse

This dolomite stone was discovered near Chasm Creek, central Arizona. It appears to have the fossilized impressions of raindrops splashing into a fine muddy surface. The stone seems to be dolomitic, as HCl causes a low fizz, unlike typical limestone's more energetic fizzing. Most of the "splashes" have the central "rebound" splash seen in my high-speed imagery of water droplets. That central rebound appears to have been broken off over time. Does my assumption that this is a somehow frozen-in-time rain shower make sense?

Hello Was out fossil hunting at Lavernock this past week. It rained a lot so couldn't stay for very long. I never really take my phone on fossil hunts but will try to get some pictures of the surrounding area next time. Here are some of my favourite finds! 1. Jumble of ichthyosaur bones. 2. Ichthyosaur rib 3. Not really sure, probably ichthyosaur rib 4. Gastropod my sister found I tried prepping the ichthyosaur rib but it didn't go too well. At least its still intact.

Headed back to the Peace River yesterday after a 17 day absence. Water level and flow were a bit higher than I would have liked due to recent rainfall. I just couldn't stay away any longer! When I started the journey to the river the weather was cool and partly cloudy. Half way there I ran into light rain and fog and began to worry I had made a bad choice to make the trip (rain prediction was 50%). When I got to the river I had to prep the kayak under cover as the rain was coming down heavily. It tapered off as I donned my wetsuit and I set out under cloudy skies. Had almost made it to my planned hunting spot when the skies opened again with a downpour that forced me to hug the bank and hide under some low branches. It stopped raining after about 10 minutes and I continued on. After beaching the kayak I made my usual bank inspection. I reached down at one point and pulled up a handful of gravel from a crevice between some roots. Discovered a nice 1" Tiger shark tooth in my hand to start the day! Worked the area for the rest of the morning and pulled up another four tigers and a 1 3/4" partial Meg along with several other misc teeth. At one point a very large vulture landed on a log in the river within 30' of where I was digging. It sat there for about 15 minutes. It was unusual for it to be so close, and made me wonder if it thought I was it's next meal! Later, after it had left I circled over near where it had been sitting to work the area and finally noticed what the vulture was really interested in. There was a dead alligator, about a 10 footer, wedged belly up under an adjacent log. The alligator was covered with flies and bloated so its true size was hard to determine, but I could see it had some big feet with huge claws! Needless to say, I moved a bit away from the area to continue digging. Came up with some mammoth teeth fragments and a vertebra in the afternoon. Vert is 2" x 1 3/4" x 1 1/2". I will post it separately in the Fossil ID section once I have better photos in hopes of a possible id. attached are photos of the best finds of the day. No photo of the alligator as I was afraid I would drop the phone in the river! It also was not very photogenic.

I have a mathematics question that is tangentially related to fossil collecting. How do you figure out the total chance of rain during a collecting trip using the weather service rain predictions (should I bring my umbrella)? Can you give a general formula? Let us say that you are going on a three day trip with the following precipitation chances of measurable rain (chance of rain for any geographical point in forecast area) for each day: Friday 10%; Saturday 20% and Sunday 30%. What is the combined probability, Friday through Sunday, that it will rain at least once? Is rain likely? Assume that chance of rain for any period is independent of each other. I know that the total chance is at least as high as the highest chance for one day: 30%. It is lower than adding 10, 20 and 30 equals 60%. What is the % answer and the general formula? Thanks, John EDIT. I found a website post below with a similar question: There is a 20% chance of rain each day for 5 days; the chance of rain during the whole period is 67%. I did solve the problem correctly before I found website below, I think. Solve the problem by using the chance that it is not going to rain each day in decimal form: .9 x .8 x .7 = .504 or 50.4% chance that it is not going to rain. Therefore there is a 49.6 % chance of rain. Bring an umbrella. https://www.theweatherprediction.com/habyhints/266/ PRECIPITATION PROBABILITY BRAIN TEASER METEOROLOGIST JEFF HABY A broadcast meteorologist gives the following forecast: Monday: 20% chance of rain Tuesday: 20% chance of rain Wednesday: 20% chance of rain Thursday: 20% chance of rain Friday: 20% chance of rain A viewer is having a week long outdoor event that lasts from Monday through Friday. Monday morning the viewer asks the broadcast meteorologist what the chance for rain is for the entire week as a whole. In other words the viewer wants to know what the chance is it will rain on either Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. What is the answer? Assume the probability of precipitation (POP) is independent for each day and the forecasted POP does not vary with time. SOLUTION: This situation represents the probability of rain within a 5 day period given at the beginning of the week and assumes each day is an independent probability. Two of the answer choices can be eliminated through applicable logic. It is known the probability of rain during the week is greater than 20% since each day has at least a 20% chance. It is also known the probability can not be 100% because the possibility is clearly evident that it might not rain at all during the week. A probability for this case is solved by multiplying the probability it will not rain each day and subtract this from 100%. The left over value is the chance that is will rain during the week. The chance of no rain each day is 80%. Thus the chance for no rain each day put together is: 0.8 * 0.8 * 0.8 * 0.8 * 0.8 = 0.33 or 33%. Since the chance for no rain is 33%, the chance for rain is 100% - 33% = 67%. (1 - 0.8^5) = 1 - 0.33 = 0.67 * 100% = 67% Thus, there is a 67% chance (or a 2 in 3 chance) that the viewer will have rain sometime during the week.

You guys sick of my threads yet? Sorry, there’s a lot more to come. Here is an interesting surface which features may be purely natural erosion or a fossil imprint. Coral maybe? Almost looks like fossil rain drops, eh? Any clue if it’s organic in origin? From northern Illinois.

It's been about a month now since I went on my last hunt, due to snow and cold weather. There's also nothing to do in the workshop since I finished up my last commision work a couple of weeks ago. All that was left was to do some dusting, so I was starting to get a bit depressed. The weather was warming up a bit, so I got in touch with a friend yesterday who lives close to the Wutach and he told me that the snow was pretty well gone for the time being. I grabbed the bull by the horns this morning, threw an extra spade into the car and took off to my favorite locality. On the way there it started to rain, which then turned into sleet, but I decided nevertheless to keep on going. It was still snowing a bit when I got there and in the woods the dampness was dripping from the trees, but it wasn't all that bad and I had packed myself up pretty good, so the dampness wasn't about to penetrate my protective clothing. The spade was for the cubic meter of overburden which I knew I was going to have to remove in order to expose the fossiliferous blocks I was hoping had a few nice surprises in store for me. I ended up slinging mud for about 3 hours before I could get to work on the blocks, and that took another 3 hours, 2 of which were in the dark with my headlamp on. Why does the sun go down so early in winter? Unfortunately nothing larger than 10cm. came out this time, but I'm pretty sure there are some nice ones there anyway. Here's the booty. Hope to get down to some serious prepping tomorrow.

Well, it looks like the rainy season is finally coming. Went to Brownville today, hiked down river from the boatramp to where those houses overlook the river, found a bison tooth, various shark teeth and a few good mammoth frags. I was working on a hole in knee deep water, saw about a 30 pound turtle, then i'm digging look down next to my leg and see a huge fish, I came up outta that hole! So I go back up near the houses and start a new hole in shallower water. So I'm digging away, I look up and see a HUGE dog about 8 ft away just looking at me, not growling not barking so far so good! Now he starts approaching me, I put my digging basket (big) between his massive head and me, but he is determined to sniff me, so I lower the basket and he smells behind me. Off he trots, so I go to walk back to my bike at the park. This dog is waiting (so it seemed) I try going in deeper water the dog swims (of course) I have no choice but to pass him. Fortunately, for me he just wanted petted. At least no gators! I was out Sunday, this recent rain bouht it up about 6 inches. We have had a long season, it looks like it is coming to a close. Well, heres to really high water and a good dry season next year! Nice puppy! Luckily!

I checked the National Weather Service website to check water levels for the Sulphur River near Cooper 19/24 bridge thanks to the link that sward was kind enough to pass along to me ( http://water.weather.gov/ahps2/river.php?wfo=fwd&wfoid=18693&riverid=203577&pt%5B%5D=143755&allpoints=143755&data%5B%5D=all ) and it looks like the water level rose to just over 7 feet after the storms and has come back down to just under 2 feet as of this morning. I've been told that the river changes dramatically after each heavy rain so I wanted to know if anyone had a chance to check it out yet. I was thinking about heading out there this weekend but am considering waiting until next week so some of the mud has a chance to dry up. I've only been there twice, but one of those trips was about four days after a fairly light rain and certain parts of the river were still like quicksand. You could make it through, but then it was like having cinder blocks for boots from all the caked on mud. In my previous two trips I spent most of my time sifting (looking for shark teeth...haven't got one yet) and found some pretty good stuff, but I think on my next trip I want to just take a really slow hike from east to west and see what I can find covering more ground. So I'm wondering if anyone's been out there and if so; how has the mud effected walking ability, has the recent rain/rise in water level mixed up the gravel beds very much, and should I go this weekend to beat the rush or wait till next weekend when things have dried out some? Thanks everyone...and especially sward for the great link -Mark

It has been a great season on the Peace River. I was out yesterday just below the Powerline at Brownsville and planned on searching above Wauchula tomorrow. So much for plans -- We were caught in 2 thunderstorms and the river went up 4 feet at Payne Creek and 6 feet at Zolfo Springs starting in late afternoon. SInce I do not scuba dive, it looks like the season is closing and I, with many others, am about to go into withdrawal until November. YIKES!!!!!! Added a couple of Photos from better times.