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I went fossil hunting at the North Sulfur River (NSR) in mid December with @believerjoe and Cathleen, @cgmck a local fossil hunting buddy of mine who is a semi-retired environmental geologist.. I’d been trying to work out a time to go hunting with Joe for close to 6 weeks. He had extended the offered sometime after I had met him at the Ladonia Fossil Day event on October 20th. He offered to take me to teach me how to spot mosasaur and bone material in the NSR. We are both on the Dallas Paleontological Society Facebook group page and crossed paths on there quite frequently so we were acquitted on there and on TFF. We set 12/15/18 as the tentative date, but rain kept threatening to delay our hunt. Up until Friday evening, 12/14 I wasn’t sure we were going to be able to hunt. If the water was too deep it would be pretty murky, making it hard to spot fossils. Saturday dawned bright, clear and chilly. Water levels were huntable. It would be in the mid 30s when we were to meet at 8:00. We would be walking through a lot of water. I have rubber boots I usually wear in the wet and cold weather in creeks, but I knew the water would be high. I’ve hunted the river when the water was high like this and it prevented me from going up the river and creeks I wanted to go up. So I opted to buy myself a pair of hip waders before the trip. I found these for $25! They were 50%. The shoe size is a man’s size 7. They said they ran big for men. Men’s shoe size 10 is bigger than women’s 10 so I took the risk and they fit fine. They were comfortable and worked great. Anyway, I packed my hunting gear in my car and then a backpack with another pair of socks to keep my feet warmer when walking in the cold water, extra leggings, gloves and hat to put on once I got there. I didn’t do my hair. I was planning on wearing the hat. I threw my favorite ball cap in the pack too. When I got there I realized I’d left my backpack with the extra clothing for warmth at home! I was going to be a bit chilly. Especially my feet. My boots aren’t insulated. My hair was going to be all over the place with the wind. We met at the Ladonia Fossil Park and then transferred our stuff to Joe’s pickup truck. Joe drove us to a place he likes to hunt. We got out, put on our gear and walked down into the creek. Joe didn’t think the water was going to be too deep in the creek so I opted to wear just my boots rather than the waders. First step into the creek there was a rudist fragment that Joe pointed out. It was kind of big and we were going to be walking a long way. So, I opted to leave the rudist there. I walked maybe 30 feet and found a piece of turtle shell. Yay! My first piece of Texas turtle shell. I’ve found turtle shell elsewhere, but it was Miocene. The one on the right is the one I found. Joe found the other piece and let me have it. We walked on up the creek and Joe kept pointing out mosy verts here and there. I found one on my own the whole trip on the second leg of this creek hunt. He’d spot them from 30 feet away half covered. It was impressive how he could see them so far off mixed in with all the other rocks and gravel. Some were pretty little too. I think maybe 6 or 7 mosasaur vertebra were found total. Cathleen has always had higher fossil quality standards than I do so she turned all, but one of the vertebra down. She took the best one home. The water was pretty deep and cloudy so it limited finding fossils considerably. There were numerous places we came to where the water was fairly deep. Joe’s boots came almost to his knees, but mine were maybe 10 inches tall. So, we had to walk carefully as times to find where the water was more shallow so that I could cross or proceed up the creek. There were many places where there was no gravel in the creek and the bottom was the typical slick gray shale of the Ozan. We all had walking sticks, which helped considerably, especially with the mud. When you hit the mud sometimes you don’t know if it is safe or how far you will sink. Walking sticks served as a measuring stick for mud depth. Which reminds me that I need to put a mark on my walking stick for boot height and water depth. We came to a few places that we tried to walk through and sunk maybe 10 inches max, which isn’t too bad by NSR standards. Other places we avoided and went around. This is Joe and Cathleen in the creek. See the large blocks of stone in the creek. Well, I had been seeing stone like this in the river since I have been hunting it, but I had never known the source. Come to find out it was imported stone to help with erosion control. This is a piece of it up close. It is a sandstone type material. Now I know it isn't from the river. I have been wondering all this time where this formation was, because nothing in the description of the formations in the area say anything about this type of stone. So, it has been a complete mystery all this time to me. The mystery is now solved. We hiked on up the creek for a while without event or really finding much of anything. I was finding petrified wood left and right. The pieces in this feeder creek were, in general, larger than what I usually find in the river. Here is some of the pet wood I found. These are my favorite pieces. The first one actually looks like it has a stain on it. You can see the sharp peak pointing to the left. The second has lots of texture and contrast in color. The third is a nice deep, brick red that you can't tell from the pic. I could be mistaken about the last piece, but I think it may be a piece of palm root wood. As I walked along I came to a piece of what I initially thought was petrified wood, but as I looked at it I realized it was not petrified wood. I thought it looked like a fish tail, but I had never found fish fossils in the NSR area. Joe came over and he initially thought it was pet wood too, but then he turned it and said “Wait a minute, that is a piece of fish. “ Woohoo!!! I was quite excited and happy about that find. I think it was Anthony Maltese who told me he thought it was "probably a Pachyrhizodus or a Plethodid based on the segmentation of the fin rays (top left of the picture)". I think he may be @-AnThOnY- on here, but I could be wrong. We walked on and found a few more vertebra and then we came to a place where the water was too deep for Joe and I to cross. I do not mind getting wet, but when it is around 40 degrees I prefer to stay dry. At that point we had been walking for a little over 2 hours. We turned around and headed back. The walk back went a bit quicker. Maybe 1/3 of the way back we were walking in part of the creek we did not walk when going in. The shale was not flat on the creek bottom, but at an angle, slanting towards the center of the creek and deeper water. I stepped just wrong on it and down I went. As I was going down, I tried to ensure that I fell in more shallow water and that I didn’t flood my boots. Somehow I managed to be reasonably successful in my attempt. I landed in a sitting position in maybe an inch or so of water with my knees bent so very little water got in my boot. Still my back side and upper thighs got wet. I stood up and began to attempt to slide forward on the shale so as to not fall again. Cathleen was right in front of me. Before I made two steps she went down too. She was wearing full waders that came up to her torso, but she was not quite as lucky. Water got into her waders and when she stood up she could feel the icy water flow all the way down her back, then down into her boots. It was in the low 40s now so it had warmed a little, but it was not a pleasant feeling to be wet in 40 degree weather, but we toughed it out. It was when she stood that we realized that we had not walked this side of the creek on the way in. We immediately crossed the creek to get to less slippery ground. We made it back to our entry point. It was almost noon. Cathleen said she needed to drive back home for something planned with family. Joe drove us back to our cars. I emptied my pack, which was full of petrified wood mostly. Then Joe and I drove back out to the creek. I put on my waders at this point. We headed down stream to continue looking for mosasaur material. I found one little very beat up vert, but I also found several pieces of Pleistocene bone and a horse tooth. The horse tooth is likely modern, though there are not many horses in the NSR area so it could be Pleistocene. Weird thing about a lot of Pleistocene bones in Texas is that many of them are not fully mineralized and so they are fairly soft and light in color and appear modern. So it is hard to tell if something is modern or Pleistocene. Even the mammoth bones in Waco are not mineralized for the most part and so they are fairly fragile, white and look like modern bones in texture. Joe and I proceeded down the creek. I was walking on the bank on one side of the creek and he was walking in the water in the creek. I came to some deep mud and contemplated whether I should back track or attempt to make my way through it. Ahead of me the mud got much deeper. I decided I better make a 90 degree turn and cross over to the other side. I had my walking stick with me and tested the mud to make sure I would bottom out rather than keep sinking. The mud stopped and hit creek bottom at a little over 2 feet deep, up past my knees a ways. I figured I’d be OK. I went ahead and walked through it down into the water. It was tough pulling my legs out, but I managed OK until I was in the water. I was trying to balance on one foot and with my walking stick so I didn’t fall over into the water. I’d managed a few steps, but then I was having trouble pulling my foot out of one spot. Joe came over and took my hand to pull me out and hopefully keep me from falling down in the water as I pulled out of the mud. I made it out successfully with Joe’s help. If I had been alone I am not sure I would have taken the risk. Not with the water being so cold. It was icy cold. It wasn’t the worst mud I have encountered, but it was some serious mud. We moved along without event after that. I had told Joe I wanted at least one hour to hunt the red zone before I left the NSR. So after a bit we turned around and headed back. Joe is not a fan of the red zone. He says the preservation of mosasaur material there is not very good there. I have not found mosasaur material there, but it is true that a lot of red zone material has either pyrite or gypsum. Pyrite is the most common. If iron was present in the fossilization process, frequently the fossils develop pyrite disease when exposed to the air and they can disintegrate into dust. I am a fan of the red zone, because that is where some of the best ammonites come from. We made it out of the creek and Joe drove back to the fossil park. It was about 3:00. These are the finds from the creek. The long thin light one is a metapodial from something like a deer or the likes. I am not sure about the others. The horse incisor, from a young horse is at the bottom middle. These are the mosasaur verts and turtle bone that Joe pointed out. The horse tooth is there to prop the one vert up. I think I may have connected another piece to the NSR puzzle. See the white calcium layer on the vert on the far left? It is common to see this on fossils. I could be wrong, but I have come to believe that fossils with this white layer most likely come from the Roxton formation. My fish piece has the same stuff on it. I don't think I put my little worn vert in one of these. I will post is in my overall picture at the end. I will be back in a bit with the trip to the red zone. I want to thank Joe for being so kind as to take me hunting so I can learn from him. I hope we can go hunting again sometime so I can learn more. Joe is the mosy guy. I am the ammonite girl. So, it was helpful to hunt with him to broaden my knowledge.

Okay, in our area we aren't supposed to have Mesozoic layers due to an unconformity....but...is this a rudist?