Search the Community

I went hunting yesterday. My hunting partner wanted to return to a place that never ran out of gravel, and had numerous great fossils. At least the last time we were there 4 years ago... Yesterday, it was more difficult. It seemed that many had discovered this place and it is pretty close to a Peace River access bridge. In this group short where I have removed the 100s of small shark teeth (broken and whole) it seems there is little of interest, but hold any judgements... I kept a couple of bones because I wanted to use them as puzzles to solve... Some interesting finds: This Hemi is about as sweet as any of these get with black on black Peace River coloration... ID #1) How about a sliver of enamel.... The brownish area on the bottom photo implies Mammoth enamel, the enamel is thinner than I normally expect from Mammoth, and the external texture is not what I normally think of as Mammoth... What is next ID #2) This looks like a gigantic !!! Drumfish tooth, but that seems unlikely.. What is it? Does not look man_made, and it is pretty unusual as a concretion.... I do not know... And ID #3) Early in the day I found a wild pig molar and tossed it back... then I picked this up,, I said it was really odd, but was about to toss it as modern calf, he said that he did not know.... So TFF gets to see it... Calf Molar, lower left m2... It has a really odd stylid. but there seems to be lots of variability on the stylids. The enamel is translucent, and "seems" fossilized, even seems to have some HSBs, but possibly those marks are just scratches.. I think I am just sharing an odd modern tooth, As always , it was a great day on the river.... Jack

Need some help with identifying this fish vertebrate, can this one be a tuna vert? The size is a little bit more than 4 cm.

Got out last week with my boys for a late afternoon trip to Calvert Cliffs to try a new spot. The beach was not very productive, yielding just a few smallish bull and tiger shark teeth. It seemed to have been worked over pretty hard before us. So we quickly turned our attention to a very sizable cliff fall at the tide line. Just looking over the surface, it didn't take long before boy #1 spotted what turned out to be a complete rib fully exposed. (Not 100% sure exactly what from but, I think, porpoise.) It was fragile and ended up coming out in three pieces, but we got the whole thing. On close inspection, it seems it also might have some predation marks. Then, while we were still working on that, just around the corner boy #2 yells out about something big. On the next chunk of cliff fall, also down low, he spotted a really nice piece of whale jaw also totally exposed! We got that out and also recovered the joint, although there is a missing piece in between. Still an awesome find! (The jaw is very solid, so we'll have to learn how to reconstruct the gap and make it one big piece.) We couldn't find any other part of it, unfortunately--we were all hoping for the skull. Just a little while later, on the next big chunk over, another collector pointed out a tiny surface of bone that he generously offered to my boys if they wanted to do the work to get it out. It turned out to be a really cool atlas vert from a porpoise (I think). It was extremely fragile, too, and in a couple of pieces that we'll have to glue together (any tips?), but another neat find. Then, just for good measure, boy #2 digs out a really nice tuna vert. (We added a 2nd, smaller one later.) This was all in maybe a 30-foot stretch. How no other collectors saw any of this stuff--and it was clear many had walked right by it all day--is a mystery. And to top it all off, on the way out with our bone haul, boy #1 spots a sweet croc tooth in the wash. It's funny that we set out to find some big shark teeth, and found almost none, but still ended up with maybe our best fossil trip ever! Enjoy the pics. And if anybody wants to confirm or correct ID's, please feel free.