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Tammy and I have been volunteering at the Montbrook dig site in north-central Florida every Wednesday and Saturday for a while. We're part of a small group of local volunteer diggers who've been able to dig the site during the pandemic. We have a maximum of 6 people at the site with 4 volunteers (aka retired people who'd rather not golf or watch daytime TV) and 2 from the museum. Over the last couple of weeks we've worked to take out several gomphothere bones that have turned up in the grid squares that we've been working. Two Saturdays ago we started the jacket on the remaining part of a gomphothere pelvis (the flat ilium was jacketed and removed separately where there was a break in the bone during preservation). It was not dried enough by the end of the day to take that large and heavy jacket out by the end of the day. Some additional plastered burlap was added around the base to make sure the jacket would properly contain the contents when flipped. In addition to the residual gomph pelvis there was what looked to be a really nice alligator skull directly underneath the pelvis which made for a very tall jacket that was also very heavy. With limited crew we flipped that big jacket into the cargo net and (in stages, with rest between) lugged it up out of the pit and into the back of the museum van. While clearing the area around the gomph/gator cluster so we could encase it in plaster I came across the end (femoral head) of a gomphothere femur. It was toward the end of the day and there was much sand above the bone so it had to wait for another day. We had other obligations this last Saturday and so we could not volunteer that day. Someone in the group digging that day was working down the level of the grid square that the bone looked to be extending into. They didn't get too far as they were distracted by a rhino jaw that happened to be hiding in there. I had been sitting directly on top of it on my previous visit and had actually dropped the level of that 1m x 1m square by about 20 cm (~8"). Had I dug a bit more I would likely have hit the rhino material. This preparatory digging before an interesting find we've dubbed "pre-discovering" a fossil. With the rhino jaw jacketed and removed we were in position to continue to reduce the level of the sand/clay in the squares around the gomphothere femur. All that was showing when I first happened upon it was the rounded ball of the femoral head and the bulge of bone known as the greater trochanter which serves as an attachment for many leg muscles. We were wondering at which angle the rest of the bone (should it be present) would appear and at what level--the laminated layers of sand and clay dip at a pretty steep slope and bones usually follow the layers. Tammy spent the early part of the morning digging down from the opposite (distal) end of where the femur should end trying to gauge its length and orientation. When she was coming up with mostly sand she switched tactics to following the bone shaft down from the hip to see where it was leading. I spent the morning taking an adjacent square down about 30 cm (~1') to level out the area in which we were working. Because the layers dip down in this direction (to the east) the sand I was digging in was above the area in which all the interesting fossils started to appear. Occasionally, while digging in sterile sand an odd isolated fossil will turn up. Absolutely none did in this grid square. I was able to remove about 30 of the large plastic kitty litter pails of sand without being bothered with any pesky fossils getting in my way. Once I had my corner square dropped to an appropriate level I started lowering the level of the adjacent square. By this time Tammy had followed the femur to the opposite end. Unfortunately, the preservation on the distal end was not nearly as solid and was instead rather punky--a preservation we've dubbed "pudding bone" which is as problematic as it sounds. This end will require quite a bit of consolidation with the plastic B72 dissolved in acetone to make a stabilizing glue. In the left image above, you can see the rounded ball of the femoral head peeking out between Tammy's right hand (with stylish orange glove) and the bright yellow cat litter pail. You can get a better view of the femoral head and the greater trochanter below it on the left edge of the bone as well as the extent to the more crumbly distal end in the right image above. At this point we knew the size and orientation of this bone and had started to remove higher material around the vicinity so we'd have room to jacket it and flip it over when removing. I started working down the higher corner visible in front of Tammy to the left edge of the left image above. This was still mostly soft (and very easy to dig) sugar sand with some thinner clay layers and chunks of orangish clay nodules. While lowering this area and making room so we could start trenching around the bone to make a nice pedestal for the jacket I found my first fossil of the day. Digging most of the day in sterile layers is necessary work but often does not result in a full bone bag at the end of the day. I've dug many days when no label for my disused bone bag had to be written up. I'd been digging since 10:00am and it was now around 3:45pm (we clean-up and leave at 4:00pm) so it was a little late in the day to be uncovering my first find of the day. This one was worth the wait though as I spotted the gleam of orange that can sometimes herald good news. Of course, 99 times out of 100 the orange is just one of those sticky clay nodules that get dug out and tossed on the spoil pile with the rest of the sand. This one was a faintly different shade of orange and indicates mammal tooth (for some reason mammalian tooth enamel often preserves as a dull orange at this site). The orange was on a small clump that freed itself while I was digging through the loose sugar sand. Closer inspection with a dental pick revealed the gleam of enamel and not sticky iron rich clay! A little water from the hose was able to soften the sandy clay around it and my first (and only) find of the day turned out to be a really sweet and absolutely tiny baby gomphothere molar. This one got slipped into a protective vial that we use for more delicate specimens and was padded with bit of tissue. While trying to finish up a bit more of the trench I was digging around the femur I hit some more bone right at the corner of the 4 grid squares which we mark with little orange wire flags. At this point it was really too late to do more work on prepping this for jacketing and that task would fall on anyone working the area Thursday or Friday. If nobody ends up working that square before Saturday then Tammy and I will be back to complete trenching so we have a pedestal that we can jacket. With the end of the day's digging rapidly approaching we protected the exposed bone with some empty sandbags till the next time it receives some attention. You can see below the squares I was working as my mild OCD drives me to leave my work area with sharp crisp walls and corners and flattened bases. Only 1 bone in my bone bag--but I'm quite happy with that. Cheers. -Ken

The spring 2021 digging session opened last week at the Montbrook site in north central Florida. It is a short drive from Gainesville where Tammy and I relocated last summer. One of the reasons for choosing Gainesville as our new home is so that we can volunteer more with the Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH). It is really great to be able to do a day of volunteer digging at the Miocene Montbrook site without a 5 hour trip up from South Florida and hotel reservations. Previously, we'd book a 3-4 day span of volunteer digging to make the trip worth the effort. Being able to dig for a single day and then rest up after (consuming fistfuls of ibuprofen) has its advantages. Usually, the museum would open this dig to a group of nearly 500 volunteers (students, retirees, and even out-of-state visitors) who have all put in countless hours of digging this site since 2016. Safety concerns due to the pandemic have forced the museum to limit the attendance at the digs to a smaller number of individuals and only locals with years of experience at the site. Luckily, we fit that category. We wear masks at the site and though we are not in one of the higher priority groups for the COVID vaccine many of the other retirees have had at least their first shot. While we are fortunate to be able to dig as part of the skeleton crew (pun certainly intended) we look longingly forward to being past the pandemic and seeing many old friends at the dig site. We were out for the season opener last Wednesday and Richard Hulbert assigned Tammy and me to a pair of adjoining (1m x 1m) grid squares. At this section of the dig site the underlying layers of the formation slant down steeply from west to east--possibly the sloping bank of the river which is what we intuit this site to represent. I spent the morning removing the soft "sugar" sand on the top layer of my grid square. We know from other adjacent grid squares (several of which I've excavated) that this layer seems to be above the good fossiliferous layers and only rarely has isolated fossils (usually only small bits of Trachemys slider turtle shell). Being soft like beach sand, this layer can be dug out quickly and efficiently with our usually excavation tool--a standard blade screwdriver. I filled and hauled out dozens of plastic cat litter containers of this sand, dumping them on the spoil pile out of the pit in which we were digging. Good exercise and useful excavation but did not add many fossils to my "bone bag" for that day. Tammy worked the adjacent square "up-slope" of my square. She was already at the level of the gritty layer below the sugar sand. This gritty layer contains larger rocks and has a more grainy appearance. It also seems to have a lot of clay particles mixed in which makes it concrete hard when dried out. We infer that these layers may represent major storms that raised the river level and increased its flow rate. As the storm subsided the more coarse material in suspension with the faster flow started to drop out and form this layer. Often, it contains interesting micro-fossils (and occasionally larger fossils as well). Tammy was digging out this layer and putting it into sandbags so it could be processed later washing it through screens to separate the micro-matrix from the silty fine sand. This was to be reserve material for an outreach project for science teachers in Florida who will be receiving matrix to pick through with their classes. Tammy needed the hose to soften the matrix--we have a gravity-fed water supply with a large tank and a jumble of hoses. She worked down her corner of the square and bagged it but it was like melting concrete with a hose and scraping it with a screwdriver. My gritty layer was under the layer of sugar sand and so was already somewhat damp and not nearly so hardened. By the end of the day I had taken down the top part of what I had been calling the "ski slope". The second photo is how we left the site at the end of the day. We were busy last Saturday (we now dig every Wednesday and Saturday) and didn't make it out. Some of the other long-term volunteers worked our squares that day removing more material and exposing a partially articulated Macrochelys snapping turtle carapace. At the end of the day they had also uncovered a small section of bone that looked like it might be part of a skull. Alligator was a good candidate and that's what we were told when we picked up work on this square yesterday (Wednesday). It was a chilly morning (starting out below freezing) and this is why they have delayed the starting time to 10am. Because it was a sunny day, before long we were able to ditch many of the multiple layers we had started out with. Richard reassigned us to this pair of squares and Tammy worked the square with the snapping turtle carapace starting by uncovering more of the suspected alligator skull. I worked my adjacent square again. It had some of the gritty layer removed but sitting out in the sun for several days meant that it had hardened and I ended up making copious use of the hose this time trying to soften this "concrete" and get through to a hopefully fossiliferous layer below--the same layer that held Tammy's snapping turtle and mystery bones. Once I got down to the bottom edge of my hard gritty layer I uncovered the layer of softer sand below it. At the interface of these two distinct layers I started finding some fossils. If this gritty layer represents material laid down during a flood event then it makes sense that some of the larger objects would have dropped out of the flow first followed by the gritty material. The finer clay particles would have settled last and then probably percolated between the grains of the grit and completed the "paving" for this weather event recorded in the layers at this site. I started to find a few bits like a pieces of a Trachemys plastron (2 left xiphiplastron elements--so not an associated set) and some gator osteoderms (which we call "cookies") and a really sweet large shark vert. They were all at the bottom of a chunk of the gritty material where it separated from the softer sand layer below. While I was busy "unpaving" the "ski slope" in my grid square Tammy was uncovering more around the suspected alligator skull. She had switched from the screwdriver to a dental pick as she worked closer towards the area with the uncovered bone. When she came upon a tooth and started uncovering it she was surprised that it did not look like a gator tooth. A little more excavation revealed a row of teeth. It was quite obvious they were mammal teeth and not gator and so we called over Richard who used a hose set to a fine mist to help gently wash away the matrix to reveal more. It turned out to be a lower jaw from a peccary (Protherohyus brachydontus)! They have a few other pieces of peccary skull but this is the first lower jaw complete with teeth. An excellent find that would be plaster jacketed and removed for preparation in the lab. I switched over to Tammy's square for a bit and we worked together to dig a trench around the jaw so that it would be raised on a pedestal for jacketing. There were a few Trachemys turtle bones discovered while trenching but luckily the were isolated finds. Occasionally, an interesting find (like the jaw) ends up in a cluster of different sets of bones and it gets complicated to figure out how to decide what gets included in the jacket. Smaller jackets are, of course, easier to remove, transport and prepare so it is always good to be able to isolate a particular specimen. We were able to create a roomy trench around most of the jaw but could only make a more narrow slot between the pedestal we were forming and the snapping turtle carapace adjacent to it. Thankfully, it was just enough to be able to jacket the specimen and remove it safely. We covered the articulated snapping turtle carapace bones with a sandbag so we would not get plaster slopped onto the specimens. Now that the peccary jaw is out it will be easier to excavate the snapping turtle to see how much is there. We protected the jaw by packing on some clean damp sand and made a more level base so this jacket would rest properly when it is flipped and worked in the lab from the underside. Tammy gets recorded as the co-collector along with the volunteer that first spotted it. I could have easily titled this post "The Day of the Peccary" or "Peccary Appreciation Day" but that would have spoiled the surprise. We had an additional surprise to this peccary-themed day. Sue, another long-time volunteer (pictured in a blue sweatshirt in a photo above and a gray jacket the week before in the very first photo) was working a few squares over and mostly finding turtle bones and a fish vertebrae came across something interesting. When she showed it to Richard he was amazed to see it was half a broken peccary tusk. A good portion of the tip was missing and though it looked to be an old (not fresh) break at the end he asked Sue if she had the other part. She didn't but she said she'd go through her bucket of matrix again before dumping it to make sure it wasn't hiding in some clump. She went through her bucket twice and set aside any of the bits she found. Amazingly, the missing piece turned up. She had not recognized it and though it had turned up earlier she methodically searched through her bucket of matrix with a fine-tooth comb (twice). The effort was well rewarded with a fine looking tusk that may very well be associated with the nearby jaw in Tammy's square. By the time we left at the end of the day I had leveled and cleared about half of my square down below the hardened gritty layer to the softer sandy layer below. You can see the neat smooth layer that I'm known for while digging at this site in the left in photo below. In Tammy's square to the right you can see the deeper pit in the upper right corner where the jacket containing the peccary jaw was removed. The sandbag with sand holding it down next to that is where the snapping turtle carapace is being protected. While Tammy was finishing off the day removing the higher level material shown at the middle of the right edge in the photo she came across a bit of bone. It was getting late and we were starting to clean up and get ready to leave. She showed Richard the bone that she had exposed and asked him if she should continue exposing it or leave it for later. We were wondering if it might be associated with a gomphothere scapula that is in the adjacent square. You can see a sandbag along the lower right edge in the image that is protecting and indicating where this fossil is positioned. It can't be removed till the adjacent material is dropped sufficiently to allow the extent of this scapula to be determined and allow for proper trenching and jacketing. The more that Tammy uncovered this bone the more it didn't seem to be related to the scapula. In the end she marked it with an empty plastic bone bag we had handy and weighted it down with a handful of sand so it would not blow away. We'll likely get back to these squares this Saturday and Tammy can investigate this bone more fully and work to get the snapping turtle carapace pedestalled and jacketed. I'll probably continue removing material from the square I've been working on and hope to get to some nicely fossiliferous material that was hiding below the gritty pavement. Who knows what will turn up next? And that's precisely why we keep coming back--even on chilly mornings. Cheers. -Ken

After a year and a half of searching followed by 6 months of time and effort related to buying, packing, moving, unpacking, and selling, Tammy and I are finally translocated to the Gainesville, FL area and out of South Florida. Hopefully, we'll have less hurricanes to deal with and significantly less year-round yard work to tend to. I'm leaving the riding lawn mower behind and hope to do less weeding and yard work in the new house. We specifically looked for a house without a lot of grass to mow and our house has only a narrow strip adjoining our neighbor's lawn. Our neighbor's son owns a lawn and landscaping business and is nice enough to cut his dad's lawn. It would be literally 2 passes with the mower so we're working out a deal with him so I never have to cut the grass again. The new house is on a little less than an acre but is surrounded on three sides by dense trees. The backyard slopes down to a creek that delimits the back boundary of the property. I had it on good authority that this was a fossiliferous creek and a few minutes a couple days back with a shovel and a sifting screen were sufficient to prove that assertion. Pretty fine gravel and so the shark and ray teeth are mostly pretty small (megs may be scarce here) but as a proof of concept I can state that I now have a continuous supply of fossils from my very own yard. Not the deciding factor in choosing this property (location, the neighborhood, and the wooded low-maintenance lot were more important) but nice to be able to have friends with kids over for a fossil hunt without leaving the yard (when that becomes a reality again post-pandemic). Other than to escape hurricanes and yard work, our motivation for relocating to a slightly higher latitude was to be closer to the University of Florida. We enjoy going out to the volunteer fossil digs and I've been eager to start volunteering more with the FLMNH (Florida Museum of Natural History). Due to the unusual times we find ourselves in the midst of presently, the volunteer program at the FLMNH is somewhat suspended. They can't have volunteers coming into the prep lab to work on jacketed specimens or doing the other volunteer efforts for the museum. Fortunately, I enjoy picking fossils from micro-matrix--I've processed countless 5-gallon buckets of matrix from Cookiecutter Creek, the Peace River, and other locations. I have a stacked set of sifting screens for classifying matrix and very functional lighted magnifier for looking through the more coarse material. For the finer (millimeter scale) micro-matrix my digital camera microscope and a large flat-screen TV monitor make efficient work of picking the finest material for interesting tiny treasures. http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/95821-optimizing-my-search-technique-for-picking-fine-micro-matrix/ I've been waiting nearly 2 years to be able to volunteer some effort into working down the large backlog of accumulated bags of matrix from the volunteer dig sites. One of these days I'm sure I'll come across a bag of micro-matrix from one of the grid squares that I myself have dug at some time in the past. Till then I've just gotten started looking through my first batch of washed and dried matrix from the Montbrook dig site SW of Gainesville. This is a really interesting late Miocene site with some really remarkable finds. A goodly amount of the described taxa in the faunal list for this site are represented only as micro-fossils. It is very interesting to see what is hiding in the micro-matrix as usually we only see the larger "macro" fossils that turn up while digging in the assigned grid square (ubiquitous turtle pieces, gator teeth and bones, the occasional large gomphothere bone, and other interesting species). Picking through the screen washed and dried matrix (which removes the sand, clay and fine silt) turns up lots of tiny bone fragments but aslo surprising number of complete toe bones (phalanges) from turtle, gator and other species. These weight-bearing bones are often very dense and fossilize unusually well as complete specimens. There are also enough ganoid garfish scales to pave an airport runway. One of the most common millimeter-scale fossils is the extremely abundant stingray (Dasyatis) teeth which along with tiny Rhizoprionodon shark teeth make picking the finest matrix continuously interesting. https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/montbrook/faunal-list/ I'm still learning the faunal composition of this matrix (different in many ways from Cookiecutter Creek) and hope to soon find some the less common taxa like rodent teeth and some of the more unusual amphibians. I did start seeing an unusual type of fossil turning up with regularity. I had no idea what it was but a continuous supply of these tiny (just a few millimeters) cupped structures which look like microscopic canoes kept showing up in the finest size class matrix. I took a group photo of these little oddities and inquired with Richard Hulbert to see if they had been identified. Richard thought they appeared to be part of some invertebrate and sent the specimens to Roger Portell who is in charge of the invertebrate side of the FLMNH collection. They did analysis and found them to be composed of calcium phosphate which is usually (but not always) associated with vertebrate fossils (inverts tending to use calcium carbonate more commonly for their skeletal structures). For a while they thought these might be some sort of mouth part from a shrimp or other type of crustacean but that lead didn't pan out. Finally, they managed to contact someone who was well familiar with these objects and a certain identification was made. I'd have never guessed what these were in a million years thinking initially that they sort of resembled some sort of botanical seed pod (which they clearly were not based on their composition). It turns out that these little ovoid cupped structures are from frogs and are the vomerine (upper palate) teeth located behind the maxillary teeth which are embedded in the jaw. These teeth are thought to help in grasping prey items. None of the frog's teeth are actually used for chewing as prey are swallowed whole. I don't believe frogs shed vomerine teeth the way sharks go through a continuous supply of renewable teeth so I'm guessing that frogs must have been pretty common in this fossil habitat and that these solid vomerine teeth preferentially fossilize better than the thinner and less calcified other bones of the skeleton which are not as well represented at the site. Frog vomerine teeth! Who'd have thunk it? This nearly rivals the famous Merritt Island micro-matrix in which Julianna @old bones found her tree frog phalanx, thus giving it the alternative name of "frog toe micro-matrix". Cheers. -Ken

For several years now we've been fortunate enough to be able to take part in volunteer digs with the Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH), University of Florida (Gainesville). The site was discovered at the end of 2015 and we've been participating during the dig seasons (the drier cooler part of the year) since 2016. The site is on private property but the landowner is very enlightened and understands the importance of this site which gives a rare glimpse into the Hemphillian North American Land Mammal Age (NALMA) period dating around 5.0-5.5 mya. The owner has been very supportive of letting the museum (and its staff, students, and volunteers) onto his property and even helps quite frequently using his excavators to clear the overburden and manage the site for drainage. You can learn more about the site and the finds here: https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/montbrook/ We were previously out to the site last November digging in the main pit. Tammy found some nice gomphothere bones and I dug a rather sterile sandy grid square but happened upon a cache of over a dozen associated gator osteoderms--both the larger circular ones from the back and the elongated ones from the border of the tail. The site is closing for the season at the end of March so we found some time in our schedule to make the trip north for a final dig before the site gets tarped for the summer. We had planned on heading up on Sunday evening for the dig on Monday through Wednesday but it is nice to have flexibility in our schedule. Tammy and I are looking to relocate to the Gainesville area so that I can volunteer more with the FLMNH (and attend these digs more often). We've been looking at houses in the Gainesville area for several months now and periodically make the 5 hour drive from South Florida to see properties of interest. Late Thursday a property that looked interesting popped-up. We decided to modify our schedule to drive up early Friday morning instead. Unfortunately, (as is often the case) the house and property looked better online than in person. We visited a few other newer properties in the area and then decided to head up to Jacksonville (about a 1.5 hour drive) to stay with friends over the weekend. Hotels tend to bump up their rates over the weekends--We've seen hotel rates triple in Gainesville when the alumni return for Florida Gators home football games. We spent an enjoyable weekend with our friends up in JAX and headed back down on Sunday (getting in an open house viewing before checking into our hotel in Gainesville). We were ready for our 3-day dig at Montbrook starting the next morning.

I've written trip reports before about volunteering with the Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH) at their various dig sites in Florida. The currently (very) active site is called Montbrook for a small town that used to be in the area (but is no more). Here are a few links from FLMNH which provide some contextual information about the site: https://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/museum-voices/montbrook/ https://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/florida-vertebrate-fossils/sites/mont/ https://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/museum-voices/montbrook/2016/09/07/why-montbrook/ The site has yielded an impressive number of specimens and is very important scientifically as it provides the best view of Florida fauna from the late Hemphillian (Hh4) North American Land Mammal Age (NALMA) from approximately 5.5-5.0 mya. The other significant locality for this age is the Palmetto Fauna a couple hundred miles south of the Montbrook site. More info here for those interested in the stratigraphy: https://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/florida-vertebrate-fossils/land-mammal-ages/hemphillian/ https://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/florida-vertebrate-fossils/sites/palmetto-fauna/ Here is a link to my Montbrook posting from 2016 showing the couple of times I managed to get out there--the last time with TFF members Daniel @calhounensis and John-Michael @Brown Bear: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/63056-volunteer-dig-with-the-flmnh/ Now, enough of the links and time for a few pictures! The Montbrook site has changed quite a bit over the last year since I've been able to get out there. We had plans to return to Montbrook last October but Hurricane Matthew was an uninvited guest to Florida that week and the dig site was tarped down and the dig cancelled. Thankfully, the hurricane left my house untouched (didn't really even get rain or wind of note) and didn't mess-up the Montbrook site but we did miss an opportunity for one last trip to Montbrook in 2016. When we returned in February 2017 it took some time to get my bearings. The deeper pit to the east where several gomphothere skulls, tusks and long bones had been removed did not weather the rainy season well. This section has been backfilled with about 5 feet of sand and clay from the higher levels during the summer rain storms. For now they will concentrate digging on the main pit to the west and hope to get back to the lower "elephant" layer some time in the future--though the prep work to remove the overburden and get back to the original level will be significant. So much material has been moved from the upper western dig area that it was hard to picture exactly where we had dug nearly a year ago. I'm still not quite sure where we were in 2016 as the site has evolved greatly since our last visit. On Thursday and Friday there were mostly just a few volunteers who could make it to the site on weekdays--mainly retired folks or those with flexible schedules like us who could volunteer during the week. On Saturday there were a lot more volunteers and the dig site became a bit more crowded so you had to be aware of others digging sometimes in the grid square adjacent to yours. Here are some overall site photos I took on Saturday and you can see the line-up of cars that brought a full capacity of volunteers.

Last week I visited one of my favorite spots for fossil shells. Out near St. Leonard, MD (Calvert Cliffs) there is a spot where a landslide carried matrix loaded with shells out into the bay. Today, all that remains is a shelf of packed sand visible only at very low tide, and a layer of shells -mostly broken- on the bay floor. You never know what you'll find, though. This time I found more than two dozen different species, most of them withe specimens in good enough condition to be keepers. Back home in Delaware, I sorted everything out. My collection is big enough that I try to keep the best examples and not bring home bucket loads. I'm running out of shelves, and for the sake of domestic tranquility I don't overload the house with boxes all in one shot. In this case, however, I did bring home bucket loads. I had another agenda. I started volunteering at the Delaware Museum of Natural History's Collections and Research Dept., which prides itself on its Mollusk collection, a few months ago. They were looking for a volunteer to sort, classify and catalogue their Florida fossil shells. Turns out that they had exactly 3 fossil shells from Maryland, all of which I donated last fall. This month, both the Collection Manager and I are fixing that problem. I spent yesterday morning at home cleaning the first batch of shells and picking out the nicer ones to bring along, then spent a quiet, happy afternoon in the cool, shady archives identifying every piece. Eventually, it will all go not only into their private database, but a searchable online database with detailed photos for other researchers. Now to go scrape away more matrix lumps and see what else I can find!

Hi everyone, I'm turning the big 50 in November (eek), and I want to do something really fun - I was hoping to find some sort of fossil hunting trip either in the US or internationally - ideally would have liked to volunteer on a dinosaur dig somewhere but mid-November doesn't seem to bring anything up. If anyone has any ideas, much appreciated ! I'm looking on my own as well. Thanks

The Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH) at Gainesville, FL has announced the schedule of digging at the new Montbrook site near Ocala, FL. This is a great opportunity for volunteers to assist in excavating this site alongside representatives from FLMNH who are very knowledgeable in the types of fossils found at the site. I've volunteered for FLMNH digs several times in the past couple of years and always found it a rewarding experience. I managed to make it out twice to the new Montbrook site before the site was closed-up for the summer (heat and rains). The new dig season will kick-off October 1 and run through December 18 (and after a holiday break will run through May 2017). This site is on private property and the museum is eager to pull as much fossil material from this important site as possible as soon as possible as they don't have the luxury of owning the site like they do with the Thomas Farm site. So far the owner of this new site has been very gracious and accommodating in letting FLMNH retrieve many important fossils from the site and seem to be willing to let the dig continue (but you never know how things could change). As this is a volunteer dig for the museum, all fossils get bagged (or jacketed) and go back into the museum's collection. You will be listed as the collector on record for all of the specimens that are accessioned into the museum's permanent collection. A great way to contribute to the knowledge of the Florida fossil record from the late Hemphillian (~5.5-5.0 mya) and learn a lot while doing so. Check out the links below for a more detailed description of the site and a the schedule and application form to submit (if you haven't volunteered with FLMNH before). If you want to dig on an important fossil-rich site in northern Florida don't let this opportunity pass you by. Plenty of dates over the next 8 months so pick a date if you are local or plan a trip if you are coming in from out of state. Trust me--it'll be an experience you'll long remember. http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/florida-vertebrate-fossils/sites/mont/ http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/vertpaleo/volunteering/field/ Cheers. -Ken (Photo shamelessly stolen from the FLMNH page on Montbrook--don't think they'll mind.)

Over a month ago I mentioned the opportunity to volunteer for a dig with the Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH). In addition to the Thomas Farm sinkhole locality, this year a new opportunity opened up on a small-scale sand mining operation on private property. Some interesting bones were uncovered and the university's vertebrate paleontology department was called to come have a look. They did some initial digging and uncovered rhino and Gomphothere bones with some of them partially articulated. This sounded exciting enough for me to check into. Here's the link to the earlier posting just in case this excitement is infectious: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/60662-volunteer-opportunities-with-the-flmnh/ My wife Tammy and I had planned on going in mid-March but a scheduling conflict for the weekend we'd chosen made us move it up a few weeks. They did most Saturdays but not every Sunday and we wanted to make best use of the weekend so we chose the 4-day block of time from March 3-6. We drove up from South Florida the night before and booked into our hotel in Ocala. Following the well-written directions from Dr. Richard Hulbert, we found the quarry and joined the volunteer team precisely at the appointed time of 10:00am (they work from 10:00am-4:30pm). We were introduced to the layout of the site and picked up our tools: flat-blade screwdriver, small trowel, pill jar for small finds, small plastic bags for finds that come out in pieces (to facilitate reassembly), and a larger bag to contain all of our finds. We decided to work together on a single square meter of the plot and so Dr. Hulbert found us a grid square where we had room to work from both sides. It was a square that was partially leveled and our job was to complete the leveling and recover whatever fossils lay within. Some of the other squares had interesting finds visible in them. One had a plaster-jacketed partial alligator skeleton (with skull) and another that was being worked on had Gomphothere (shovel-tusker elephant relative) bones including several associated ribs. The area we were digging in had been turning up lots of snapping turtle remains and as we progressed in our grid square we found more. Here's a look at the work site:

I took the opportunity to volunteer with the Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH) in April of 2014 and had a great time (though it was off to a rough start with a rain out on the first weekend we tried. We finally did manage to do some digging and found a spectacular carnivore mandible toward the end of the dig which was our "trip-maker". For anybody who missed this tale, you can find it here: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/45220-thomas-farm-volunteer-dig-spring-2014/ I missed the Thomas Farm dig in 2015 as I was out of the country playing a coral reef scientist on TV (one of my numerous avocational interests). When the opportunity came around this year I jumped on it. Because of the new Montbrook site that the FLMNH is working this year, they are spending a limited time (5 days) at Thomas Farm this year--so not wanting to miss any of the fun, I signed up for the entire 5 day dig. The new Montbrook site dig will continue through mid-May and I encourage any who have the opportunity to give it a try. I'll probably try to get back there once more before the end of the season. Here is my report from a month ago: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/63056-volunteer-dig-with-the-flmnh/ So anyway, back to Thomas Farm. The section I was digging back in 2014 (which they continued in 2015) was now dug down deep enough that they wanted to balance out the area by going back to a section that they haven't dug for several years. When I was there last it had an aluminum frame car port with a canvas top covering a cache of sandbags and some other stored gear. They moved all of those sandbags up out of the digging area to ground level near the outbuilding on site. The plan is to dig this area down to match the level of the adjacent section which is now quite a bit lower. They like to try to keep things relatively level as it promotes good water run-off during the rainy season (though Florida seems to have nothing but a rainy season this year). For anybody who has been to the Thomas Farm site in the recent past, here is what the site looks like now:

Exciting times in Florida. The Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH) has announced the volunteer opportunities for 2016. More information can be found directly from their website: http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/vertpaleo/volunteering/field/ This year the Thomas Farm site will have a limited opportunity for field work--April 4-8 which is a Monday-Friday (no weekends). The reason for the minimal field work at Thomas Farm is actually for a good reason--they are focused on a brand new site! A new fossil site (on private property) southwest of Gainesville near the town of Williston is showing signs of being spectacular. Unlike the random disarticulated finds at the Thomas Farm sinkhole, the new site seems to contain some associated skeletons. They have already found gomphothere and rhino and there have been signs of llama, horse, and some carnivores. Additionally, there is a high diversity of turtles (6 species so far) as well as fish and gators. The sign-up for Thomas Farm won't be till early March but the extended field season at the new site is already underway (started last Saturday). The link above contains an application form with the schedule of days that they are digging at this new site. If you've got the opportunity and interest to see a brand new site as it is uncovered, don't miss this opportunity--you'll regret it later if you do. I encourage any TFF members looking for a rewarding volunteer experience to give this a try. If you do, you are, of course, obligated to take lots of cool photos and post a trip report here. I'm going to try to make time for the short Thomas Farm week and I've already put in for a block of time in mid-March at the new site. If I have the time I'll try to make it up for a second trip to the new site before the season is over on May 13. Don't delay--volunteer opportunities to work side-by-side with experts like Dr. Richard Hulbert don't come along every day. [End of infomercial] Cheers. -Ken