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Fun morning hunt. North Sulphur River Texas.

I think it's Mastodon tooth enamel but the color is different from my other two pieces. Maybe this guy had bad dental hygiene. Found at the North Sulphur River Texas.

For those of you who frequent the North Sulphur River in Fannin County Tx. We were at the south side of the channel at the tributary often referred to as Davis creek. The cliffs are very high there and large columns of dirt are falling off due to erosion. I was examining some of this fall off and noticed a great deal of fresh water muscle shells at a certain level. Looking at the cliff I saw a level perhaps a foot thick at least 12 to 15 ft below ground level and perhaps 12 ft or more from the channel floor. It was loaded with fresh water muscles and chunks of wood. I climbed up some of the debris piles to inspect it at close range and pulled this very fragile bone fragment out of that layer of the bank. There are very few signs of any mineralization. Given the depth that this bone was situated I conclude that it must be of some great age, perhaps thousands of years old. If that were the case then I would suggest that there must be other bones that erode from the upper layers that are not mineralized to much extent. I've perhaps found and left those on the bed of the river thinking they were cow bones. After noticing this shell layer I saw that it was still present a couple of miles west of Davis creek. It was marked by large logs protruding from the cliff and a noticeable band of shell material. I'm sure some of you have seen it too. I figure that it must have been from a very wet period, considering all of the wood perhaps it was after a flood. It must be a boundry line of somekind. Given the organic material found there it would be easy to date if anyone in the scientific community were interested. I've been in the channel many times and never looked very high up the bank before. Perhaps the abundant fossil bones and shells at the lower levels cause many of us ignore the other 40 to 50 ft of sediments. I've looked at pictures and think it might be a humerus, but its hard to find anything that looks just like it. It would be funny if it were a cow bone..right?

I picked up my old running buddy TRENTON-MON early yesterday about 8:30 am. We had a big day planned which would entail about a 5 mile round trip hiking in the North Sulphur River channel. I found a nice assortment of broken points and scrapers, worm tubes, ammonite parts, petrified poop, a large piece of enamel I suspect from a mastadon tooth, some oysters for my 5 year old grandaughter, some shells and baculites. I also picked up a good assortment of bone frags. I need to research that big chunk on the lower left, there might be enough there to identify it. I expect it and the larger verts to be from mosasaurs. The lower right bone I posted in the questions section. Check out that post under North Sulphur River Upper Geology. I also picked up 5 verts and several likely vert fragments. One of the verts is a cast in phosfate, looks like a fish vert. Theres also a nice shark centrum. Trenton-mon picked up some goodies, I expect he will post those too. We are a couple of worn out old guys and we know it. We guessed we were going to push ourselves. Wow!! It wasnt too hard on us hoofing it in, at least we werent whining out loud yet. About 1.30 we made it to the turn around point and started to head back. It got rather hot down in that channel. I had about 8 lbs of stuff in my collection bag. About then I managed to pinch a nerve in my neck. My buddys feet were bothering him. So we were kind of hobbling along. A little over half way back we sat down and finished the water which was of course hot by then. Luckily some clouds came in and a breeze started blowing. We cooled off a bit and plodded back to where we came down, a little beat up but okay. For me it's always a struggle climbing out of there. This time we really were huffing for air. Well after having a pain pill, a cup full of ice water on my head and another to drink, I put on a dry clean shirt and sat down for a long cold blast of max a/c. All in all a decent hunt, a rather warm fall day, a new found appreciation for ice cold water and still another adventure in the bank for a couple of old, worn out.. old friends. over and out.