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Another found in the area where a lot of Dugong fragments were. The shape and patterns of the core has me wondering what it might be.

Another find from last week in an area where I found a lot of Dugong fragments. This one I was at a loss on. Thinner than anything I have found of similar length.

Total strikeout at Venice Beach Florida today. Not a single tooth. Wonder what I was doing wrong with the stiffer tool? Others on the beach alwo had no luck today.

Anyone know what this jaw is from? Apparently collected back in the 90's in Tampa Bay Florida, I'm not sure on the geography of the area, but it also says allegedly it's from the pleistocene. The description of it is specific enough to say it was collected in a river deposit, but i'm not sure which. I agree that it's a carnivorous mammal, but beyond that I have no idea, any clue what it is?

So dry season is making slough hunting possible again. These were 12-24" down in a now dry creek bed all within about 4 linear feet of each other. And I happily complied with the rules of fossil hunting and broke the big one trying to get it out.

Figured I would post this here, acquired it at a sale today... Was found in Collier County, FL. I think it is a shark coprolite, but would like to get more opinions/verification on the ID. Measures 6 inches long.

Got in a few hours of digging today and popped a few keepers out. One day I'm going to find a nice complete Meg that size.

Had a good bit of success visiting a river I've been to in the past. I had "cleaned" this area out last year but I tried an experiment & piled all the rock/limestone that I worked through last year up in the center of the river expecting that it would trap sediment & moving fossils upstream of the rocks during the rainy season. Like most of my plans it didn't work as I expected, it seems that the sediment didn't deposit behind the rocks but the flow tumbled the rocks and sediment deposited downstream of the rocks. I spent about 4 hours digging out about 120 square feet of deposits 6-10" deep and screening. Pretty much about the easiest hunting scenario you could hope for in a river. I picked up everything that I recognized as a shark tooth (one bison tooth 2 bits of stingray & about 2 back packs worth of dugong bone bits). I wanted to point out a few things, 1) almost all teeth are river black, there are less than 5 teeth that had other coloration (bone valley like), 2) a high percentage are broken but not necessarily "river worn". So that evening I went to a social party & took the nice Meg to show some friends, of course one of the guest is totally enamored and tells me I've got to take them along next time so they can get some like that too! If only it was that easy....everyone would be doing it!

We found this in the surf at Casey Key today. About 3" long and very heavy. Any ideas what it might be?

So I didn't know where to post this, but figured fossil hunting trips would be a good spot since the kids were doing an indoor fossil hunt! Today I did my annual class for the Western Interior Paleontological Society (WIPS) Kids Club. It is always a hit, but due to scheduling I was unable to make the February class and did this one in May. May tends to be a smaller group because of the nice weather and vacations, but we still had a great time! The adults even wanted to get in on this activity and I was more than happy to help! The worst thing that happened was I forgot to take lots of pictures! I took (2) 5 gallon buckets of matrix, one bucket from Peace River, FL and the second bucket from Aurora, NC. I talked to the kids about how fossils in different locations can be similar (ie. shark teeth!) and we explained the importance of labeling your finds! Each person was given (1) 5-ounce cup of matrix from Peace River, and (1) 5-ounce cup of matrix from Aurora. We set up microscopes and laptops an allowed the kids to photograph their 5 favourite finds. We set out books, posters, and print outs to help with the identification part. They then loaded these photos on to a USB and have some very nice detailed photos to take home with all of their finds. That's right, I let them keep EVERYTHING! One kid found a cookie cutter tooth, full root and all! I don't even have one in my collection yet! Aside from keeping everything they found I made sure to send each kid home with a small 125mL bag of each matrix, and 5 various fossils from my Peace River hunting trips ((3) 25mm+ shark teeth, a dugong rib, and a turtle piece.) I shared with them my preferred methods of hunting and encouraged them to try their own! All in all it was a great day with lots of very nice finds! Thanks again to @Sacha for sending me Peace River matrix for my classes!

Hi all, this is my first post! I found these on Caspersen beach, Florida - any clues as to what they may be? My newbie instincts say the brown one may be dugong rib bone and the black one a whale vertebrae? Thanks for any helpful replies!

I needed to break the monotony of waiting for the rivers to go down after the storm, so I thought I'd go to the spoil islands near Yankeetown, FL to see what the storm surge churned up. I'm always looking for sea urchins, but usually find the normal sea biscuits (Eupatagus antillarium) and small sand dollars instead. This spot is Eocene Inglis formation, and a pleasant spot to spend a sunny morning. I felt pretty guilty that I didn't even think of how the village of Yankeetown faired during the storm until I got there and saw everything piled by the road for trash pick-up. Looks like everything on the first floors got flooded. Lots of trees down as well. They are only a couple feet above sea level so the surge really did a number on them. So the spoil islands were freshened up allot, so the sea biscuits were everywhere. I tried to stop picking them up, but I don't have allot of control over my actions. Here's a shot of the beach showing the rubble contain the echinoids. and here's a close-up of a small section showing the quantity of sea biscuits in the mix. The highlight of the day was when a pod of dolphins were herding a school of mullet up nearly to the beach. I missed all the good shots of the fish jumping and the dolphin scooping them up, but they got very close to me in as little as a foot of water. Very cool. I do have a couple items from this morning that I need help identifying. I'll add them in following entry.

I finally got around to taking some pictures of what I found while creek hunting in south Florida. I've made two trips with my fossil hunting partner down to this particular creek. On the second trip we met up with jcbshark and his dad and had a fun time hunting with them. Of course I forgot to take any pictures of the site but will try to do so the next time I'm there. What makes this site unusual for me is the way the shell layer is exposed in the high banks of the creek. It's wild to be able to just walk up to the bank and see large shells in perfect condition just poking out of the dirt. Really wish I'd taken a picture of it. My favorite shell find between the two trips is a large lighting welk that is in near perfect condition. When I spotted the shell only a small portion of the end was sticking out of the bank and I had to very carefully pry it out with my shovel.

Is anyone planning on going to Fossil Fest in Tampa this weekend? I'll be volunteering there both days and it would be fun to meet any fellow Fossil Forum members that also go. On Saturday I'll be working at the silent auction from 2-5 and will be wearing a name tag, not sure where I'll be on Sunday. This will be the first time I've gone to Fossil Fest but I've been told it's a fun event. I've attached a link to the event flyer for anyone who would be in the area and is interested in going. http://www.tampabayfossilclub.com/documents/FossilFest.pdf Kara

I finally got my microscope attachment for my phone in the mail and spent a little time last night playing with it. Of course it got here the day after I started moving everything around in preperation for getting out the Christmas decorations! I've posted pictures of this tiny tooth before but they were not very clear and I wasn't able to get it identified. Now that I have good pictures I have hope that someone might be able to tell me what it is. The tooth was found in micro matrix that I collected from Rattlesnake Creek in Gainesville, Florida last year. I believe the age of the area is miocene to pliocene. The tooth is 3mm long by 2mm wide. Forgot to include the scale in the pictures.

Saturday I was able to go to Mosaic's Fort Green mine for half a day of fossil hunting. I woke up at 4 in the morning and was on the road just before 5. That should have gotten me there an hour early but since I didn't have a good address to enter into my Garmin I wanted to give myself plenty of leeway. Good thing since I ended up on the wrong side of the mine and it took half an hour to get to the right spot. I was still only the second person there, not counting our mine guide. The trip was organized by the Tampa Bay Fossil Club and was limited to only 30 people. When you consider that the club has around 600 members I was pretty lucky to get to go! The weather was comfortable, if overcast, but the mosquitos were quick to attack. Lucky I had some insect repellant which I shared with several other people who had forgotten them. It had rained only the day before but the road to the spoil pile we were to hunt around were fairly dry until we were almost in site of the hunting spot at which point it turned too muddy for those of us with smaller cars (I drive a Honda Fit). Our guide stopped and walked down the long line of cars telling us all to turn around so that we were facing the right direction for driving back out. Now this was somewhat of a challenge for me as I had just driven through a very muddy spot and there was marsh on both sides of the road. Even calling it a road was stretching things a bit as it was really two dirt tire paths with some very tall grass growing between them. That was a many point turn around as I tried to avoid getting stuck in the mud and I wasn't the only one having difficulties. It was pretty tight fit for the people driving large trucks! Once we were all turned around we got out of the vehicles and started milling around on the road as we all impaitionately waited for the go ahead to make for the spoil pile. A few of the sharper eyed people started finding fossils in the mud along the road. I wish I had thought to take some pictures at this point but was to focused on the search to even consider getting out my phone. About halfway to the pile the ground to each side of the road was plowed up which caused everyone to fan out to start the search. This area wasn't all that productive for me and was very muddy. After sinking and and slipping around a few times too many I made my way over to the main pile. I spent most of my time hunting up and down the grooves cut into one side of the pile and along made it about a quarter of the way around it before we had to leave at 12:30. I really wish we could have stayed longer as it will probably be a long time before I get to go back. Thankfully it didn't start to rain until we were back onto paved roads. There were chunks of dugong rib bone everywhere and I was tempted to pick up quite a few of them as they had some pretty colors to them. I resisted most of them though as I didn't want to weigh myself down too early and didn't want to waste time trekking back to the car to drop them off. I found quite a mix of fossils over the coarse of the day although all but one of the megs I found were broken and even the intact one had a few chips. The highlight of my day was when I spotted a whale/dolphin earbone that was mostly intact. That was the first one I've ever found. I also found a couple partial whale/dolphin verts. I also found a range of smaller sharks teeth including one still in the matrix. Some of my other finds were a couple fish verts, a few pieces of turtle shell, a battered glyptodont scute, a large piece of stingray barb, part of a large fish mouth plate, and piece of whale tooth. And because I wouldn't be me if I didn't find at least a few tiny fossils I was picked up a tiny fish grinding mill, part of a small drum fish tooth, and a possible gar fish tooth. More to follow.

Following my visit to the Trilobites for America lab I spent 5 hours at a southern OH site. Flexicalymene meekis....I've got some prepping to do. I hope to pull 5-6 good ones out of all this. I don't usually collect "pieces" but these Isotelus parts were pretty cool, so.... I'll update with the good ones in the future