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Hello Everyone, I had the honor of being invited by @markmg to a trip down into essentially ... a big hole in the ground. Woo Hoo !! A rather large gravel/sand pit that is being mined to 50-60ft ? We were not quite sure but hopefully at least as deep as the dredging that happens on the river. You know .. a play date ! .. haha Well, having just rained out my river trip on Friday I came prepared to slog through some mud. Let's just say it was lucky we didn't have a The Princess Bride (1987) moment because the water made the sand and mud a bit soft in some spots. The open pit has to be constantly pumped out or it would fill up with water and you'd have a nice deep pond ... not so good for a gravel business. Mark had been down in the pit on several occasions and asked that I join him and see if I couldn't help him find anything ... Mark was being brutally teased having previously come out and found - ON THE RAMP- a partial meg tooth. Well, we didn't find any mega-sharks down in the pit, but after exploring for about 90 minutes, the first small hints of the phosphate pebbles we were looking for started showing up. They were washing out of a layer sitting just above an impermeable formation of red compacted clay with shell impressions. Unfortunately the preservation was poor. And very crumbly .. I'm assuming these first finds had been sitting out too long and they were returning to the ground. They were encrusted with precipitated minerals and were delicate. The first hints that maaaaaybe this wasn't a dry hole ?? Some of the encrusted bone that didn't crumble to dust ....