Ice Age & erratics in Lathum

[Max-fossils]

Hey guys!

This hunt was on more than a month ago, on the 18th of July, but I haven't had time to make a trip report till today. Better late than never!

In late June I invited my good friend Tijn ( @Hunter0811) to come hunt with me at the Zandmotor, and then come to my place to see my whole collection, and we had a great time talking about all things fossil-related. That evening he told me about a new location he had discovered near his house in the east of the Netherlands which also had Ice Age mammal bones, and so we made plans to meet up again soon, but this time over there, so that we could check this new place out together. He picked me up at the train station and we biked to the place. The weather was nice, although maybe just a bit too warm, but sunny and good for fossil hunting. We had to cross a small field with cows to get to the place after parking our bikes, and they were curious to see what we were doing so they approached us to say hi. 

The site is near a village called Lathum. It's quite literally a big pile of rocks: gravel with lots of erratic stones, all dredged from the bottom of a nearby pond. The hunting there consists of just looking in between the stones. 

[Max-fossils]

As soon as we dropped down our bags, I immediately found a perfect wild horse (Equus ferus) astragalus just laying out in the open! I knew the day was off to a great start. 

 

Shortly after I found some shell fragments in hard matrix. These were clearly erratic as they don't look at all like your standard Ice Age fossils. I also found a small shell piece that looks to me like the Oligocene Habecardium tenuisulcatum, but I'm not sure. There were also a couple modern freshwater shells scattered around.

A bit later, Tijn found a huge piece of mammoth ivory. We both found some more ivory and bone pieces here and there. I sat down for a moment to look at the ground more closely in hopes of finding some smaller fossils, when I turn around and just see a really cool horse scapula chilling out in the open! I was hoping to find a nice, big, identifiable bone that day, and I wasn't disappointed. 

 

I then quickly made what was probably my best find of the day (in terms of rarity, not aesthetics!). Ammonites! That's definitely not something you find often in the Netherlands. The only 2 ways I know of that you can find them is by going in the late Cretaceous quarries around Maastricht (completely in the south-east of the country), or by finding them in erratic stones, like this time. They don't look like much, but I'm still happy to have found something relatively rare. 

 

[Max-fossils]

We then decided to move on to another pile that was about 200 meters away. Overall, this one seemed a bit less productive than the first one, but we both found some toothy remains: he found a nice cow/bison tooth and I found a cool horse tooth. Lots of horse material!

 

In that second pile I also found a rather big piece of woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) ivory which was quite well preserved. 

 

We then decided to call it a day and head back to his place. He showed me his very impressive collection (he has LOTS of really cool Hell Creek and White River material), and a rapidly growing section of Pleistocene mammals. We spent some time IDing our bones of the day and found out I had mainly found horse material, while his finds were more diverse (mammoth, deer, horse, etc). 

 

We also discussed the possible age of the fossils. Obviously the erratic fossils are almost impossible to date, unless a very accurate taxonomic ID is done (which seems difficult given their poor preservation), so that's only guesswork. However the Ice Age mammal bones, which all seem to come from the same layer, are more interesting. There's a lot of mammoth ivory present, so it must be older than about 14'000 years ago (which I think is approximately when the mammoths left Western Europe). However the bones don't seem very heavily mineralized (compared to the Zandmotor finds), so we're guessing they're probably generally younger (but we are aware that this may just be due to differences in sediments: the gravelly bed of the lake may have been less suitable for fossilization than the sandy North Sea beds). This is backed up by us not having found any evidence of the woolly rhino Coelodonta antiquatis, a species that's rather 'common' at the Zandmotor (and would probably have liked the mammoth-steppe environment of Lathum enjoyed by the mammoths and wild horses); this species started to become a lot less common after about 35'000 years ago. So we think that the age of our bones range somewhere between the 25'000 to 15'000 years ago, although this is very approximate (the Zandmotor finds often hover around the 40'000 year old mark). 

[Max-fossils]

Towards the end of the day, a little before I was about to leave, Tijn decided to spoil me with 4 incredible fossils:

A Dimetrodon vertebra from the Wellington Formation of the Lower Permian, from Waurika, Oklahoma

 

An oreodont (Merycoidodon culbertsoni) jaw from the Upper Brule Formation from the Rupelian stage of the Oligocene (32 mya), from the White River, Wyoming.

 

A hornless rhino (Subhyracodon occidentalis) tooth in jaw, also from the White River

 

And an early horse (Mesohippus) jawpiece from the "Chocolate" White River

 

Such incredible gifts! Thanks again Tijn!

Overall it was a very fun day, and I came home with way better (and more!) fossils than I had anticipated. Both the fossil gods and the fossil people were very generous with me that day!

Well, that's it, I hope you enjoyed reading  

 

Happy hunting!

 

Max

[Hunter0811]

What @Max-fossils forgot to mention is that I also got some really nice gifts from him and that he is also partially responsible for the rapid growth of my pleistocene mammal collection!! ;). Thanks again Max!!

[Max-fossils]

10 minutes ago, Hunter0811 said:

What @Max-fossils forgot to mention is that I also got some really nice gifts from him and that he is also partially responsible for the rapid growth of my pleistocene mammal collection!! ;). Thanks again Max!!

[RuMert]

Very nice jaw fragments

[PrehistoricWonders]

Awesome specimens!!!

[Monica]

Nice bones and teeth, Max!  Congrats!