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Peace river report 5/15


JoshRockz

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Hello everyone! Reporting back from a trip to the peace yesterday 5/15! 
 

It ended up being a really beautiful day! Taking into consideration that we’ve been pushing into the upper 90s lately I was not looking forward to that 2pm heat stroke in my wetsuit. However I saw the depth drop back down after these heavy rains and figured I had maybe a few more trips before the gators, bugs and rain kick me out for the season for good!
 

I launched from Wauchula to go to the usual gravel islands upriver and only saw 1 juvenile gator where as a few weeks ago I saw 3 6-8 footers. I was hoping it being early and chilly they were somewhere away from me. I guess I’ll never know!

 

The areas I was digging in only had a foot and some inches of gravel before hitting the limestone. This was frustrating as I spent all night reading to refresh myself on “DIG DEEPER” philosophy we are all so familiar with. I was finding the usual, frags and smalls with nothing really to show for my efforts so I headed back downstream and spent a few hours at one spot with similar efforts. 

 

I decided to drift back down to the boat ramp and pass it because there was a 4 footer guarding the gravel bar near the bridge.

 

I ended up at a spot with a few people who had walked in about 50-100 yards downstream. They decided to leave and as they were passing me one of them stepped into a few foot hole. I thought that would be a good spot to dig as it looked 2 feet deeper than the one I had started digging in and I wasn’t wanting to put in any more serious effort for the day. 
 

After about 10 minutes of digging around that hole I noticed the gravel / rocks in this area were larger than the upriver gravel bars I was at earlier. I also pulled out 2 bullet casing, one 22 and one I couldn’t identify and some colored brown glass. Even though this layer I was digging in was basically clay textured karst / white matrix it was almost impossible to get through with my non spade tipped shovel. I started to widen out a little bit on the layer of gravel above the matrix and then I pulled this out...

 

Sometimes this place makes me wonder if I should buy a lottery ticket on the way home. 
 

Could anyone give me some more info on this find? The Facebook group I am on suggested mammoth, and maybe Colombian mammoth. This is definitely the best tooth I have found on the river so far! 

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DAD38F2F-972E-4FE8-A9AF-6E3EED2B3D54.jpeg

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Nice chunk of Mammoth tooth in that first pic - congrats!  If you want a good chance for an ID on the smaller one (I am leaning toward mammoth)some better pictures would help.  Here is a diagram from a post by @Fossildude19 that shows the best way to photograph your fossil for an id. 

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10 hours ago, JoshRockz said:

Could anyone give me some more info on this find? The Facebook group I am on suggested mammoth, and maybe Colombian mammoth. This is definitely the best tooth I have found on the river so far! 

 

Great find  !!! I love Mammoth, Mastodon, Gomphothere...  any type of elephant ancestor.

You have found 3 plates plus of what was very likely a lower tooth of a Colombian Mammoth.  We used to ID 2 mammoths in Florida, but the scientists decided that the Imperial Mammoth was actually a slight variation of the Colombian Mammoth !!  Mammoth have a total of 4 teeth in their jaw at a time 2 uppers, 2 lowers.  The uppers tend to be much bigger than the lowers.

 

A number of years back I was hunting with a friend, who found a complete lower mammoth tooth about 15 feet from me. I purchased it from him. I had never found a complete tooth.  4 Months later he found a second !!! tooth about 20 feet from the 1st.  You had to pass over the location going from the Islands to Heard Bridge. IMG_8082.thumb.JPEG.3d9740f5b751d1007ef0028d184712e0.JPEG

 

I think yours was part of a lower because the lower teeth are much smaller than the uppers in both length and width.  What is the width of your tooth?  A lower tooth likely has 10-11 plates, so you have about 25% of a full tooth.  Your section came from the distal part of the tooth. TuberclesDiagram.JPG.88add3015a2d257bbcb6f0167d663d5c.JPG

 

Keep digging deep.  Endurance and time uncovers the treasures.

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The White Queen  ".... in her youth she could believe "six impossible things before breakfast"

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