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A Peace River Location


Shellseeker

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As noted elsewhere, I am accelerating into the end of season on the Peace River.  More days hunting, less sleep at night. I am finding lots of items to identify,  but not much time to photo, and post.

Normally I find Pleistocene mammal fossils, but in the huge variety of the Peace River, I sometimes run across something else.  Just sharing a different set of fossils.  Along with Equus and Tapir teeth,  I start finding seashells,  most are broken fragments because there are lots of rocks and bedrock in the river,  but a few recognizable.  Lots of this showing up on my sieve.

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but just a little of this....

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So thinking marine, will stay with that thought. I find fragments of ray teeth all the time,  but these chunks of ray mouthplate are pretty unusual and I have found 2-3 .

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and then a Meg...photographed with sunlight flowing thru screening:

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Now what seems to be a fish tooth ... or is it alligator

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and finally a bird claw and a horse tooth.

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It was pretty hot out there and it is a lot easier to see small fossils in the sunshine. I managed to position myself so that the screen was in the sunshine, and I am in the shade, standing over the location producing this wide variety and age of fossils.

I think this last horse tooth may be too small for Equus, making this location at least Pliocene, and possibly Miocene.

 

I was also considering which fossils were the rarest for me to find... the fish tooth and the ray plate fragments. Enjoy,  Jack

 

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

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I love the botryodial chalcedony. I always keep those when they turn up. 

 

I think some of the marine shells we find might be weathering out of the eocene limestone layer along with the echinoids and sand dollar pieces we find in our screens. I've taken home a couple of sea-shell encrusted river rocks. Some of them look like clusters of shell remnants bound inside the limestone itself. I'm not sure about the formation and distribution of this stuff, so I am talking from hunches and not from an authoritative standpoint. My knowledge of inverts is lagging far behind my vert knowledge.

 

That river is still low. I am soooooo tempted, but will probably hold off. It looks like next week we have more widespread rain coming, but if these low river levels keep up, I may give in to temptation eventually.

 

 

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Super photos and finds.  Guess that is the next part of this hobb for, a good camera and learn more about photoshop.  


I made it out yesterday, and it absolutely poured about 3 to 4:30.   Not sure how much the river rose, it didn’t look like they got that much north on my way home.  That was my last trip for the season.  A bit unsettling holding a shovel with the metal portion buried in the sand and water when the lightning starts popping :)

 

I didn’t find a ton yesterday, but more Meg frags than I’ve found, so I was hoping.  
 

I did find one bone that interests me, I need to do some research to see if I can ID it.  Someone mentioned an elephant foot bone, so I guess I’ll start looking there.   

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18 hours ago, PaleoNoel said:

Beautiful talon, congratulations!

This is a very small talon,  15.5 mm broken may get to 17-18 mm complete. This would still be from a very small hawk, like the sharp_shinned Hawk. Compared below to the Peregrine Falcon talon at 22 mm.

It is not an Osprey because that raptor has round talons, not grooved.

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

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4 hours ago, Family Fun said:

Super photos and finds.  Guess that is the next part of this hobb for, a good camera and learn more about photoshop.

 

My gear is not all that impressive.

I have an old think-pad with a barely supported version of Windows. , I use the Camera in my iphone 11, the Apple Cloud for storage of photos,  the windows photo viewer, along with FREE software: Infanview, SnippingTool.

Over time, I have become an expert on focus on small objects, using halogen or sunlight, and above all cropping as tight as possible.

 

On your bone , anything 8 inches long means one of the Elephant types or possibly whale from the peace River.

I have a few large Mammoth leg bones all of which are smaller than your bone.  You should send photos to the University of Florida fossil identification service.

@digit

 

 

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

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5 hours ago, Family Fun said:

I did find one bone that interests me, I need to do some research to see if I can ID it.  Someone mentioned an elephant foot bone, so I guess I’ll start looking there.  

Peace River bones are notoriously dark and can be hard to photograph to show the details. Best not to use a white background as that usually causes the camera to underexpose creating more shadowy images of Peace River finds. Try photos outside in bright light (if it is not raining) and look for a medium brightness background--often a table or towel can work. zoom in to make the image fill the frame as best as possible (keeping things in focus).

 

Assuming you are not passing through Gainesville anytime soon, it is easiest to send photos to Richard Hulbert. The contact information can be found here:

 

https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/vertpaleo/amateur-collector/fossil-id/

 

The bone is worn so that works against a positive ID but it is also large so that limits things it could be. Let us know if you get back any information from Richard.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

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We’ll thank you so much!  I figured the white background worked best, but it makes perfect sense to use something a bit darker.

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White works well for high contrast but a darker background will lighten up these dark fossils to allow the details to show.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

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I emailed Mr. Hulbert, I’ll let you know if I get a response.  
 

thank you both,

 

Rick

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Well that was a super quick response.  Dr. hulbert confirmed it is a mostly intact patella from either a mastodon or mammoth 

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9 hours ago, Family Fun said:

Well that was a super quick response.  Dr. hulbert confirmed it is a mostly intact patella from either a mastodon or mammoth 

Congratulations!!! You have been VERY successful.  You found an unknown bone in the Peace River and you have a positive identification after a couple of days.. as good as it gets !!!!

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

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On 6/12/2021 at 12:26 PM, Shellseeker said:

I think this last horse tooth may be too small for Equus, making this location at least Pliocene, and possibly Miocene.

 

I think you've found an Equus sp. right m2.  They run smaller than the premolars usually; but, if it's really under-size, I might consider calling it Equus cf. E. simplicidens.  (See note 75 to Hulbert's species list.)

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http://pristis.wix.com/the-demijohn-page

 

What seest thou else

In the dark backward and abysm of time?

---Shakespeare, The Tempest

 

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34 minutes ago, Harry Pristis said:

 

I think you've found an Equus sp. right m2.  They run smaller than the premolars usually; but, if it's really under-size, I might consider calling it Equus cf. E. simplicidens.  (See note 75 to Hulbert's species list.)

 

Thanks Harry.  It would be surprising to find a pre_Equus horse tooth at this location. A marine mix with Pleistocene mammals is relatively common in the Peace River.

I will try to educate myself on E. simplicidens.

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

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