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12/10/07 Finds


Cris

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Anson and I got out for the first time in forever today.. Hunted a little creek for an hour and a half looking for some sharks teeth. Can't wait until we can hunt the river for Pliestocene stuff again.. It got high and dark not too long ago..

I was clearing the sticks away in a muddy part of the creek so I could sift the gravel at the bottom and out popped the little whale (or Dugong?) vertebrae. That was my best find for the day.. It tapers a lot from the front to the back, so I'm guessing it was getting closer to the tail. Found a couple nice liiiittle Hemipristis serra teeth... When I say little, I mean some of them were tiiiny.. Could set 'em on top of your little fingernail :P

If anybody could, I'd like to get a positive ID on this vertebrae... I've found whale, porpoise and dugong teeth all in the same part of this creek.. My first thought was "whale vert" when I saw it, so I'm going with that.... What do you guys think?

post-16-1197336312_thumb.jpg post-16-1197336337_thumb.jpg

post-16-1197336367_thumb.jpg post-16-1197336382_thumb.jpg

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Nice haul, but I bet I had more fun shoveling snow and chipping the ice off my driveway in anticipation of the next winter storm ;) (humor me, I HATE WINTER)

There's no limit to what you can accomplish when you're supposed to be doing something else

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Snow and free health care in exchange for hurricanes and shark teeth. What to do, what to do :Cave Man:

There's no limit to what you can accomplish when you're supposed to be doing something else

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On Sat I hit a little Cretaceous ditch in San Antonio not far from my house and got a few echinoids and ammonites, not a bad start for the weekend when my wife thought I was Christmas shopping.

Sunday was the main event, another river trip. It was a long consisting of systematic searches of 4 gravel bars and one bank. Best finds included a horse jaw with one molar and the symphesis intact, a camel tooth, my first gator osteoderm, 2 Holmesina osteoderms, and a killer 3 inch spear point. I also grabbed the end of a mammoth limb bone, several horse teeth, several verts, deer toes, deer antlers, bison bones, and lots of turtle and tortoise shell frags. Not my best day, not my worst, but certainly worth the effort. Usually each trip has one find that stands out beyond the rest. This time it was the spear point.

Images will be available once I get around to posting my December report on the museum website.

Grüße,

Daniel A. Wöhr aus Südtexas

"To the motivated go the spoils."

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Maaaan, you're killing me, Dan................ Anson and I have gooot to get back to the river...... I miss all the gator teeth, Holmesina osteoderms and whatnot...

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Maaaan, you're killing me, Dan................ Anson and I have gooot to get back to the river...... I miss all the gator teeth, Holmesina osteoderms and whatnot...

It's called location, location, location ------ :)

-----"Your Texas Connection!"------

Fossils: Windows to the past

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Anson and I got out for the first time in forever today.. Hunted a little creek for an hour and a half looking for some sharks teeth. Can't wait until we can hunt the river for Pliestocene stuff again.. It got high and dark not too long ago..

I was clearing the sticks away in a muddy part of the creek so I could sift the gravel at the bottom and out popped the little whale (or Dugong?) vertebrae. That was my best find for the day.. It tapers a lot from the front to the back, so I'm guessing it was getting closer to the tail. Found a couple nice liiiittle Hemipristis serra teeth... When I say little, I mean some of them were tiiiny.. Could set 'em on top of your little fingernail :P

If anybody could, I'd like to get a positive ID on this vertebrae... I've found whale, porpoise and dugong teeth all in the same part of this creek.. My first thought was "whale vert" when I saw it, so I'm going with that.... What do you guys think?

post-16-1197336312_thumb.jpg post-16-1197336337_thumb.jpg

post-16-1197336367_thumb.jpg post-16-1197336382_thumb.jpg

Way to go Chris! :Clap: You find in one day what takes me years to amass! I've never been lucky enough to find a "honey-hole" here. I need to move to Florida.

-----"Your Texas Connection!"------

Fossils: Windows to the past

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"Location, location, location" is a good start, but I'd like to modify that strategy to read "remoteness, timing, stealth". Play them all to their fullest and you'll be knee deep in fossils.

Grüße,

Daniel A. Wöhr aus Südtexas

"To the motivated go the spoils."

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"Location, location, location" is a good start, but I'd like to modify that strategy to read "remoteness, timing, stealth". Play them all to their fullest and you'll be knee deep in fossils.

I'd have to agree. The farther from the beaten track & right after a good rain usually produces some good finds. Now stealth can be construed a couple of ways. What & where you find stays with you or your being careful & quite when you go under that fence on private property. :rolleyes:

-----"Your Texas Connection!"------

Fossils: Windows to the past

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i would also add hard work to the list. here is utah things just don't wash out after a rain storm. i have to move alot of overburden and rock to find any quantity of the good stuff. that is one thing nice about stuff here. competition is not an issue in most places, as you can always dig deeper or wider.

brock

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Mike,

Well I'm not exactly quiet about what I've found. In fact I like talking fossils all the time. When the conversation turns to exactly where I went, I tend to get a bit squirrely. I work pretty hard for my sites and incur lots of expense in the process. I've shown people good sites in confidence in the past only to have them overused and even commercialized. I always have places to send people, especially beginners, but every man is entitled to a few secrets. Heck, I need to save something for my death bed! Hehehe

As for the whole private property thing, I must admit to having torn several pairs of pants on barbed wire in my earlier years but these days I've done a better job of talking to private landowners and quarry operators with decent results in spinning our conversation into permission to collect. I much prefer to take my time and methodically search an area than to keep looking over my shoulder for a hillbilly in overalls to come after me with a double barreled shotgun full of rock salt.

Grüße,

Daniel A. Wöhr aus Südtexas

"To the motivated go the spoils."

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Dan,

I agree as to getting permission. Things have changed, the law for one. I wouldn't dream of crossing a fence for any reason, anymore (too old to run for one :rolleyes:). Talking to the land owner & stating your reasons usually works. I've only been turned down once & that was because of some previous % fossil hunter left their property in shambles. I also had the misfortune of showing an unknown site to a new collector who starting hitting it when I wasn't there --- Which was not the agreement we had. It was the first & last time I ever did that. Just keep sharing your finds with us with plently photos & discriptions. That will do just fine by me. :)

Mike

-----"Your Texas Connection!"------

Fossils: Windows to the past

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Mike

Regarding trespassing, there is a stretch of creek I've been wanting to hit for ammonites and echinoids here in TX, but the banks are posted. I tracked down landowners through the tax office and they all told me to bug off. So what does a persistent collector do? Call the game warden. It turns out that the state owns the bed of the larger streams in the state, and so long as I enter from a county road bridge and stay below the woody vegetation level, I'm legal. That suits me fine as I'm only interested in bedrock and float. I plan to do my creek march this weekend with the game warden's cell number in my backpack should anyone not be overly thrilled with my presence.

Public access is a slippery slope at times. Often it is open to interpretation. I'm just glad that the game warden's interpretation coincides with mine. So through due diligence, one can proceed with the law on his side with no need to feel like he is trespassing.

Grüße,

Daniel A. Wöhr aus Südtexas

"To the motivated go the spoils."

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  • 2 weeks later...
i would also add hard work to the list. here is utah things just don't wash out after a rain storm. i have to move alot of overburden and rock to find any quantity of the good stuff. that is one thing nice about stuff here. competition is not an issue in most places, as you can always dig deeper or wider.

brock

Great place, utah. Was over at Dino National Monument this spring.

Pete

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Great place, utah. Was over at Dino National Monument this spring.

Pete

were you able to go inside the building and see the "wall" . last i heard it was closed and the building was condemned. i was in it making a mold of the big allosaur skull just a few weeks before they closed it. one of the rangers showed us all the damaged that the building has suffered over the years. door frames were very noticeably not square, i mean really not squre. the concrete floors all sloped very badly and you would sometime loose your balance walking on them . the best part were the support pillers that enclosed the actual wall. they had all been lifted off their foundations and were just hanging from the ceiling. it didn't really bother me but i could see why they closed it. i am just glad that before they did i got a chance to climb on the wall (with permission of course) to photograph an allosaurus foot that is still there.

i have heard that it is going to be along time before they decide what to do and reopen it to the public. it is really too bad, i think any dinosaur fanatic deserves to see it. truely a world class site.

brock

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