Peace River Finds- What Are These?

[autographcollector11]

These were found in the peace river last year. I split them into 2 groups. The right are clearly fossils and one is a small turtle shell I presume. The largest piece is the brown piece on the left which is about one inch. I included a few images of each including the side view on a few on the left. What is interesting is that the inside of the left grouping is black. It looks like a rock I guess?

For the fossils, can these be identified. I know that many are fragments but your expert opinions would be appreciated for both groupings.

Thanks

[Sacha]

The left bits look kind of tusky and kind of turtley. Most tusk material we find is in small fragments like that, but the photos are small and hard to determine with such small bits. The right bits I'm clueless on without holding in my hand and even then it might be a wild guess. In spots 5 or 10% of the river gravel consists of bone and shell fragments and much of it is impossible to connect to a specific animal.

[digit]

The items on the left that look a bit tusky or trurtley might in fact but a bit muddy. I find all sorts of interesting phosphate "mud" pieces when I'm hunting in the Peace. It would be interesting to see the surfaces of those thinly laminated pieces to see if there is any interesting texture. From the side they look quite a bit like the thin sheets of muddy matrix which can be common in some areas. One of my friend's young sons came with us on a trip (trying to hook them on fossils while they are young and impressionable). He had a penchant for pulling oddly shaped pieces of "mud" matrix and asking what they were. When I told him "fossil mud" he said, "Cool!" and pocketed the pieces. He said he was going to have the world's best collection of fossil mud--and he just might.

In the right pile there is an example of an "Indian bead". They seem to be of dubious origin and nobody can say for sure if they are artifacts made from firing a thin coating of clay around a reed or if they are some sort of invertebrate or root trace fossil. Cool to collect nonetheless.

If you are currently up in Anchorage I think you need to need to make an excuse to come down to the relative warmth of South Florida and see what else you can pull out of the Peace River. I'd be happy to make sure you come away with lots of certified turtle shell and a variety of shark teeth and other odds and ends.

Cheers.

-Ken