Trip To Cf Industries Phosphate Mine

[digit]

This Saturday I had the opportunity to make a trip to Central Florida (CF Industries) phosphate mine to hunt for fossils. The little town of Wauchula in central Florida created a non-profit organization called Peace River Explorations which currently resides in the refurbished (long out of service) train station in the middle of town. They are hoping to broaden the economy of the area to bolster tourism in addition to citrus and cattle which are the primary two industries. To that end as a fund raiser they have periodically worked with one of the local phosphate mines (open pit--really more like a quarry) to provide supervised visits to the spoil pile area for a day of fossil hunting.

I did this once several years ago with limited success--surface hunting is an entirely different skill set than sifting for fossils in the rivers/creeks. Did come away with a reasonable 2" meg last time and a few other bones, vertebrae, etc. but no great prizes. At the very last minute (late Friday morning) my wife I decided to give it a go again and woke up at 4am to drive across state to arrive at the converted train station in the center of Wauchula to join a group of 10 others on a trip to the mine for the day. I was happy to hear that Mark Renz (one of my very favorite local fossil gurus) was slated to come along to lead the trip and help identify finds.

The weather ranged from low overcast clouds with a hint of imminent thundershowers to blue skies with baking sun with a cold front blowing in from the north to finish the day off many degrees colder than it started. It was hard to believe this was all the same day with such variable weather conditions. Over the last week the area experienced some pretty heavy showers (a bit out of place for the middle of dry season). This benefitted us as a good rain helps bring items to the surface in the muddy/sandy matrix that was the spoil pile area that we hunted. I really should have pulled the camera out of the trunk and taken some photos of the area we were hunting in but somehow I was single-mindedly focused on covering as much of the area we were allowed to wander within with my head constantly pointed down scanning the ground in front of me. By the end of the day my neck muscles ached and the area between my shoulder blades burned from the strain of looking down. The area we hunted was about a hundred yards wide and a couple hundred yards long. Bulldozers had recently piled new material onto this area and dozed it flat. I used the dozer tracks to align myself as I walked a methodical back and forth pattern while sweeping the area looking for the hint of an edge or color that might indicate a fossil worth stopping for and picking out of the hardened muddy/sandy matrix with a screwdriver.

The recent rains obviously helped as many fossils were sitting proud on top of the now dried muddy matrix. Unfortunately the abuses they endured while being mauled by a dragline bucket, dump truck and bulldozer seemed to have reduced many a megalodon tooth to "fraglodons" or "shamers". I picked up over three dozen meg fragments many that were real teasers. You'd see a blade or part of a root protruding from the dried mud that it was sitting in and slowly work a screwdriver in beside the tooth only to see that there was usually little else hidden below the mud and all you had was another frag to add to the collection. Some of the teeth had interesting colors and pieces like the caramel colored blade fragment hinted at some awesomely colored teeth that once were before they were ground to bits.

It was kinda sad to see so many near misses but also interesting to see the density of megs that could be found in one day. Still, the fun for my wife and I is the hunt--the possibility that a great find will suddenly present itself like an unexpected gift from the fossil gods. The day wasn't all busted megs as I did manage to glean one mostly undamaged meg (2.25" in length) that was sitting flat on top of a little mound between dozer tread marks where the recent rains had uncovered it. It has a really nice blonde root and a nicely patterned steely gray blade. The interesting thing (to me) about this meg is that it is very cupped (toward the labial surface). Does anybody know why a meg tooth would be so curved?

Additional favorites found that day were a really nice shark vert that my wife found and a really colorful shard of a cusp of a mastodon tooth. Probably by favorite find of the day was the very last thing I picked up--a gorgeously colored horse tooth. I believe the clearly visible isolated protocone indicates that this would be from one of the species of 3-toed horses. Anybody who is up on equine dentistry feel free to chime in as to the probably species. I really like the color (unlike similar monochromatically black horse teeth from the Peace) and the fact that the cusps on the chewing surface are very sharp and not worn down. I'm guessing this is probably indication that this horse didn't live long enough to wear this molar down.

Surface hunting is an art much different from sorting through bits of gravel in a sifter. Because of the wider area covered we usually didn't spot much in the way of tiny shark teeth (though I got a few). I enjoyed the novelty of the experience as it quite different from sifting. Some day my wife and I want to make it up to the Carolinas to try our hand at surface hunting in the creeks up that way as it would be a different sort of experience (and we're all about the experience). Would be a good opportunity to find some different species of teeth as well.

Cheers.

-Ken

Below: A rogues gallery of broken megs, my "keepers", and my new favorite horse tooth.

[Uncle Siphuncle]

awesome excursion!

[busyeagle]

Sounds like fun! I fully agree that the chance of pulling out a gem makes it well worth all of the disappointments. Glad you got a few keepers to go with that impressive assortment of almosts.

[sixgill pete]

Excellent. You never know what you may find in the spoils of a phosphate mine. Great horse tooth.

[digit]

That horse tooth (the last thing I plucked from the ground) really was my favorite find of the day. Not the biggest but definitely the nicest example of equine dentition I now have in my limited collection.

Cheers.

-Ken

[lissa318]

Nice finds and LOVE the horse tooth! What a beautiful color!!! Congrats.

[Auspex]

What an interesting Org! Peace River Explorations

[FossilDudeCO]

Very nice finds, congrats, I have a couple horse teeth that Sacha sent me but they are black so I love that lighter color!

[RickNC]

Some good finds. A shame about all those once nice teeth.

[MakoMeCrazy]

Too bad more of those megs weren't complete. Still looked like a great day of hunting though!

[digit]

I find a higher percentage of whole megs as compared to shards while sifting river sediment so despite the trials and tribulations of being tumbled along a river bottom with gravel I guess it is still less damaging then industrial processes involving large diesel powered machinery.

Despite my sore neck muscles from scanning the area in front of my feet for hours it was still a fun day out. Among the other 10 hunters take was a really sweet upper and lower mako (both over 2"), some other nice horse chompers, some really nice ray dermal denticles, and of course more fraglodons. Always nice to hunt in a pack to see more of what the mine/quarry has to offer.

Cheers.

-Ken

[Mike and the Megs!]

Still a fun day and nice stuff!! I had the chance to

Make it over to white springs phosphate mines a while back and had a very similar experience with some teeth I though for sure were complete to only find a shard. I d def go back again tho

[Fallingfossils]

Very nice finds and I'm sure it was a great time with Mark Renz around. I took one of his tours a few years ago, he really is a great guy to get to know.

[digit]

Mark Renz was kind enough to send me a few photos from the trip out in the phosphate mine spoil pile. I'm suitably out of focus in the background with some in situ megs highlighted in the fore.

Enjoy.

-Ken

[digit]

Here we are at the end of the day comparing our fraglodons at the converted train station in Wauchula that houses the art gallery and home to Peace River Explorations.

Mark Renz enjoys taking unusual photos with his ultra wide angle lens (yours truly at the lower right of the frame unloading all my frags and shamers from my nail belt).

Cheers.

-Ken

[masonboro37]

I enjoyed your vivid report! Nice finds too and splendid horse tooth.

Libby

[jcbshark]

Thanks for sharing your pics Ken.At least you found some nice pieces but it is hard to stomach all those that were most likely very nice teeth before the heavy equipment.I swear if I worked in a mine I would be fired the first day, no way I could concentrate on work with all those fossils to be rescued lol.

[digit]

It really would be like being a kid in a candy store working there. Many of the workers have sizeable fossil collections. I too would be conflicted and would spend too much time off my dozer picking up fossils--I'd likely not last the week before I was looking for a paycheck elsewhere.

And thanks for the props, Libby. As is likely evident by now I have the 'gift of gab' and enjoy relating my experiences to a captive audience.

Cheers.

-Ken

[beachbum]

It looks like you had a great trip with some nice finds Ken.So,how was it with Mark Renz as your guide? See you guys Saturday,Jim

[digit]

Mark Renz was, as always, witty, engaged, cheerful and full of lots of good information to help those identify those odd little fossils that they know are probably something but just can't make out what. A day out fossil hunting with Mark would be fun even without the fossils (but, of course, extra fun WITH fossils).

Looks like we'll have another trip report from a gathering of TFF members as several of us from the greater southeast (Jim & Sally getting the award for greatest distance traveled). Hoping for good weather, low river levels, and lots of good finds to impress the Forum members currently snowed-in at higher latitudes so they can get their fossil fix while their hunting grounds are out of reach.

Cheers.

-Ken

[fossilselachian]

Fragladons or not given that you found upwards of 40 megs, not counting those found by other members of the group, the total count represents an incredible number of meg teeth in the area where the search was conducted.

[digit]

Yes indeed. There were quite a lot of megs surfacing that day. We covered an area of ground that was as big as several football fields so it does represent an area of several acres--still our group probably salvaged over 100 fraglodons in a single day of surface hunting. I'm betting that recent heavy rains (that spiked water levels in the Peace River) probably did us a big favor by exposing lots of fossils that were previously hidden under a small amount of clay and sand. If you notice the couple of pics from Mark Renz that I added to this thread yesterday, the bits of rock and gravel are standing proud on the surface of the muddy clay--a clear indication that the field was nicely prepped for a troupe of fossil hunters to make the most of.

I'd love to have access to some of the screened tailings from the phosphate process. The worker who was our chaperone while out on the spoil area mentioned that when they clean these screens several times a day that smaller teeth come out in the hundreds. The mine has a pile of gravel next to the lunch pavilion where they let school groups hunt for fossils when they come out for a tour of the operations. Last time we got access to the mine several years ago, the hunters spent most of their lunch break riffling through the "Kiddie Pile" finding lots of small teeth with excellent color. This trip we behaved ourselves and left these teeth for the next school group (though it was tempting to sort through this enriched pile of gravel). I bet somewhere in that complicated process of taking bulk material from the mine and sifting and chemically separating the phosphate that there is a screen of just the right size to catch an undreamed of density of meg teeth (and similar sized fossils). Oh, to have the connections to the person who has to clean that screen....

Cheers.

-Ken

[dozer operator]

Great report Ken! I lovee surface hunting. The horse tooth is sweet!

[Shellseeker]

To provide those who have never visited a Florida phosphate mine, a sense of what CFI/Mosaic mine hunting looks like... walking around with your eyes staring at the grounds in (sometimes) blazing heat on bare rock and sand ... and a little phosphate.... and a few teeth.

[jcbshark]

To provide those who have never visited a Florida phosphate mine, a sense of what CFI/Mosaic mine hunting looks like... walking around with your eyes staring at the grounds in (sometimes) blazing heat on bare rock and sand ... and a little phosphate.... and a few teeth.

Picture2 007cma.jpgPicture2 008cma.jpgphotoA_BlueMeg.JPG

Beautiful posterior you have there Jack,those are some of the colors that make bone valley material so desirable.