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My Trip To Peru.


PaleoRon

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I have always liked the colors and preservation of high quality Peruvian shark teeth and I have always wanted to go there and find my own. At the end of the fall semester (I am a full time college student) I found myself with a few weeks off before the spring semester started. Unfortunately, due to the frigid temperatures, I couldn't indulge in my tooth collecting hobby/obsession so I came up with a plan. I got on the internet and I found a fossil guide in Peru. The guy I contacted bills himself as the Desert Man. I had read that he charged $100 a day for desert tours. Not chump change, but reasonable if you're finding killer stuff. When I contacted him the price had gone up to $150 a day. Not what I had been expecting but looking at the pics on his site, maybe it was worth it. When I told him I just wanted to look for teeth the price went up to $250 a day. This was not good. Then he told me we would do a 50 - 50, and split all the teeth we found during the trip evenly and I got to pick first. Wow, thanks. At this point alarm bells were starting to ring and I'm thinking it's time to "just say no". While this is going through my mind I get an email from a friend who tells me that going with the guy is a VERY bad idea. I also heard from someone who lived in that part of Peru who told me it was a VERY bad idea to go with this guy. I had pretty much decided that things were not to my liking and hearing from other people made me feel like I wasn't paranoid. Needless to say I made other contacts. Most of my trip was just checking out different areas by bus and taxi, but I managed to spend one 9 hour day in the desert.

After spending the night in a bamboo and adobe house I headed out into the desert on the back of a motorcycle. The fossil area is huge and the productive areas are several miles apart. In the areas that produce teeth there are many thousands of bone fragments and hundreds of exploded tooth fragments. Most of the bone looks like toothpicks due to the harsh climate. The sun bakes the fossils making them expand and eventually the stress is too much and they fragment. I saw one small baleen whale skull that was composed of tiny fragments that hadn't spread out too far and still preserved the outline of the skull. I saw other skulls that were exploded but the pieces were still several inches across. There were a couple of oyster beds that covered many acres and were 100 percent oysters and a few areas with lots of bone and no shells at all. In the afternoon when the temperature climbs above 90 degrees the wind starts to blow and within an hour it is blowing really hard and anything exposed gets sandblasted, including skin.

I found about 100 teeth but most were fragments that I gave to local kids. I ended up finding less than a dozen complete teeth but the megalodon made up for the lack of numbers. All things considered it was an interesting adventure. I don't know if I would do it again, but I won't rule it out completely.

Here is the link to the pics. Enjoy.

http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?au...m&album=347

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Doesn't Peru have a ban on exporting fossils, or is that just Chile?

Anyway, Nice stuff! :D

Tha tighin fodham, fodham, fodham!

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One incredible journey. Thank you for posting the pictures. I can appreciate what you went through, getting off the beaten path in Peru. I lived in Lima for a couple of years many years ago. The landscape in many places is very harsh, but I found it beautiful.

Besides fossils,

I collect roadcuts,

Stream beds,

Winter beaches:

Places of pilgrimage.

Jasper Burns, Fossil Dreams

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wow. i mean, you actually went to the peruvian desert and got a meg from there. there's no way that coulda been better unless you'd gone there on a horse with no name...

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Hey Ron. It is nice to get/find some really good fossil, but you must have had one GREAT adventure with meeting lots of different people, eating new foods and lots of new sight seeing. When you are older, you will have more stories to tell. Thats what its all about my freind.

RB

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Wow, what a trip! That's great! If only I had know there were fossils there :faint: I've been to Iquitos and traveled up and down the Amazon on a house boat. I also flew over to Lima. It's a vast contrast.

The soul of a Fossil Hunter is one that is seeking, always.

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Sweeeeet Meg, awesome adventure!!!!!

Very awsome!!!! I would love to be lucky enough to go there.A trip to remember!!!!

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Awesome tooth! To be able to just get up and go like that on a whim is a true joy. Savor it!

In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of defeat: but in the evolution of real knowledge, it marks the first step in progress toward victory.

Alfred North Whithead

'Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia!'

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Hey Ron. It is nice to get/find some really good fossil, but you must have had one GREAT adventure with meeting lots of different people, eating new foods and lots of new sight seeing. When you are older, you will have more stories to tell. Thats what its all about my freind.

RB

It was very interesting spending two weeks with people who don't speak English. I speak a little Spanish so my language books came in handy. The food was good, plentiful, and cheap. Everything was cheap except gasoline, it was about $5.00 a gallon.

The worst thing about going to college right now is that I'm twice as old as a "traditional" student.

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...The worst thing about going to college right now is that I'm twice as old as a "traditional" student.

You are young at heart, but with the confidence and wisdom born of experience. I wasn't particularly surprised to learn that you up and went fossil hunting (on your own) in Peru. You're one of those guys who does stuff, and does it well. Congrats!

"There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant

“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley

>Paleontology is an evolving science.

>May your wonders never cease!

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Ron:

What was your sense of the extent of fossil shark hunting today in Peru? How about fossil collecting in general within the country?

Enjoyed the pics, thanks for posting.

FS

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Ron:

What was your sense of the extent of fossil shark hunting today in Peru? How about fossil collecting in general within the country?

Enjoyed the pics, thanks for posting.

FS

There are a couple of huge areas that produce fossils, but the productive areas are spread out over miles of desert. There are local collectors who scour the desert for fossils on an almost daily basis so the chances of finding an untouched area are pretty low. I think a determined person with a couple of weeks and a four wheel drive vehicle could find some decent material. I found a very nice megalodon tooth on my one day outing, but I was told that finding a tooth like that is a rare occurence.

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According to the webpage for the book:

CHAPTER 10: Render under Peru what is Peru's. Removing fossils from this beautiful country is strictly forbidden. The law here has eyes and teeth.

Looks like you might have been lucky to make it out with your meg and your own teeth as well :)

Ron - Way Cool!

Mark Renz just published a few assets - CD and Video on a fossil shark hunting trip to Peru: http://www.paleopress.net/

---Wie Wasser schleift den Stein, wir steigen und fallen---

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Doesn't Peru have a ban on exporting fossils, or is that just Chile?

Anyway, Nice stuff! :D

Nice photos and great meg find!

I believe Peru does ban fossil exports. A friend went there to document the age of the strata from which Gordon Hubbell's C. carcharias skull came out of. This was for research towards his dissertation. He found the exact spot where the skull and vertebrae were extracted decades earlier, and was able to estimate the age of the strata and thus the age of the shark remains. He and his professors and other students came upon a huge fossil whale skull and other finds in the desert but were not able to bring them back with them due to the ban.

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Have any FF members seen/viewed the CD and video?? If so, any comments?

I have not, but have considered purchasing them as they look interesting.

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  • 10 years later...
On 1/16/2009 at 5:08 PM, Sharktoothguy11222 said:

Doesn't Peru have a ban on exporting fossils, or is that just Chile?

Anyway, Nice stuff! :D

Yes,  the are LEGAL to sell in the country, so fossils are in every market.  But it is ILLEGAL to export.  So you can buy it legally but you cant take them out of the country.  when I went I bought a few amonites and the were xray detected at the airport and I was hauled into a basement room and the were confiscated.  I wasn't there for fossils so it didnt Dawn on me that it was an issue since the were being sold everywhere.  

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