End Of Season Peace River Trip

[digit]

My wife Tammy and I made it out for one last trip to the Peace River for this season. I expect I'll be busy and won't have a chance to get back to the river before the summer rains usher in another rainy season with raging river levels depositing a new layer of gravel (and erasing any of the pot holes and spoil piles that us fossil hunters have worked so hard at this season--like shaking a giant Etch a Sketch).

We experimented with a 1/2" mesh retrofit on one of our sifting screens since John (Sasha) and Jeff (jcbshark) have used them to great end. The spot we focused on in the Peace River was an area of large chunky gravel with bowling ball size boulders of matrix mixed in. This gravel bed has never turned up much in the way of smaller finds or tiny shark teeth so we figured we'd not be missing much with the wider screen mesh. As Jeff had commented on, you sure can shovel a lot of material through the wider mesh before filling a screen. I went from an average of 3 shovels full per screen (with the 1/4" mesh) to 6-10 shovels with the more coarse mesh. As there is a lot less tiny gravel to sort through in the sifter it takes very little time to parse through what the screen has kept from passing through. It was definitely a quick way to zip through a large amount of gravel.

The very first screen produced a nice Equus lower molar which was a nice way to start the day. Though this site has produced some interesting finds in the past (a couple of 3 lb. mammoth tooth chunks, large makos, glyptodont rosettes, and even a gold wedding ring and tie tack--there must be a story there) this trip didn't produce much in the way of "wow" moments. The water was over 2' lower than when we tried this site just two weeks ago so it was much easier to dig and even visually locate the chunky gravel areas. Since I'd found large chunks of mammoth tooth there in the past it seemed necessary to reach down and inspect every large chunk that wouldn't balance on the shovel on its way to the sifter. Sadly we only had large chunks of matrix and no heart-stopping moment when a large, intact mammoth tooth reveals itself from the tannic waters--maybe next season.

Though we hunted alone this weekend without the company of any of the South Florida TFF members, we did have a companion of sorts. While standing in waist deep water about 20' from the shore where our canoe was parked I looked out while chucking larger pieces of matrix away from our digging area. Just after a shoebox size chunk of rock had left my hands I noticed it was heading in the vicinity of a young gator which had come to the surface for air (and likely to see what all the commotion was about). Though the rock created a great depth charge of a splash not 3 feet from the gator's head it didn't spook but simply slowly descended back into the tea colored water. Had this been a 13' adult I'd have given it as wide a berth as possible as I cautiously slinked back to my canoe but as this was a juvenile probably less than 4' I chose to keep my eye on him (or her?) while we continued to dig and sift. We continued to volley shots in the general direction in an effort to make our nearby surroundings a less appealing for this living fossil. Undaunted, Al (as we took to calling him) stayed with us for several hours periodically surfacing near the shore for a breath of air and to keep an eye on his unruly new neighbors. Luckily, the only gator tooth I encountered was a black one that surfaced in my sifting screen. We've seen gators occasionally on the Peace but this is the only time we've been within 10' of one while in the water.

We dug through a lot of the coarse gravel but it didn't deliver much other than dugong rib bones. They are exceedingly common at this site with every shovel full of material bringing up 2-3 fragments. I wondered if it was possible to dig a shovel full of gravel and not turn up at least one dugong frag and I think the only time I did was when I ventured off the gravel deposit into more sandy areas.

We found a few whale (dolphin) ear bones (tympanic bullas) though most were pretty beat-up and fragmented. I had to laugh when I got 3 of these in a single screen of gravel--we ended up with 9 in total. There was a lot of small fragments of mammoth and mastodon (or gomphothere) teeth and even few small pieces of tusk ivory that ended up in our sifting screen but the largest piece of what might be proboscidean was a large rib? fragment. It's a bit big and not the right shape for dugong and besides it has a decidedly apparent marrow space.

We had a nicely complete fish (shark?) vert that was just a little too big to fall through the sifting screen and so came home with us. The other vert we found was not fossilized but recent and I assumed might be gator (though I have to look through other possibilities like deer or pig as well).

We were hoping for some nice glyptodont rosettes but they eluded us this time. Instead we had several armor plates from Holmesina (mostly broken pieces but one complete and in nice shape). In addition to many frags we ended up with three nice horse lower molars including the smallest one we've ever found (just over 1/2" across). I'll have to consult some books to see if this is just a juvenile Equus or a smaller species (I suspect the former). A couple of bison molar frags rounded out the mammal teeth for the trip.

Turtle shell was relatively absent this time with only a few nuchal plates from the carapace and another "peace sign" gular-humeral plate from the plastron. The nearly 2" long leg spur (osteoderm) from a large land tortoise was the trip maker for me (I'm oddly quite fond of these things).

Though we had dozens of meg frags (mostly nearly unidentifiable root fragments) we did find a real shamer--what would have been about a 3.5" meg split right down the center. Rather than caulk it to a hand mirror to make it "complete" this one will end up in my next goodie bag to be gifted to some unsuspecting friend's kid.

The only complete meg we found was a little 2" one that oddly didn't come from the site with coarse gravel but from an area with finer gravel. After our allotted time searching for big finds at the coarse gravel site we continued down river to an area that I know has a great abundance of fine (pea-size) gravel. in the past we've found areas of this gravel bed where 3 shovels into a sifter have revealed up to 2 dozen smaller shark teeth--great fun when you have a group of friends with kids. We had a competition to see who could get the most teeth in a screen and I think the winner was something like 25 or 26.

I wanted to stop at this location (coded FINE) in my handheld GPS because I figured this would be a good place to harvest some micro matrix. After seeing all of the fun that various TFF members have had picking though the fine gravel that Jeff (jcbshark) and John (Sasha) had collected I though it might be interesting to cache some of this material to play with during the off season (when the river it too high to hunt). I brought along one of my 1/4" sifters and had a piece of window screen material (roughly 1/16" openings) to set inside my new 1/2" mesh sifting screen. By double stacking the two screens I could sort out some micro matrix. The 1/4" mesh on top kept out any larger gravel while the 1/16" mesh fitted into the bottom sifter let the sand and tiny gravel pass through. This left micro matrix with a grain size roughly 1/16" to 1/4" in diameter sitting in the lower sifter.

My wife took a turn with the shovel loading up the stacked screens and she hunted for any tiny teeth trapped by the upper sifter while I worked the finer gravel in the bottom screen till the sand had made it through the fine mesh. I brought along a 5 gallon bucket to dump the micro matrix into and soon had the bucket nearly filled. You can imagine that this bucket ended up rather heavy and I got the brainy idea to put the sifting screen on top of the bucket and invert it on the sandy shore so the trapped water could drain away reducing what weight I could. After it had drained well I flipped the bucket upright and scooped back into the bucket the gravel that had spilled out into the sifter. While doing this the bucket regained most of its weight and unfortunately the sandy sloped shoreline where I was working gave way as the titled bucket approached full fill tipping a good portion of its contents back into the water at the edge of the shore. After some choice words I re-scooped a combination of micro matrix, sand, and water back into the bucket and loaded it into the canoe. I'd deal with cleaning-up the matrix at home. The matrix is now spread out on a plastic tarp sunning in my driveway. Once it is quite dry I figure it will sift more easily. I'll give it another pass or to over some more window screen mesh and then store it in a dry place to play with later.

I'll be bringing some samples of this mesh to Chicago next week when I head up there to do a little more fossil hunting north of the Mason-Dixon line. Though I didn't collect as much micro matrix as I had intended (next time remember to take more buckets) I may make some more care packs of Peace River micro matrix available on the Forum if there is still interest.

Cheers.

-Ken

[fossilized6s]

Nice report Ken! That is a mighty fine spur!

It always is a bit hair raising when you see a gator while in waist deep water....Hopefully all of the tourists will continue to not feed them so they don't approach humans for a free handout meal.

[Shellseeker]

Good report -- I never tire of reading about the Peace RIver.. On the gators I have seen a couple this week, mostly because the water is so shallow that they have fewer places to hide. Both gators were in the 3-4 foot range and I imagine that this is a a very dangerous time ----- for them!!!

One of the little gators was missing about a third of its tail --- likely donated to a larger gator. I worry about the fools that think it is fun to kill gators more than I worry about the gators.

[Plantguy]

Hey Ken, thanks for the update. Getting out in the creek and on the river and finding this kind of stuff has spoiled me bad! Thanks for sharing you alls latest finds. That snake? vert intrigues me! Regards, Chris

[jcbshark]

Thanks for the report Ken, love the nice Meg and horse teeth! Congrats!

[Cam28]

Nice report and finds Ken. Been a great first season of fossil hunting, including once with you guys. Sooner or later I'll find a complete meg too!

[digit]

Hey Ken, thanks for the update. Getting out in the creek and on the river and finding this kind of stuff has spoiled me bad! Thanks for sharing you alls latest finds. That snake? vert intrigues me! Regards, Chris

I'm hoping that the big (recent and non-fossilized) vert doesn't turn out to be snake as it would have to be from one of the giant pythons that have invaded the Everglades. I've tried to compare it to photos of gator verts as well as deer which would be the other logical choice given the size. Neither seem to match-up with this one precisely so I'm not really sure of the former owner of this vert. As it is not fossilized it was kept more for curiosity sake and won't make it to my bowls of Peace River fossils in my collection.

-Ken

[digit]

Thanks for the report Ken, love the nice Meg and horse teeth! Congrats!

The tiny horse lower molar is my favorite of the day. It's in pretty good shape and it is positively tiny compared to the similarly shaped molars I usually find. Will have to look at the occlusal surface and study the enamel pattern but I'm guessing it is just a very young Equus molar and not something from one of the smaller horse species.

The small (2") complete meg brought quite a laugh when it was discovered. Tammy had taken a turn shoveling so I could manage the double stacked sifting screens. We'd been finding quite a number of the usual small shark teeth in the 1/4" screen and unexpectedly we came across a nice 1"+ complete sand tiger tooth (not very common in the Peace River). Tammy commented that it would be funny if we found a meg here after finding only frags at the previous coarse gravel site. Quite literally one second later I pulled the 2" meg from the screen and without missing a beat said, "Like this one?" to her utter amazement. It's silly things like this that may the hard work of shoveling gravel into a sifter all day worth the effort.

-Ken

[digit]

As I mentioned before, I collected some micro-matrix in order to have something to do when the fossil hunting itch strikes while the river is raging throughout the summer. My goal is to find a cookie cutter shark tooth. The cookie cutter shark has been one of my all-time favorite shark species since I learned about it as a kid. Not only does this small species of dogfish shark have photophores on its ventral surface to stealthily blend into the water column (cool by itself) but its novel method of feeding has always amused me. For those who don't know this species has suction-cup like lips that it uses to attach to larger animals (usually whales or larger fishes). It then uses its saw-like lower jaw to scoop-out a plug of flesh. I remember seeing video of a large whale that was pockmarked with these divots. Personally, I would have named the shark the "ice cream scooper shark".

Till I find my cookie cutter shark tooth I'm having fun sorting through my collected micro-matrix. Yesterday I did a binge hunt at my desk with a Solo cup full of matrix, a paper plate, small LED light, dental pick and my 10x photographer's loupe. For those not old enough to have gray hair yet, smart phones did not always exist and photography was once done with rolls of celluloid film involving a chemical process that generally took hours if not days to actually see what your photos looked like. My loupe hasn't gotten as much use these days as I'm no longer using it to check the focus or exposure of the tens of thousands of slides I've taken--in fact the last (chemical) photo I took was in Indonesia in 2005. I've found that looking backwards through my loupe held close to my eye allows me to hover above the micro-matrix adjusting the distance to bring the bits into sharp focus (at 10x magnification).

My process for searching micro-matrix has been the following:

1) Pour out a line of micro-matrix across the width of a white paper plate.

2) Tap and slightly agitate the plate so that the fine gravel splays out into a single level for better searching.

3) Holding the reversed loupe in one hand with a small LED flashlight angled above it to brightly light the matrix allows me to focus in on the greatly magnified matrix.

4) As I scan along the line of matrix from one side of the plate to the other I use the dental pick to manipulate individual pieces for a better view.

5) Any micro fossils can be separated out using the pick and moved to the side for later collection.

6) After scanning the line of micro gravel I pick up the tiny fossils mainly by pressing a finger onto them and temporarily sticking them to a fingertip.

7) The micro fossils get dropped into a small lidded container and the scanned matrix is poured into a collection Solo cup.

The process can become quite addictive (especially when you get a couple of nice micro shark teeth from a line of gravel). A comfy chair and a workspace at the right level can help minimize back strain during an activity which is basically hunching over a paper plate. Short intervals of searching with breaks would be indicated as well to reduce back and shoulder soreness though it is hard not to pour another line--not quite as addictive as another white crystalline substance poured into lines (but close).

So far I've found a bunch of tiny tiny shark teeth, some ray pavement tooth plates, pharyngeal teeth (drums and/or porgies), a few tiny ganoid garfish scales, and some miscellaneous bits and bobs. Cookie cutter dentition still eludes me but then what would be the fun if they were common? Here's a few snaps with my point-and-shoot in super macro mode.

-Ken

[fossilized6s]

Looks promising Ken! Good luck with your hunt.

I would suggest using a pair of plastic tweezers next time. I've tried the finger thing, but when you lose your first micro to the floor gnomes you'll rethink your approach.

And yes, the hunt for micros is very addictive and sometimes all consuming on those reclusive "relaxing" days.

[beachbum]

Great finds Ken!! And you were right, it was your turn to find a meg on the next trip. Enjoy the hunt,Jim

[digit]

That's right--I guess it was my turn (alphabetically). Good thing I didn't find one out of turn or I'd have to throw it back....

-Ken