Slightly Off Topic, More Nj Shore Finds

[jpevahouse]

While I was on vacation at the Jersey Shore recently a story appeared in the news of a youngster finding a paleo indian flint point along the beach. Considering the rarity and oddity of finding a paleo point on any public swimming beach it's definitely newsworthy.

The tendency might be to assume the artifact had resided on the continental shelf along with mastodon remains for eons. But that is very unlikely, almost impossible considering sand along the popular public beachs of the NJ Shore is replished almost every year. Storms during the winter beat up and redefine the shore line every year. Beaches can get a serious work out from the pounding surf. During the spring many shore communities haul in sand to fill in the sand washed away during the winter.

There was discussion once before on this board about sand replishment along the NJ shore and where the sand came from. This discussion evolved from the question of various bones, corals and shells being introduced from outside the area. Where the sand actually comes from I'm not exactly sure, various places, but it was agreed sand is hauled from locations within NJ or nearby.

So, the paleo point could have originated from many locations on the mainland but the least likely place would be the continental shelf.

Another beach NJ find was the neck vertebrae of a giant ground sloth. It was found along a stone jetty on a public beach. Maybe something else hauled in with sand. The vertebrae was in better condition than it should have been for having been in the pounding surf for any amount of time. The ocean can eat up stuff really fast. The shore line is like a rock tumbler working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, year after year.

Edited September 7, 2014 by jpevahouse

[Al Dente]

Some small scale replenishment uses sand from sand pits hauled in by trucks but large scale uses offshore sand that is pumped onto the beaches. It is very expensive to haul in enough sand by trucks to replenish a large section of beach.

[tmaier]

Wherever humans congregate, weird floats can be found. That point might have been dropped by somebody who bought it at a souvenir store, who bought it from some supplier who got it from 2000 miles away.

On sci.bio.paleontology news a couple decades ago a person asked a paleontologist if they had ever found anything that was out of context with the strata they were working, and he replied that he once found a Homer Simpson doll, which he believed was a float because he was working the ordovician.

Edit:

This is funny because everybody knows the Homer Simpson dolls are only associated with cretaceous exposures.

Edited September 7, 2014 by tmaier

[jpevahouse]

Some small scale replenishment uses sand from sand pits hauled in by trucks but large scale uses offshore sand that is pumped onto the beaches. It is very expensive to haul in enough sand by trucks to replenish a large section of beach.

The point appears to be in good shape in the picture (see attached photo). I once had a 5 inch chipped flint blade found in a creek by a grade school friend. It was clearly a prehistoric flaked blade but it was polished smooth like it had been in a rock tumbler for a long time.

The 10 year old boy is Noah Cordle and he found the point at Beach Haven, NJ. Gee, maybe I should start going to Beach Haven?

[jpevahouse]

Wherever humans congregate, weird floats can be found. That point might have been dropped by somebody who bought it at a souvenir store, who bought it from some supplier who got it from 2000 miles away.

On sci.bio.paleontology news a couple decades ago a person asked a paleontologist if they had ever found anything that was out of context with the strata they were working, and he replied that he once found a Homer Simpson doll, which he believed was a float because he was working the ordovician.

Edit:

This is funny because everybody knows the Homer Simpson dolls are only associated with cretaceous exposures.

I agree completely. A point I try to make time and time again. A mastodon bone was found at Big Brook beside an old car battery. People around here have used streams and the ocean as trash dumps for centuries. Big Brook is full of Victorian era broken glass, ceramics, pottery and bones of domestic animals. A favorite Big Brook find I heard of is a Revolutionary Period cannon ball. The battle of Monmouth occurred a few miles south.

I've learned from hard experience to be skeptical about random finds out of context in places subject to constant erosion and disturbance of the soil.

I'm sure someone will strongly disagree with your assumption Homer Simpson dolls are of Cretaceous origin asserting they must be much earlier due to their primitive less evolved physiology.

[tmaier]

I bet you that the car battery didn't make it into the news.

I once had an argument with an editor of a national newspaper. They had grossly distorted a story. The editor told me that he was in the business to make news exciting, so getting things right just wasn't on the radar.

[jpevahouse]

I bet you that the car battery didn't make it into the news.

I once had an argument with an editor of a national newspaper. They had grossly distorted a story. The editor told me that he was in the business to make news exciting, so getting things right just wasn't on the radar.

I completely agree the media is under pressure to present the most sensational often poorly verified news, not the boring factual stuff. I'm probably getting too cynical in my old age but the disturbing thought occurred the story could just as easily be a hoax.

If I wanted to get my name in the paper I'd take a rare fossil to the beach, report my unusual find to someone of authority and claim to have found it in sand.

Maybe I could find the first Tyrannosaurus tooth on a NJ beach. I'd be instantly famous.

Of course it is possible some average person with no knowledge of archeology could end up picking up a rock on the beach which happened to be a rare eons old arrow point and think to alert someone of some authority about their unusual find. It's possible and maybe did happen in this case. My point is the media would report it true or false and people would not question the story.

My guess is about 1/10 of 1 percent of noteworthy archaeological or paleontology finds in NJ ever get reported to any institution. People just pick them, they go in a personal collection or the closet. One farmer in south Jersey is reported to have once used a mastodon skull for his door step. When the first Hadrasaurus was found locals took bones home and left them laying around in the back yards.

Edited September 7, 2014 by jpevahouse

[tmaier]

I've always been tempted to make some big dinosaur feet and put them on the end of stilts, and then create a media sensation in Daytona Beach.

Edited September 8, 2014 by tmaier

[jpevahouse]

I've always been tempted to make some big dinosaur feet and put them on the end of stilts, and then create a media sensation in Daytona Beach.

The press would be happy to report it and many people would believe it.

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[squali]

hmm I don't think the scientific community would do more than reply 'that's nice' when you jump up and down with your T-rex tooth on the beach.

A fossil without detailed location information is usually worthless to a paleontologist.

It is highly improbable, in my opinion, that the kid who's name and photo you posted is committing a hoax.

Most people seem to think the New World was a pristine wilderness with little tiny alcoves of Native Americans.

In fact, there were large communities that traveled and traded across the entire continent.

When the beach sand erodes away it exposes sands and soils that are older.

There are Pleistocene formations at the current seas edge and beyond.

The very fossils you purchased and posted should attest to that.

If, like you say jpevahouse, only 1/10 of 1% of important fossils are reported to professionals, than the collectors are not doing their job.

I think just by looking at TFF and the number of posts for ID's shows that people have an inherent need to learn more about their finds.

[jpevahouse]

hmm I don't think the scientific community would do more than reply 'that's nice' when you jump up and down with your T-rex tooth on the beach.

A fossil without detailed location information is usually worthless to a paleontologist.

It is highly improbable, in my opinion, that the kid who's name and photo you posted is committing a hoax.

Most people seem to think the New World was a pristine wilderness with little tiny alcoves of Native Americans.

In fact, there were large communities that traveled and traded across the entire continent.

When the beach sand erodes away it exposes sands and soils that are older.

There are Pleistocene formations at the current seas edge and beyond.

The very fossils you purchased and posted should attest to that.

If, like you say jpevahouse, only 1/10 of 1% of important fossils are reported to professionals, than the collectors are not doing their job.

I think just by looking at TFF and the number of posts for ID's shows that people have an inherent need to learn more about their finds.

My comments concerning a hoax were in response to another post about the reliability of the press, not the honesty of the little boy. Of course if I were to do a hoax I would use a child because no one is possibly going to doubt a child. Doing so will reap an unprecedented storm of derision regardless of the persons claims.

I spent most of my early life hunting ancient camp and village sites along the Tennessee and Buffalo Rivers in Tennessee. The area attracted large numbers of early peoples because of the excellent flint beds which capped the hills. It was a great place to judge the dispersal and populations of ancient Americans over a 10,000 year period. Paleo sites were rare, usually small surface sites. Archaic sites became somewhat more numerous and woodland sites common. Paleo peoples left small campsites and there were few of them. Archaic sites could be larger campsites with concentrations of material from habitation extending down several feet, like the Spring Creek or Britts Landing sites I hunted many years. In all our years of hunting my brother and I only managed to find one broken clovis type point out of hundreds of later flint artifacts. The population had to be small. There was nothing I saw which told me otherwise.

Also, fishermen along the Jersey Shore sell their fossil finds to people who resell them. They need the money during the off season. Agreed, collectors can be generous but as with the case of the little boy and the clovis style point his parents were happy to get the publicity but not interested in donating the artifact to the state museum which I would have done.

Edited September 8, 2014 by jpevahouse

[Auspex]

This artifact, though interesting in and of itself, is more curio than scientifically valuable specimen, as it lacks any context. That it was found where it was found is a (small) data point, true, but no one is going to write a peer reviewed paper on it, and it matters little that it will reside outside a museum.

As for the incidental offshore bycatch, I agree that there would be some value to a registry/record of everything that is trawled up, if for no other reason than the resulting sample size.

[Plax]

The ocean is transgressing the shoreline and passing over what was once the back bay beyond the beach. The "arrowhead" could very well be from quite near where it was found or pumped up with the sand from just offshore. I believe there are near sea level native american sites, such as at Bowers Beach Delaware. There are of course many sites under the current sea level.

[jpevahouse]

This artifact, though interesting in and of itself, is more curio than scientifically valuable specimen, as it lacks any context. That it was found where it was found is a (small) data point, true, but no one is going to write a peer reviewed paper on it, and it matters little that it will reside outside a museum.

As for the incidental offshore bycatch, I agree that there would be some value to a registry/record of everything that is trawled up, if for no other reason than the resulting sample size.

I totally agree, such finds out of context have more value to collectors than scientists.

This threat started because while on vacation at the shore this summer I connected with a person I've bought from before who is a kind of local broker for fishermen's fossil finds along the southern part of the Jersey Shore. He showed me pictures of some of the fossils he had sold off to collectors, some out of state. There were great fossils, mastodon tusk sections, walrus skull sections with embedded tusks, lots of beautiful complete mastodon molars and other impressive stuff. So, I had the chance to get a rare overview of what really comes out of the ocean off shore NJ and I was really impressed. And that's only in an area about maybe 30 - 40 miles of fishing waters. This stuff goes directly to private collectors, scientist will never know of or see this stuff. It's a kind of underground market. The state museum contacted fishermen about their finds but they can't afford to give away stuff they can sell. During the winter they usually don't work and they need the money.

Edited September 8, 2014 by jpevahouse