More May Mammoth Mania

[digit]

May is quickly running out and with June just around the corner the forecasted probability for rain each afternoon has been on the rise. This has been an oddly wet "dry season" for us in South Florida likely as a result of this year's El Niño event (officially declared by the Bureau of Meteorology). We've already had a pre-season warm-up with Tropical Storm Ana sneaking in ahead of the official start of the rainy/hurricane season on June 1. I was lucky enough to finish my coral reef survey work on the other side of the globe and make it back in time for a couple of last trips to South Florida's rivers and creeks. Last week I went out with John (Sacha) and we had a spectacular time on the Peace River (see here if you missed that report: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/54599-end-of-season-trip-to-the-peace-river/?p=583526). John and I both felt that the location we were hunting still had some treasures to give up so we talked about possibly returning this week to give it another go.

 

Over the weekend it was decided that Tuesday would be a good day for a revisit so I set the alarm at 3:00am again and tried to get to sleep early. Of course that didn't work but I did drift off sometime before 11:00pm and woke up several times (probably subliminally fearing that the alarm had not been set properly and I'd overslept). I had been lying in bed making a mental list of things I needed to do: recharge phone, remember to pack a towel, get the frozen drinks out of the freezer, etc. After seeing the alarm display 1:50, 2:06, 2:14, 2:20, 2:25 it was pretty obvious that I was well awake and that efforts to remain in bed till 3:00am were going to be fruitless so I got an early start. I was soon on the road and headed back across the state in the dead of night (at least traffic is never an issue at that time). I stopped at the 24-hour Mickey D's in Okeechobee for an early breakfast and a caffeinated beverage to keep me awake for the next hour and a half of driving to my destination. Made it safely through the thick banks of fog and the nocturnally active heards of Whitetail Deer on the unlit stretches of small highways in the middle of the state. I arrived at our meeting spot just a few minutes before I saw John pull up with his pickup containing our day's transportation—a pair of brightly colored kayaks. After a quick breakfast, John was eager to get to our put-in and start paddling to our remote site to try our luck again.

 

It was another beautiful and peaceful morning. Water vapor was slowly rising in wisps from the still warm waters of the Peace River disappearing into the chilly air of the early morning. Osprey and Turkey Vultures got an early morning wake-up call as we paddled past and they took to higher perches to watch us from above. We got to our location, secured the kayaks along shore and got our gear ready for another long (but hopefully enjoyable) day of digging and sifting. Due to the demise of my shovel on the previous visit I would be breaking in a new tool on this trip. When I had to borrow John's backup shovel last trip I noticed how light it was. John said that he prefers a lightweight fiberglass handle as the lighter shovel can be less tiring when you have to lift it several hundred times loaded with sand and gravel. I considered John's sage advice when purchasing my replacement but opted for a heavier, sturdier model with a slightly larger blade—probably hoping that I could move more material faster that way.

 

John went back to the hole that he'd been excavating where he was rewarded with a lot of interesting items, most notably a complete mammoth tooth and a small piece of mammoth skull (recognizable by the hollow pockets on its interior that serve to reduce its weight). I took my probe and poked around in the river. This section has the limestone hardbottom quite close to the surface with only a thin dusting of sand over much of it. Instead of the probe sinking unobstructed into sand I heard the distinctive 'tink' sound letting me know that it would be impossible to shovel in that area. I spent a few minutes prospecting around trying to find a hole in this caprock into which I hoped all sorts of treasures would be buried. A little upstream from John and closer to the middle of the river I found an area where the limestone wasn't right at the surface and decided to dig. I found a little sand and some gravel that wasn't at all productive. Instead of black pebbles of matrix this was mostly jagged broken pieces of whitish limestone. The sand soon gave way to a thick layer of gray sticky clay which makes digging and sifting a lot more difficult. I worked this area for probably half an hour or more trying to get "in the zone" and find an area that I could work and which was giving up some fossils. When this strategy didn’t seem to be panning out I decided to go back to the hole I had started last week and try to extend that for a while. The tapir and camel teeth that this hole gave up last week seemed to be on backorder as they were very few and far between this time. Mostly, I was finding some nice large hemis and tigers and some very busted up dugong ribs.

 

I don’t think we were settling into our rhythm of work for more than an hour or so before John called my name. I looked over to see him smiling and holding another whole mammoth tooth. This one seemed to match perfectly the size of his remarkable find from last week. John was right—this location DID have more to give up and he now had a rather stunning set of bookends. These teeth just had to be associated as it didn’t seem likely they could both end up in the same hole by chance. Not too long after that John pulled up a much larger chunk of elephant skull that we figured might be from the teeth’s former owner. After a small round of tusk material also emerged from John’s ever widening hole I started toying with names for this site—“Proboscidean Pocket?”—I was sure I’d come up with something memorable as I figured I’d be referring to this location for years to come when telling fossil stories.

[digit]

Meanwhile, my dig location seemed to tap-out. The little seam of gravel and sand that I was excavating felt like it was petering out. The finds dwindled and I got out my probe and started prospecting again. I had hoped to find a larger pit somewhere with a good amount of gravel and sand that I could easily dig but instead was mostly tapping around on the hardbottom like some sort of deranged woodpecker. John suggested that I try prospecting about the same distance from the bank where I had been digging before so I moved upstream a little and discovered another little cache of gravel just next to where John had lodged his kayak on the bank. The area was covered with a large amount of wood from trees that were swept along during the rainy season and deposited here. It made digging a bit tricky and several large pieces of wood had to be moved to the side to get at the gravel below them. I started to find a few items in this new gravel source as well as a lot of trash and, unfortunately, lots of broken glass. Some of the glass was recent (beer bottles and the like) but a few pieces were from older stopper bottles. I uncovered two matching pieces of an aqua colored 1920’s Dr. WB Caldwell Syrup of Pepsin bottle—a real shame it was busted up and I never found the remaining pieces to reconstruct it.

We both continued our digging, occasionally calling out our finds to each other when something notable was discovered. There were a lot of limestone rocks in the area I was digging and I would occasionally have to reach down in the water to retrieve a bowling ball size piece of rock and toss it off to the side or pitch the softball size chunks that came up in my shovel and landed in my sifter. When one shovelful of gravel came up from the pit I was working with something heavy I was pleasantly shocked to see what was sitting proud on top—a nice chunk of mammoth tooth! I lifted it from my sifter where I had deposited it and called over to John with much the same sort of grin that I’d seen on John when proudly displaying his mammoth molars. I retrieved my camera from the dry bag in my kayak to get some photos and found that the battery was running on fumes. I was however able to snap a photo or two right before the camera beeped and died. I returned the camera and my mammoth prize to my kayak, and then had a drink and a snack—still elated by my find (hard to drink with that big of a smile on your face).

[digit]

It was a few minutes before I returned to where I was digging. The suspended sediment from my digging had now settled and/or had been carried away by the river’s current. I could now see the area of my excavation. I always make a point of inspecting the area whenever the water is clear just to make sure some killer meg tooth hasn’t fallen off my shovel and is sitting on the bottom waiting to see if I’ll capture it on a second attempt. When I looked down into the water I could see a conical depression (much like you get when you try to dig a hole in dry sand at a beach). I’d been taking sand and gravel from its center and the fine sand around it had been draining in from the edges leaving this perfect little crater. Sitting embedded in this slope in the sand was something that I’m sure made my eyes bug out comic book style. I called over to John and told him he needed to come over and see this in situ. The unmistakable shape of a mammoth tooth could be seen from the surface. It’s at rare times like this that I wish I had a GoPro camera with an underwater housing—it would have make for a spectacular in situ photo.

John quickly suggested that it might be a matching piece to the chunk I had just found. I reached down in the water and attempted to retrieve the piece—but it was stuck! With both hands I was able to free it and bring it to the surface. It was not a matching fragment of my first find but, to both of our disbelief, an entire mammoth molar! I was stunned, but not too stunned to let loose with an exaltation of expletives that I cannot repeat here. I could absolutely not believe my dumb luck. Just feet away from where John had parked his kayak and in an area both of us had probably tread over or near several times was hidden this spectacular treasure.

[digit]

Shortly after my mammoth finds were resting safely in my kayak and my pulse at returned to near pre-discovery levels, I turned up my first non-broken stopper bottle of the day. It is embossed and states that its former contents were patented Aug 29^th, 1916. I’ll have to check on the bottle forum to see if I can dig up more information on this much more recent artifact. I’ve got many older antique bottles but this one holds the honor of sharing a spot in the river with a monster mammoth molar and so will find a special place in my collection.

You can bet that I continued to excavate this spot hoping against hope that more spectacular treasures would make an effort to leave the river and come home with me. We dug for a few more hours but no other “trip-maker” prizes revealed themselves, though I did continue to find a nice variety of interesting smaller items.

When we both ran out of steam in the afternoon we decided to call it for the day. It seems to have been a good decision to give this location some more of our attention and effort. While we paddled to our site in the morning I jokingly ran through a wish-list of the items I was "planning" on finding. John realized I was kidding but he still wanted to make sure I lowered my expectations as it seemed our first trip to this location was rather anomalous and could not possibly be repeated. In light of the success of our encore visit to this site, John is considering coming back once again while the weather and river level holds. I believe they coined the portmanteau word “Three-peat” exactly for situations like this.

Other tasks have been piling up while I’ve been out playing in the river lately so this is my last trip of this season. I think it is wise for me to go out “on top” with one of the most incredible experiences I’ve ever had on the Peace River. John said he’d not mention if he gets out for a third time and scores something grand without me along as good luck charm. I told him that I want to hear about any other spectacular finds he rescues from the river. We’ll have to wait to hear from John to see if we’ve tapped out this location for now or if more treasures await.

-Ken

[digit]

Here are some better views of the entire tooth. It measures 22 x 10 cm on the occlusal surface with the roots extending down to a maximum of 19 cm. The tooth weights 5.75 kg (that's a little over 12.5 pounds for you non metric types). While many of my other Peace River finds end up mixed together in a bowl for display, I think I'm going to need to research and design a nice mount for this monster to display it properly.

-Ken

P.S: Maybe the experts can enlighten me as to the proper name for this species. In my ID books and online I've seen mammoth teeth from the Peace River and other South Florida locations referred to as Mammut americanum, M. imperator, and M. colombi). Did we have several species roaming Florida or are some of these older junior synonyms to a preferred species name?

Edited May 20, 2015 by digit

[jcbshark]

Wow, just wow guys!!!!! That's totally awesome!!!!: ) big congrats to you both!

[digit]

Thanks. I'm totally indebted to John for taking me with him to one of his favorite locations and for the use of his kayak to make the trip possible. This has, of course, totally ruined for me going to the over-hunted sections of the Peace River and scrounging among the spoil piles of others for the few scraps they've missed. I also thank both John and Jeff for motivating me to leave the smaller shark teeth behind and step-up into the big league with a sifter with 1/2" mesh. My 1/4" sifter still has its uses but I'm now hooked on moving lots of material in an effort to discover more finds and bring back more than a pocketful of tiny lemon shark teeth.

I hope the rains hold off enough for John to get his fill of this site before the season comes to a close with the onset of the rainy season. I'm now switching tasks to some copy editing on a new edition of a book that is off to the printer soon. You can be sure that a certain 12+ pound "rock" will sit at my shoulder for some time on my office desk while I work (unless it just becomes to distracting). I won't have to go through fossil withdrawal anytime soon though as I'll be up in the Chicagoland area in a couple weeks and hope to gather enough freezer fodder in the form of Mazon Creek nodules to last me through the summer.

Cheers.

-Ken

[Auspex]

And the "Spring 2015 Peace River Mammoth Survey" is in the books...

I have very much enjoyed being along after the fact; thank you!

[digit]

And the "Spring 2015 Peace River Mammoth Survey" is in the books...

I have very much enjoyed being along after the fact; thank you!

It felt like quite an in depth census of all the mammoth teeth that were residing at that address.

Story telling is in my genes and I do like bringing experiences to others through word and picture--glad you enjoyed the ride.

Cheers.

-Ken

[fossilized6s]

Wow, Ken! Spectacular teeth!! Congratulations.

[digit]

I've always said it's better to be lucky than good and my wife agrees I'm the luckiest guy she knows (and not just because I had the good sense to marry her).

When I come up to the Chicagoland area in a couple of weeks, I'm hoping my luck holds out. As of now I'm putting all the Tully Monster fossils on notice--I'm coming to get you.

-Ken

[old bones]

Holy Moly! What a fantastic trip and teeth! Thanks for taking us along on. I enjoyed the illustrated narrative.

[Search4]

Unreal.... You lucky dog lol. Well, you have certainly had this coming Ken. We all know you put the time in this year travelling to and from the Treasure coast over our way. Congratulations man!!!!!

Btw, I have to disagree with you on having had a wet, dry season. The few rains were quickly absorbed where they were desperately needed. I lost 3 palms and a lemon tree to draught.

And check this out for Joshua creek, the height after two days of afternoon thunderstorms here is....4.15! lol Its the lowest I've seen in 2 years.

Edited May 20, 2015 by Search4

[Sacha]

Well, Ken definitely covered the story so I won't add anything but my poor finds of the day (compared to Ken's).

The skull fragment:

The total take for that day:

And in the next post, the 2 teeth together for comparison.

[Sacha]

[digit]

Thanks Cris.

I wonder if the rains have been patchy this season. Seems like every time I Skyped with my wife from the other side of the planet over the last several months it was either raining in Boca Raton or had just finished. I checked the Canoe Outpost river level page and several USGS gauges while out on missions to see where the river was at after hearing people on TFF mention that the Peace was not going down as expected. I remember the drought of a few years back when Lake Okeechobee was at historical lows (and Native American encampments and artifacts were surfacing behind the receding shoreline as the lake shrank). It made some of the deeper spots on the Peace accessible but canoes had to be dragged for some distance over lots of shallow beds that were then dry shoals. The Peace seemed to spike to unseasonable highs after various rains though it did seem to settle back again between storms. It's interesting that you experienced drier conditions than normal where you live and so this season's weather seems to have been more patchy than I would have thought. I guess it's like a certain "enlightened" politician who was able to deny "climate change" (formerly termed "global warming") because he was able to gather enough snow in Washington, D.C. this winter to form a snowball which he brought along during his speech for "show and tell".

But this is neither the time nor place to talk of politically charged debates (let the mainstream media handle that). I'd say congratulations on dodging any rains where you live but it sounds like the plants in your yard would rather have spent more time under a canopy of rain. I hate losing plants to drought, disease or cold. Hope you are able to replant soon.

Cheers.

-Ken

[digit]

Thanks John for the combo-photo of the two teeth. They look to be about the same size on the occlusal surface but differ in depth. I wonder if one might be an "upper" and the other a "lower"? I don't know enough about mammoth molars to answer this.

-Ken

[JohnJ]

Well done, Ken, well done.

Congrats on your finds, guys.

[digit]

Thanks. I'll take the praise for what was really an incredible bit of good luck. I've hunted for a find like this for the last 8 years and the only difference between all my earlier attempts and yesterday's success is that this time I dug my hole where a mammoth tooth (or two) were actually located. I realize that more times out hunting increases your odds (just like buying more lottery tickets) but I'll credit this incredible find to luck (aided by many sore muscles and a few blisters).

You never know when lightning will strike--but it helps to be in South Florida.

Cheers.

-Ken

[megaholic]

I'm so happy for you Ken! All this time you have been paying your dues-Finally paid off. Congrats.

Where did you buy that shovel? I need one just like it!

MH

[digit]

Where did you buy that shovel? I need one just like it!

I found a mad scientist who crossed a garden spade with a truffle hunting pig and I'll be releasing my signature brand Mammoth-detecting Spades in the autumn (not to late to get in on the crowdsourced funding). I'll continue the line with a Meg-divining Hand Trowel .

It's been a heck of a week--thanks for the comments.

Cheers.

-Ken

[PFOOLEY]

...but instead was mostly tapping around on the hardbottom like some sort of deranged woodpecker...

...congrats on a spectacular tooth!

[digit]

I dug up (figuratively) some more information on the bottle I found on a different forum (www.antique-bottles.net a great site). Based on the embossed printing it seems that this bottle dates to the 1920's from a company called Nyal. It was a patent medicine--likely their Spring Sarsaparilla Compound. I find old medicine bottles with writing on them fascinating.

-Ken

[digit]

Here are a few of the other finds from this trip. Not as singularly stunning as a big honking mammoth tooth but quite a nice variety of odds and ends that were fun to see come up in the sifting screen.

I got (most of) a large gator osteoderm (about 4 cm in diameter) as well as a tiny and delicate one not more than 2 cm in diameter. The smaller may be recently deposited as it is razor thin yet completely intact. I just gave it the flame test and the slight odor and discoloration would seem to point to something more recent than fossil--still kinda cool though.

I also saved a few turtle neural scutes (the central ones along the spine). Shown here are a nuchal, a mid-body neural, and a tail piece (all from different species). The piece at the bottom is a small tortoise leg spur (osteoderm).

Here are a pair of worn vertebrae that might be dolphin but could easily be from something else.

Some Glyptodon and Holmesina armored plates (osteoderms).

-Ken

[digit]

Only two camel teeth this time but they are in good shape and I'm quite happy to add them to my growing collection of this family of even-toed ungulates.

Did alright with horse teeth with two nice (square) uppers and a (long rectangular) lower.

These appear to be the tips of deer antlers (tines).

While most unidentifiable bone fragments weren't kept, I did like this piece of a rather distinctive canon bone that I believe is most likely deer.

-Ken