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Sometimes I break fossils


Shellseeker

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I am always sensitive to breaking fossils, especially rare ones... It is exceeding painful to realize that a fossil made it intact for tens of thousands of years and I broke it with my shovel finding it. I am very careful, but it happens: My worst experience was a broken major root on a Dire Wolf Carnassial.. the pain...the pain..!!!!! I also broke the tip of a point (twice) that was pinned upright in a crevice of the bedrock.

I was digging in an area rich in mammal fossils -- some mastodon, mammoth bones & teeth.

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The chewing surface is distinctive. and this is a pretty nice "fragment"...almost 5 plates of a lower jaw tooth. Lower jaw because of length between roots and chewing surface.

I found the 1st piece about 10:30 am and a 2nd piece of the same tooth 45 minutes later about 3 feet away. Digging in a mixture of 60% gravel and the rest sand -mud mix down to a base of grey clay. The fragments were on the clay. The 2 pieces fit almost like a glove.

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At first, I thought I might have broken them apart but was relieved to note that, although the plates fit loosely, there was significant missing cementum and no telltale shovel marks. Whew!

So, broken by some natural forces in the preceding decades. I'll consolidate and set the 2 pieces up in a display, but I do not intend to glue them back together... Where would be the story in that?

By the way, my hunting partners and I have an agreement on all "fragment" fossil finds. Who ever finds the 1st piece, has title to all other fragments of that fossil found. This, of course, is from Chapter 3, sec. 5 of the 14th edition of the Peace River Fossil Hunters Code of Conduct and Rules of the Road. (PRFH-CCRR). I can quote chapter and verse to my fossil hunting buddies, but sometimes they do not listen. :shake head:

SS

The White Queen  ".... in her youth she could believe "six impossible things before breakfast"

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I too know the pain Jack, I have a perfect 4 1/2 meg I broke in 3 pieces prying on it: ( every serration and nice color to boot, I shed a tear every time I look at it lol.

Every once in a great while it's not just a big rock down there!

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