Peace River Hunt...Finally!--April 2016

[digit]

It seemed like the Peace River would NEVER get down to the proper level for fossil hunting. Unseasonable (and possibly unreasonable) rains had continued to make the river level rebound with an incredible super-elastic quality every time it approached a workable level. I made tentative plans about a month ago and on the date I had chosen the rains spiked the river level upwards of two feet in a little over a day. But finally, the rains held off for a bit and the river was finally able to process the accumulated water load and having sent it on its way to Port Charlotte Harbor--the Peace River's final destination before it mixes with the waters of the Gulf of Mexico on the southwest coast of Florida.

I watched in amazement as the river gauges seemed to be holding. I didn't even start making serious plans till Friday afternoon. Tammy was able to leave work a bit early and as soon as she got home I started loading the car with all we'd need for our trip. I usually have all of my fossil hunting gear relatively organized so I can toss things together pretty quickly. Last season I'd only gotten to the river twice for two weekday hunting trips with TFF member John (Sacha) so it had been almost two years since Tammy and I were making the three hour trip to the northwest to try our luck sifting on the river. I've done day trips on the Peace before but a combined total of six hours of driving and eight hours of shoveling and sifting makes for a very tiring day so we usually choose to head over the night before.

With a fair amount of excitement we had a quick breakfast, checked out of our hotel and were waiting at the Canoe Outpost office to complete our paperwork for our canoe rental. It seemed that others had also realized this was a great weekend to get out on the Peace and the place was a mob scene of cars and people. We were able to quickly and efficiently fill out our paperwork and unload our hunting gear. Some large groups were going north to the Gardner put-in as well as to the Brownville boat ramp where we were heading. Once large group of about 50 people were packed on one of the retired school buses that Canoe Outpost uses to shuttle people to their drop-off locations. We were told to hold back and put our stuff into a white van pulling a small trailer with six canoes. Inside, we met the other couple who were also going to Brownville. Gladys and Jose were from Brazil and currently living in Miami (so they had come even a bit further than we did to paddle down the Peace). On the ride up to Brownville we had a pleasant conversation with them--glad to be in a civilized and quite mode of transportation and not on the "party bus" with the huge rowdy group. It turned out that Gladys had never canoed before and that she and Jose had made a deal to go out and do something around the state one weekend every month. Jose had learned about the Peace River and thought that the 8.5 mile full-day trip would make for a fun activity this weekend. Of course, we told them that we'd been on the Peace many times over the last nine years--always hunting for fossils but enjoying the river for its beauty as well. They had no idea that the Peace River had such a reputation (by those in the know) for fossil hunting--heck, we didn't have a clue till we learned out about it back in 2007. We filled them in on the types of fossils that could be found on the river and showed them our gear as we were loading it into our canoe. We suggested that they might enjoy learning a bit more about the fossils and that one of the gravel beds we'd be stopping at was only a few minutes from where we'd be entering the river at Brownville.

Gladys did quite well for her first time in a canoe and they followed us to our first stop where we pulled the canoes to the bank and started unloading our gear. I stepped out into the cool (fast flowing) tannic waters of the Peace and I was home again! I had brought along two sifting screens--one outfitted with the 'standard' 1/4" mesh screen that we'd been using for years and one with the larger 1/2" mesh that many of the TFF members that I hunt with on the Peace have switched to in order to process more gravel. The smaller shark teeth and other tiny fossils find their way through the larger mesh but in return you can work through a higher volume of gravel and increase the odds of finding larger fossils. I loaded the 1/4" screen with a couple of shovels full of gravel and gave it to Tammy to take back to the canoes where Gladys and Jose were sitting. They didn't really count on getting out of their canoes and walking around in the river so they didn't dress appropriately for it--in particular, they didn't bring shoes they could get wet as the Peace is (sadly) littered with too much broken glass (beer bottles) to safely walk about in bare feet.

Tammy set the sifting screen full of gravel on their canoe and then showed them how to sort through the gravel. In no time they had begun to find shark teeth (and other fossils). The ease at which things could be spotted in the sifting screen really entertained them. I gave them some of my plastic zip-top bags that I always take so they could hold onto their growing nascent collection of fossils. When I would find something new I'd bring it over to where I was sifting in the river (with the 1/2" screen) and explain to them what it was and how you could tell from even small broken fragments. The spot I was digging in seemed to be fertile ground for hunting and so there were a variety of things to show to the "newbies". In addition to the numerous smaller shark teeth they were finding in their sifting screen I was able to add items like worn horse teeth, a gator tooth, mastodon and mammoth tooth fragments, lots of different turtle shell pieces, gator osteoderms, a small (but identifiable) fragment of proboscidean tusk and more.

We gave them all of the finds and as other canoes would pass us on the river the more curious would stop by to hear an explanation of what we were doing on the river and what we were finding. Despite not using equipment even vaguely resembling that used for gold panning, we'd often hear comments like, "Find any gold yet?" or "Are you rich yet?" For some reason this is the only concept that seems to occur to folks when they see some fool standing waist deep in the river with a shovel and screen--can't really blame them. We'd explain to them that we are looking for "black gold"--fossil and they would either continue to paddle down the river with a puzzled look on their faces or the more curious would stop over for a look. Those few were always rewarded with some fossils.

At around noon we decided to head down the river to our other favorite spot to continue hunting in the afternoon. Gladys and Jose had accumulated quite the collection of fossils by then and were really bowled over by their collection and how much fun they were having (especially as it was completely unplanned and impromptu). The only two items I kept from the morning were a small gator osteoderm and a nice 3-toed horse molar. I suspect the osteoderm is likely recent as it feels light and is pretty delicate with nice sharp edges all in good condition.

We were so busy introducing our new Brazilian friends to the fossil wonders of the Peace River that we didn't take the camera out much. Here is the only photo of me enjoying myself in the river at our first spot. You can see the technique that I use to save my back (well, limit the stresses and strains). I've seen people bend over to scan the contents of their sifting screens as they float in the water (hard to see at the water's surface and even harder on the lower back vertebrae). Others, I've seen hold their screens to their stomachs with one hand as they paw through it with the other. I'm both lazy and a computer programmer (related attributes actually) and I like to optimize my process whenever possible. I use my gravel probe (the custom-made Probulator 3000^tm) planted firmly in the riverbed to hold my sifter stationary in the river by looping the rope lanyard over it. When I'm done filling the sifter with gravel (sifter buoyancy provided by the attached foam 'pool noodles'), I plant the shovel in the pit I'm digging in the river to mark my spot. This shovel also becomes key to reducing my ibuprofen consumption at the end of the day. After the sifter is shaken to drop out the smaller material, I shake the screen at an angle to shift all of the remaining gravel to the back of the sifting screen. I then prop the back edge of the screen on the shovel handle and with the front edge of the screen slightly lower I can easily and efficiently sort through the material pushing it bit-by-bit to the front of the screen methodically searching for any interesting bits.

Edited April 24, 2016 by digit

[digit]

After a bit of a trip down the river we got out at our second (and final) hunting spot for the day. I like to periodically check this spot when I can as it has given me nice presents for my efforts in the past. The first time I hunted this spot while I was prospecting for new areas, I pulled a really sweet upper mako in my first screen--that got my attention. Some years the gravel deposit seems to shift around or get buried under a heavy load of sand but other times it is right where I go looking for it and usually it delivers. This is the spot that I have previously pulled a gold wedding band and a tie-tack set with a black stone of some sort. I keep joking I'll turn up the rest of the mobster one of these days--but secretly hope I never do. A few years back this location gave me two large chunks of mammoth molar just a few feet apart but separated by a few months.

The reason I keep coming back to this location is the quality of the gravel--not the productivity necessarily but the size. For some complicated reasons that I'm sure include hydrodynamics and the proximity to where this material is eroding out of the banks, the gravel (if you can call it that) at this spot is very chunky. Much of the pieces that end up in my sifting screen range from the size of golf balls to baseballs. Additionally, much larger chunks either come up carefully balanced on very heavy shovel loads or get pulled up by hand and tossed aside. Pieces the size and weight of bowling balls are common at this site and so digging goes much slower as you have to carefully work the shovel through what is almost a pavement of rock among the sand. Once through the rocky layer to the more sandy material below I try to extend the pit horizontally by undercutting the edge and leveraging out great chunks of the bottom that I shot-put out of my way with resultant depth-charge like splashes.

I was explaining to Gladys and Jose who had followed us to our second stop the reason why I liked to check this location. I explained that this spot had much larger gravel and while the density of smaller shark teeth and other fossils was much less than where we'd spent the morning digging that the larger gravel offered the possibility of larger finds. I used the analogy of a $1 scratch off ticket with more common but lower-value possible prizes verses the Powerball lottery with much longer odds but greater possible returns. I was also recounting the story of how I had found some chunks of mammoth tooth here in years past when minutes later a chunk of mammoth tooth slid off my shovel and into my sifter. As quickly as that I had my trip-maker. I was able to show our fossil students how the smaller pieces of mammoth tooth fragments came from the larger and more-intact specimen I had just pulled from the river's depths.

[digit]

Gladys and Jose bid us farewell as they hadn't packed enough snacks and drinks for how long we were keeping them entertained on the river. They had thought they'd been back to Arcadia in just a couple of hours but hadn't counted on their chance meeting with us. They said they'd be back on the river again and maybe next time they'd bring a sifter and add to their new fossil collection--this is how we bring converts into the fold.

Shortly after they had continued down the river with the thoughts of a cool hotel room and a hot meal in a restaurant before them, I told Tammy she better pull the camera out of the dry bag again. I was pulling large rocks out of the way again so that I could continue shoveling the smaller rocks and gravel into my sifter and I had encountered something camera-worthy.

At this point Tammy figured I was joking (I am a notorious kidder at times) and she was amused just watching me with my ear nearly at water level "listening to the river to locate fossils" but soon she was a believer. I had been removing a number of large chunks of black rock from the area I was trying to shovel and when I grasped this one I felt a series of parallel furrows on one side. I groped around and found a surface that felt even more intriguing--a possible occlusal surface. As I slowly and carefully pulled my object from the sand and mud in which it was embedded Tammy caught the moment it broke the surface.

This is the reason I fight with the large chunks of matrix and the coarse rock that is difficult to dig and usually provides few fossils of note. This is also why I'm so happy I have the opportunity to take the day off and spend a day on the river with gloriously perfect weather and a couple of new friends eager to listen to us babble on about fossils. I think our chance meeting made their day on the river more than they had planned or expected and in return the bank of Instant Karma repaid us with more than I had planned or expected. It was a good day on the river.

Cheers.

-Ken

[Raggedy Man]

[Sacha]

Ken, are they part of the same tooth?

[snolly50]

Ken, I have become accustomed to your seemingly superhuman capacity for finding adventure. I am at peace with the fact that the quality of your photography is often beyond that of the vast majority of us common folk. I am not at all astounded by the preternatural cleverness of your written accounts.

However, I was indeed taken aback by your candid admission of being not totally human. It will take a little time for me to get my mind around the fact, you perambulate on ursine appendages!

"They didn't really count on getting out of their canoes and walking around in the river so they didn't dress appropriately for it--in particular, they didn't bring shoes they could get wet as the Peace is (sadly) littered with too much broken glass (beer bottles) to safely walk about in bear feet."

[Darktooth]

Awesome tooth great story!

[ynot]

Nice report Ken, and kudos for Your ambassadorship.

Nice find also!!

Tony

[digit]

Ken, are they part of the same tooth?

Nope. You can be certain that that was my very first thought when the second piece appeared especially since they were recovered within a few feet of each other. As this spot has now delivered four large chunks of mammoth molar (none matching) from an area the size of a dinner table I have to really wonder what's going on here. There must be a nice deposit of mammoth somewhere reasonably close upstream. The teeth are not whole but yet not beaten to a pulp as we usually see in the small flakes that we usually find. This spot is on the leading edge of a wide sandbar I'm assuming these large pieces somehow become impacted into the front of the sandbar much like a bug meets a windshield (I like to imagine it that way anyhow as I picture a mammoth molar being tossed about by the force of the Peace River in flood stage just as it hits this sandbar and sticks tight). It is a small area dropping off into deeper water but the area still had some chunky rock and large gravel to work through. I'm hoping to get back again this season before the actual rainy season starts and stalls me for another year. The visibility on the river was pretty dismal as even a bright blue canoe paddle disappeared into the murk just a foot or so below the surface. We brought the Aqua-scope aka Sneak-a-scope aka Jaguar Bone Detector with us but it was mostly useless in the turbid water. If the water clears and I make it back before the river floods again I might consider snorkeling or diving gear as I'm real curious what lies at the base of this sloping leading edge of the sandbar.

Cheers.

-Ken

[digit]

Ken, I have become accustomed to your seemingly superhuman capacity for finding adventure. I am at peace with the fact that the quality of your photography is often beyond that of the vast majority of us common folk. I am not at all astounded by the preternatural cleverness of your written accounts.

However, I was indeed taken aback by your candid admission of being not totally human. It will take a little time for me to get my mind around the fact, you perambulate on ursine appendages!

"They didn't really count on getting out of their canoes and walking around in the river so they didn't dress appropriately for it--in particular, they didn't bring shoes they could get wet as the Peace is (sadly) littered with too much broken glass (beer bottles) to safely walk about in bear feet."

Hah! Thanks for making my evening! Even copy editors need copy editors it seems. My OCD tendencies require me to correct my "bear-ly" noticed typo but thanks for pointing it out.

I'm worried though that you are becoming accustomed to my endless series of adventures--verbosely expounded upon and littered with illustration. I guess I'll have to step-up my game.

Cheers.

-Ken

[old bones]

Wow, Ken! Great trip report and drool worthy finds! My favorite.

[jcbshark]

Man Ken, Great finds!!! Glad to see you guys were able to get out and get some hunting in

[snolly50]

Hah! Thanks for making my evening! Even copy editors need copy editors it seems. My OCD tendencies require me to correct my "bear-ly" noticed typo but thanks for pointing it out.

I'm worried though that you are becoming accustomed to my endless series of adventures--verbosely expounded upon and littered with illustration. I guess I'll have to step-up my game.

Cheers.

-Ken

Ken, I assure you, I am accustomed in a most positive manner. That is, I look forward to the exposition of your exploits and would surely miss them if they were not forthcoming. Keep 'em comin' and the best of fortune to you in your active ramblings.

[digit]

Man Ken, Great finds!!! Glad to see you guys were able to get out and get some hunting in

It felt good to be back out on the Peace River after an extended absence (thanks to some guy named Al Niño ). I really hope I can get out and explore this site more before the summer rains make us wait again. I thought my earlier finds were a fluke but now I'm thinking this site--though tiny--might have some potential.

Here are some better views of the two (non-matching) chunks of mammoth molar that were rescued from the Peace River.

Cheers.

-Ken

[digit]

Wow, Ken! Great trip report and drool worthy finds! My favorite.

Glad you enjoy reading through my novel-length trip reports, Juliana. I try to write them so that the reader can in some way feel like they are along along for the ride. I enjoy reading well-written trip reports on TFF which tend to motivate me to go out and try to experience the adventure for myself. My hope is that I can motivate others or at least let our more distantly located TFF members have a virtual hunting trip while they ready my reports. Plus, as you can tell, I like telling stories.

I considered collecting micro-matrix on this trip (in case it was my last this season) but kinda got busy teaching our new Brazilian friends (and excavating mammoth dentition). At least I still have a little Shark Tooth Hill and Rattlesnake Creek micro-matrix sitting in buckets in the garage in case I'm overcome with the irresistible urge to hunt some fossils.

Cheers.

-Ken

[Khyssa]

Great find, Ken! I truly wish that I'd been able to get down there this weekend. The weather was perfect! Instead I finally made some headway on the front garden which was quite over run with weeds from nearly a year of neglect (more time spent fossiling instead of garden upkeep). Your trip reports are the best and highly entertaining.

Kara

[JustPlainPetrified]

Great effort and wonderful results! Thanks for sharing.

[digit]

Here are a few other fossils that turned up during the pleasurable day hunting on the Peace River. The (relatively) tiny 3-toed horse molar is dwarfed by the much larger upper molar from the more modern Equus horse tooth. This is the first time I've found nice examples of each on a single day (the smaller tooth at the first stop and the larger one at the second site with the larger gravel). I thought it would be fun to get some comparative photos of the two molars side-by-side.

This tiny gator osteoderm is the only other item I kept from the first site (I gave all my other finds to our Brazilian friends to get them motivated about fossils). Because of the well-preserved condition and the delicate nature of this potato-chip thin osteoderm I suspect it might be modern and not fully fossilized. It is a nice example of an osteoderm so it ends up in the collection just the same.

Cheers.

-Ken

[Lori LuvsFossils]

WooHoo!! Great day for a nice couple. Glad it was you! Congrats

[digit]

The second location we stopped at (with the very coarse gravel) is notable for having a crazy density of dugong rib bones. Each shovel full of gravel usually contains one or two pieces of dugong so it is not difficult to have a sifting screen with a dozen or more pieces. It's always a great place to stop if you want to pick up some novel paperweights as gifts for friends. Over the years we have learned that the round holes commonly found in dugong bones are NOT from gator teeth (no matter how nicely you can manage to plug one of the holes with a gator tooth you found in the same sifting screen ). These holes are actually created by a family of bivalve mollusks called piddock or angelwing (Pholadidae) which also make "burrows" in wood, coral or soft rock. While some dugong bone pieces seem to have escaped drilling by these mollusks, most that we find have at least a few dimples caused by these bivalves. Check out the "Swiss cheese" dugong bone we turned up at this site:

In addition to the "normal" size dugong rib sections that are common here, we also turned up this huge chunk that at first made me think it might be proboscidean till I saw that it was solid in cross-section and thus from the ubiquitous (at this site) dugong.

Cheers.

-Ken

[digit]

Also found a smaller chunk of mammoth tooth (that on an average day would have been a top find). Additionally, I found about 30 small pieces of mastodon tooth (most worn smooth from a long time tumbling in the river). This was the largest chunk (half a cusp) of mastodon tooth that came out of the river that day.

Cheers.

-Ken

[fossilized6s]

Mammoth finds, Ken! Your house is going to be covered with Mammoth teeth.

[digit]

Yup. I just need a few more to finish paving the driveway--Paleo-pavers.

Here are the last images from the pieces I found last weekend. At first I thought this large chunk of bone might have been proboscidean (given the teeth I was finding) but in cross-section it appears to be a fragment of our giant land tortoise (Hesperotestudo sp.).

Then there is this smaller piece of turtle shell. I found a surprising number of proneural plates at the first site (at least half a dozen) which I gave away to various folks on the river. The proneural (also often called nuchal as the nuchal scute overlays this bone) is the bone is the bone at the front of the line of neural bones that run down the midline of the turtle's carapace. See these images for examples of these distinctively shaped bones: https://www.google.com/search?q=turtle+nuchal&tbm=isch

The piece shown below is obviously symmetrical and so must come from the midline of the shell. At first I thought it an odd proneural/nuchal imagining the head and neck sitting in front of the scalloped edge at the "top" of this piece but the more I look at it I just can't seem to fit that into my understanding of the bones that comprise a turtle carapace. I considered it possibly being from the plastron instead but could not seem to find any matching bones with this overall shape. My current guess is that this might be a suprapygal bone from behind the line of neurals rather than leading this series of bones. If there is anybody out there with a better understanding of turtle anatomy than this novice, I'd appreciate your opinion on this little mystery.

Here is the last mystery from this trip. An odd bone with an unusual lumpy texture on one side. I initially thought this might be some sort of epiphysis--the end of a long bone separated from the main portion of the bone by cartilage in younger animals (later fused to the main bone in adults). The other side of the bone looks more worn (you can see the exposed cancellous texture. Given the round overall shape the thought of some part of a vertebra comes to mind but I can't seem to make much of this one. If someone has seen something like this before and knows its true identity, I'd welcome being informed. If I get no response in this sub-forum I'll repost these images in the Fossil ID section.

Cheers.

-Ken

[digit]

No takers on identifications for the last two fossils posted above? I guess I'll repost these on the Fossil ID section to see if I can attract the attention of those wiser about such things on this forum.

Cheers.

-Ken

[Cam28]

Nice finds Ken. Your "found any gold yet?" situation reminds me of the countless times I've been on a boat at work clearing up someone's pond vegetation and they always ask "catch any fish yet?" Such are people. But nice account of it and fossils.

Would guess giant land tortoise too on the 1st unknown

Edited April 29, 2016 by Cam28