Panning for color

[Shellseeker]

Digit and I lined up a hunt for yesterday. He was after a phosphate micro mixture from another Florida creek and in addition to learning what/how that was done, I was after some of the larger colorful teeth.

The 1st thing you should understand is that Peace River connecting creeks are extremely low meaning that my back would definitely communicate displeasure both yesterday AND today. As Digit wisely pointed out, that is what Neoprofen is for on the trip back home. LOW Water Photo above.

So the 1st 40 minutes, Digit sifted for matrix with an occasional larger tooth and I was busy finding the deeper pools of 20 inches deep -- no kayaks required here. 

I did find a hope canine but Digit immediately dashed my hopes.

 

Next we were finding some of those lighter colored teeth:

 

And finally as I looked closer , there were a bunch of tiny teeth, only 2-3 times the size of what digit was hunting!  Here is a tiger...  All in all , another fabulous day hunting fossils.  

[Fruitbat]

Looks like you had a productive trip!  I particularly like those 'lighter colored' teeth.

 

-Joe

[Sacha]

Jack, you must have a Superman suit under your wetsuit! You guys moved a ton of material on Thursday and then to dig in that shallow stuff the next day has got to be a killer. 

 

Anywhere in that location to dig holes of decent depth or do you run into the clay or limestone pretty quickly?

[Shellseeker]

Really big transition. I was moving from chest deep water to calf deep water. There were spots that went down a little but I do not know how many. We were really lucky to find two spots within talking distance because we were also attempting to triangulate on the color teeth.

I reinforced the idea that most of the muscle soreness comes from sorting gravel/fossils while trying to hold the sieve up.  There is no support for the sieve in very shallow water.

This location has taken lots of digging pressure since I was there last.  There are still some cream & orange teeth but if you like them , you should plan a visit soon.

 

[Peace river rat]

18 hours ago, Shellseeker said:

Really big transition. I was moving from chest deep water to calf deep water. There were spots that went down a little but I do not know how many. We were really lucky to find two spots within talking distance because we were also attempting to triangulate on the color teeth.

I reinforced the idea that most of the muscle soreness comes from sorting gravel/fossils while trying to hold the sieve up.  There is no support for the sieve in very shallow water.

This location has taken lots of digging pressure since I was there last.  There are still some cream & orange teeth but if you like them , you should plan a visit soon.

 

I am finding a few good colored teeth in the Peace in arcadia almost every dig day.

[Shellseeker]

9 hours ago, Peace river rat said:

I am finding a few good colored teeth in the Peace in arcadia almost every dig day.

When I first started, I also found good colored teeth in Arcadia.

[Peace river rat]

59 minutes ago, Shellseeker said:

When I first started, I also found good colored teeth in Arcadia.

Black teeth are boring, unless big or unusual.

[digit]

I'm indebted to Jack for his generous guidance to my inquiries about other small creeks to collect micro-matrix from as part of a project I'm working on. I did wonder about the "S" on his wetsuit and thought the red cape was rather unusual fossil hunting attire but it all made sense when he mentioned he'd been out fossil hunting every day that week. The low water really is a pain in the butt (or actually about a foot higher than that along my spine). I got lucky in that the first spot we tried right near the access point had a very dense amount of the micro-matrix gravel I'd been looking to collect. It didn't take very long to achieve my objective and it was a nice short trip to lug a heavy 5-gallon bucket of material back to my car.

 

With my main mission accomplished before the morning had even started warming-up we were free to explore a bit for the rest of the day. We walked upstream and tried a few locations. We could see the signs (gravel piles along the banks) that indicated others had hunted here in the not too distant past. The water was really low here--my sifting screen was laying on the creek bottom in just a few inches of water. I had to walk it out to a deeper part of the creek just to be able to shake it and let the water pull the sand and finer gravel through the sifting screen. All this, of course, done while bending deeply over at the waist. It didn't take too long before the muscles in my lower back had begun loudly registering their complaints. There were some small shark teeth here but mostly in the blacks and grays commonly found in the Peace River. Our logic (and yes, we did use our brains as well as our backs) was that the same quality teeth (or better) could be gleaned from the Peace River and it was not worth the pain to dig them up from this spot in the creek. Jack moved back a bit downstream to try to re-enter the zone of colored teeth. I tried one more spot next to a snag (deadhead) along one bank. There was a deeper pool in front of the roots of this downed tree where I could detect some gravel with my probe. It was also nice to stand in knee-deep water (I call this "frog depth"--needeep needeep needeep. ) I had only brought my shorter shovel which meant I could not prop the back of the sifting screen on the end of the shovel handle and stand upright holding the front edge of the sifting screen while sorting through the contents (vastly less strain on the back). I quickly discovered that I could rest the back of my sifting screen on the highest of the roots that were not projected upward from this tree which was now lying on its side. I was getting a mixture of black/gray teeth and a few showing some lighter coloration. Mostly, it was tiny shark teeth but I did pull a small gator tooth and a nicely colored Holmesina osteoderm from this spot. Jack had moved further down around a bend in the creek and I soon decided I'd give up this convenient and supportive snag and follow him back down the creek.

 

Jack had relocated an area that was producing some colorful teeth again and I probed around for a bit of gravel a little further upstream. I had noticed that this section of the creek had an exposure of whitish clay with some very rusty orange looking sections in it. This clay exposure seemed to be correlated with where we were finding the more colorful teeth so I'm suspecting that they are dropping out of the similarly colored clay layers in the bank. Further upstream where the teeth lost their colors the banks did not show this clay exposure. There were a few nicer colored teeth upstream but I'm suspecting that there are additional clay exposures upstream and that a few colorful teeth eventually come to inhabit the sections of the creek that are mostly producing the black/gray teeth. There were the occasional grayscale teeth mixed in with the nice cream, caramel and orange colored teeth but it seemed that digging near the colored clay outcrop was the best bet for pulling beautifully colored teeth from this creek. I'm guessing that the lower flow of this creek means that most teeth do not travel very far from the point of origin. This could be useful knowledge when prospecting this (or other) creeks in search of Technicolor teeth.

 

Other than a few smaller broken megs, most of what I found were tiny shark teeth (but with a good representation of tigers). The colors were like seeing color television for the first time after growing up with black-and-white television sets. For those younger TFF members there once was a time before wall-sized 4K LED flatscreens with surreal vibrant color. I came across a couple of very large (and nicely tan) dugong rib chunks. I always keep nicer pieces as they make great "paperweight" giveaways to friends and acquaintances--these were huge and heavy and not shiny obsidian black like those that litter the Peace. Oddly, there was a seemingly a lack of turtle shell in this creek and other than Jack finding a nice fossil horse incisor and a bovid tooth (that looked too recent so cow not bison) there was not a lot of mammal material in this creek (at least where we were digging). My probe found some gravel hiding in a deeper section around a bend in the creek. This was right next to a colored clay exposure and my sifter contained lots of clay as well as limestone matrix chunks. There was a large thick sand bar extending to the middle of the creek on the inside of the bend (where you would expect it) and I found that I could detect a thin gravel layer at its edge (right above a sticky clay base in the creek). I moved around this area searching for gravel and enjoying the depth which was nearly thigh-deep in this slot at the edge of the sand bar. Before we knew it lunchtime had come and passed (never even went back to the car for snacks). Seemingly minutes later it was past 2pm and time to stop terra-forming this section of the creek and get cleaned-up for the long trip back home. I ended up catching rush hour traffic by the time I got back to the Turnpike on my side of Florida and that added another hour to my 3.5 hour return trip. Lots of time to sit comfortably in the car and let my steady diet of ibuprofen do its work.

 

I'd been threatening to meet-up and hunt with Jack for some time now and I'm glad we both had a free day to make it out to a lovely spot (that could only have been better if it had enough water to reduce the bending over--though I'm not complaining). I may get back to this creek someday if I'm itching to go hunting sometime when the Peace River is still to high to work. The colors of the teeth would certainly be a draw. Below is a quick photo of some of the lovely warm colors that can be found here.

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

 

[MCG DAWG]

On 3/4/2017 at 3:36 PM, Shellseeker said:

Really big transition. I was moving from chest deep water to calf deep water. There were spots that went down a little but I do not know how many. We were really lucky to find two spots within talking distance because we were also attempting to triangulate on the color teeth.

I reinforced the idea that most of the muscle soreness comes from sorting gravel/fossils while trying to hold the sieve up.  There is no support for the sieve in very shallow water.

This location has taken lots of digging pressure since I was there last.  There are still some cream & orange teeth but if you like them , you should plan a visit soon.

 

 

Would a strap as pictured below help?  

 

I have exactly ONE four hour creek dig to my credit and I found exactly what you state. I can run a shovel all day long.  Not a problem.  I'd challenge you to a dirt moving competition any day.  But the sifting . . . man it got old quick.  Not a "natural" movment or posture that really wore on my lower back.  Only my intense desire for more teeth combined with the fee I had paid for the trip kept me going after the first two hours.  I found myself putting half as much matrix into the sifter each time to take the weight off my back.  

 

I did some archaelogical digs as a teenager and found myself fantasizing about having a small A frame/tripod mounted sifter on the bank like we used in those digs.   I think it would have been easier taking the matrix to it than with self sifting within the creek itself.  

 

[digit]

My low-tech approach to saving the back muscles is to simply plant the shovel firmly in the hole I'm digging (helps to keep track of it) and then rest the back edge of the sifting screen on the shovel handle (approximately centered on the back edge). I can then easily hold the front edge and position it up or down to get just the angle I want to help the gravel to slowly move its way forward as I sort through it. Before I put the screen on the shovel I shake the gravel to the back edge of the screen and then pull a little from the back to the middle of the screen to look through it carefully. Once I've check that gravel I continue to push it toward the edge nearest me and then pull some more gravel from the back. This orderly search through the gravel makes sure I miss very little. Resting the back edge on the shovel takes off a large amount of the weight and allows me to dig and sift all day. The strap idea above would still have me carrying all of the weight and I'd soon collapse.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[Shellseeker]

I think that you are spot on.  A strap would help significantly. The basic premise is that I do not want to lift any weight while sifting. (See photo below). In waist deep water , I have a 10 pound weight (anchor) keeping the sifter in place. I have pool noodles to give the sifter sufficient buoyancy to float freely at the surface. If all works as designed, my hands are free and I lift nothing. I do not bend my back or my neck tp perform the sifting function.

Now consider what a disaster it is to be standing in ankle deep rather than waist deep water.

[SailingAlongToo]

I will just throw this out there: a restaurant serving tray stand (like they set beside the table to put the tray of food on) works really well holding a screen full of matrix material so you can sort through it without holding it or bending over. They are also light weight and fold so they are quite portable. The one I have is plastic with webbing straps on top. Nothing to rust and easy to clean up at the end of the day. Straps to my back pack easily too.

[MCG DAWG]

Shellseeker, that's quite the set up!  Those sifters are huge.  

 

Love that idea of using the bouyancy to support the sifter while you work and alleviate any repetitive lifting.  I was in at most a foot of water and having to manually lift a sifter and hold it up braced on my abdomen each and every time.  Got old quick.  Your "work smarter, not harder" option seems ideal.  Thanks for the pics.  

 

 

 

[Shellseeker]

Nice grouping of colors Ken,  I knew that you were finding some goodies upstream.  It was a great day all around. We picked the only site that avoided the cooler winds.

 

Glad to assist, Mcg Dawg. Always minimize the heavy work so you can extend hunting hours.

 

SailingAlongToo.  One of my hunting friends brings PVC stands for his screen and adds a plastic beach chair so he can sort out the fossils in comfort.

 

KEEP the innovations coming!!    Shellseeker

[Craig]

Beautiful teeth! Sorry to hear about your back issues. I hope this will hope. When sifting I always bring 2 buckets (nested) with me. One is water tight for my gear, lunch, wallet, camera, etc and to sit on. The other has 3/8" holes drilled in the bottom and sides and is used to support my sifter. This way I can give my back a rest while sorting through the sifter. Also, the perforated bucket catches smalls as they pass through the sifter screen and I will occasionally take these home for a look at on a rainy day.

[digit]

2 hours ago, Craig said:

Also, the perforated bucket catches smalls as they pass through the sifter screen and I will occasionally take these home for a look at on a rainy day.

 

Great idea for a second chance for the smalls. Every time I'm out sifting I watch at least a few slip from my fingers through the screen.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken