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CBOB

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Hey All!

 

Had a lazy day today so finally got some time to post my Peace River canoeing/fossil trip I went on end of Feb.  I went 4 days and 3 nights on the Peace River canoeing, camping, and fossil hunting.  We dropped in Wauchula and ended in Arcadia.  We had a blast and found some good stuff along the way.  This is my 4th year going down there and my first trip where I found my biggest and best condition meg!  My buddy had never been fossil hunting (except once to Mazon Creek, pit 11 with me) and he found his first small meg on the river.  We saw a lot of wildlife, paddled a lot of water, and shoveled a lot of river bottom.  Here's my material from the trip.  Enjoy!

 

 

Armadillo band/scutes, glyptodont scute and tail scute (one of my favorites!), whale bulla, tortoise spur, random bone, and tusk material

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Jaw (recent deer??), alligator teeth, snake vert, sloth teeth pieces, gator osteoderm (a favorite), and small random bones

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Peccary tusk??, capybara tooth piece, reconstructed deer antler,  horse teeth, piece of petrified wood

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mammoth tooth pieces (I think same tooth), mastodon enamel pieces, shell (id?)

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turtle neural pieces, soft shell turtle pieces, gar scale, ray teeth/plate pieces, ray barbs

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turtle turtle turtle!

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These are my unknowns

glass bottle (any ideas w age on this one???), bone piece?  skull bone??, very worn vert of what?

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A perfect alligator osteoderm:   first one I've ever found

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I know nothing on glass bottles and thought it looked unique enough to keep.  Any ideas?  The bottom has "795" stamped or molded on the bottom

 

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Unknown large bone or skull piece?  Any ideas??

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Any idea on this small mammal tooth???  

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Wow! Great haul and great post.  I love that meg; it's a beauty.  That gator looked pretty healthy, guess you kept your shovel handy while you were in his house!

 

Luck is the most important skill of a fossil diver.

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Man what a sweet haul!!! To me your unknown mammal tooth looks to be a tapir tooth. Much more rare than horse or some other herbivores  in my experience. I think your large bone may be tortoise or turtle. Congrats on a high quality Meg, I find 9 beaters for every one that goes in the case:fistbump:

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

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3 hours ago, mrieder79 said:

Wow! Great haul and great post.  I love that meg; it's a beauty.  That gator looked pretty healthy, guess you kept your shovel handy while you were in his house!

 

Thanks!  The meg was def a highlight of the trip.  And that was a pretty big gator.  He/she was actually just around the bend from our campsite one night.

 

 

 

2 hours ago, jcbshark said:

Man what a sweet haul!!! To me your unknown mammal tooth looks to be a tapir tooth. Much more rare than horse or some other herbivores  in my experience. I think your large bone may be tortoise or turtle. Congrats on a high quality Meg, I find 9 beaters for every one that goes in the case:fistbump:

Hey Jeff!  Thanks!  I thought tapir too on that tooth but it is so small I didn't know but I guess there are baby tapirs too.  My buddy on the trip found a sweet perfect adult tapir tooth with one side of the full root still intact.  

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Great finds!  What is camping like on the Peace?  Is there sand bars on the river or do you camp on the rivers edge.  If camping on the rivers edge is there public land or is it private property?  I do several river extended river trips a year and am very curious what the situation is there on the Peace.  Esp with the croc situation:ninja:

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51 minutes ago, Jakuzi said:

Great finds!  What is camping like on the Peace?  Is there sand bars on the river or do you camp on the rivers edge.  If camping on the rivers edge is there public land or is it private property?  I do several river extended river trips a year and am very curious what the situation is there on the Peace.  Esp with the croc situation:ninja:

I go through the Canoe Outpost company on the river in Arcadia... they give you the canoe and they have designated areas along the route where you are able to camp.  Some spots if not most though are private property and you are allowed to only camp at the rivers edge.  I'm not too clear on the legality of who owns what land while camping but have never had a problem doing the trips.  Its all very primitive camping.  They also have their own campground a little up river from their facility on the river that you can also book and stay at with actual sites that you can reserve which is an option.  I have camped there also in the past.  Their website gives you a lot of info on trips they offer and camping info.  

And no croc situation there, only gators.   I've never had any problems with gators or have ever heard of anyone having problems with them.  But if you come upon babies, look out for mama.  Just have common sense with all wildlife and you should be fine.  Actually I am more worried about fire ants and snakes on that river than the gators.  

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25 minutes ago, CBOB said:

I go through the Canoe Outpost company on the river in Arcadia... they give you the canoe and they have designated areas along the route where you are able to camp.  Some spots if not most though are private property and you are allowed to only camp at the rivers edge.  I'm not too clear on the legality of who owns what land while camping but have never had a problem doing the trips.  Its all very primitive camping.  They also have their own campground a little up river from their facility on the river that you can also book and stay at with actual sites that you can reserve which is an option.  I have camped there also in the past.  Their website gives you a lot of info on trips they offer and camping info.  

And no croc situation there, only gators.   I've never had any problems with gators or have ever heard of anyone having problems with them.  But if you come upon babies, look out for mama.  Just have common sense with all wildlife and you should be fine.  Actually I am more worried about fire ants and snakes on that river than the gators.  

Thanks for the info esp the outfitters info.  One day I hope to make it out there and canoe/kayak camping would be ideal.  I've never had to deal with croc/gators here in North Texas or anywhere else I've been so wasn't sure if certain preventive measures needed to be taken.  Bears have definitely been an issue in many places I camp(not in N.TX).

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Great haul and variety of fossils. You must have moved a lot of the river bottom to come away with all that.

 

Love the old bottle as well--I always enjoy finding these (especially when whole).

 

I know just a little about antique bottles (and learn more as I find more). You'll find this website to be a wealth of information: https://sha.org/bottle/bases.htm

 

The number on the base was likely a manufacturer's mold number identifying a particular size and shape of a bottle. This bottle is molded (not old enough to be completely hand made and shaped). To determine if it was made (real roughly) in the 1800s or 1900s you can look at the neck of the bottle to see if the mold lines on the sides continue all the way up to the top of the bottle (machine molded) or if the seams stop short of the top (applied finish) where the top (the "finish") was added as a separate piece of hot glass and then molded into shape after the blowpipe was detached from the bottle after molding. I'm guessing it might be late 1800s but inspection (and some photos) of the top of the bottle would tell more.

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

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1 hour ago, digit said:

Great haul and variety of fossils. You must have moved a lot of the river bottom to come away with all that.

 

Love the old bottle as well--I always enjoy finding these (especially when whole).

 

I know just a little about antique bottles (and learn more as I find more). You'll find this website to be a wealth of information: https://sha.org/bottle/bases.htm

 

The number on the base was likely a manufacturer's mold number identifying a particular size and shape of a bottle. This bottle is molded (not old enough to be completely hand made and shaped). To determine if it was made (real roughly) in the 1800s or 1900s you can look at the neck of the bottle to see if the mold lines on the sides continue all the way up to the top of the bottle (machine molded) or if the seams stop short of the top (applied finish) where the top (the "finish") was added as a separate piece of hot glass and then molded into shape after the blowpipe was detached from the bottle after molding. I'm guessing it might be late 1800s but inspection (and some photos) of the top of the bottle would tell more.

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

Thanks for the bottle info.  I checked and the bottle does have the mold lines going up the sides to the top.  I found it up just south of Wauchula and had read a lot of posts of people finding bottles up that way on the Peace more so than farther south.  We were finding more bottles but none sparked my interest like this one did.  This trip was my first time dropping in at Wauchula versus Zolfo and I sure liked that stretch of river.

 

I definitely did a lot of digging but after going for a few years now I do have a few "spots" that I return to and they still produce some great finds.  This was a great trip on 2 levels:  1.  I brought a "first timer" with me and he loved it and is already asking when we can go back!  2.  I found some fossils that I had never found before and was really happy I did- gator osteoderm, glypto tail spike scute, complete biggest meg to name a few, and my first cool bottle.  

 

We ended up driving down from Chicago for the trip and on our way back home we stopped off at the Florida Museum of Natural History.  Such a great museum and gave my friend a chance to wrap his head around all our fossil finds.

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That sounds like you had a great trip. Bringing newbies to a hunt is a great way of sparking enthusiasm all over again. FLMNH is a great museum to drop in on after hunting the Peace River. You can see many of your finds fully articulated in the room where they have the large collection of mounted specimens. You can then see where your little find fits into the overall anatomy. If you come down again to Florida I'd encourage you to spend a few days volunteer digging at the Montbrook site. They are digging nearly continuously except for shutting down and tarping and sand bagging during the rainy season. You don't get to keep any of the fossils but you get to dig on a very fossil rich site and find things in situ as opposed to jumbled finds in a gravel bed in the Peace. I enjoy the experience and go whenever I have the time.

 

Sounds like your bottle is from the early 20th century then with the lip molded in one step with the rest of the bottle. The SHA site is a great place to educate yourself on antique bottle production methods and learn lots about old bottles you might find. The only whole bottles (of any antiquity) that I've found in the Peace have been in the Wauchula to Zolpho stretch. I believe there was a dump somewhere near the river which over time has been breached as the river progressively shifts its path over the years. I found a nice old bottle I was able to date at around 100 years old when I found my complete Colombian Mammoth molar a couple years back on a trip with John (@Sacha). He's found numerous bottles from the same stretch of the river.

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

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Here's a picture of a part of my vast collection including 2 mid century modern Aqua-Velva bottles. Very rare and extremely valuable!

 

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On 3/29/2017 at 9:34 AM, Sacha said:

Here's a picture of a part of my vast collection including 2 mid century modern Aqua-Velva bottles. Very rare and extremely valuable!

 

 

 

Wow!  Those are cool.  I found more but threw back most of the bottles.  Now thinking I maybe should have kept a few more.  Oh well.  I don't know too much on the old bottles but they sure have character.

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