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Inaugural Trip With Ray's Magic "CUBES"


SailingAlongToo

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This past weekend some good buddies and I headed down to a river in SE NC which is known for producing cretaceous fossils in a lag deposit among other things. The group consisted of folks from NC, VA, MD and PA. Weather forecast Saturday for central/eastern VA and NE NC was really BAD, but forecast was great for where we were headed, mid-80s, mostly sunny with a nice breeze. Even more exciting and important to us (especially at this time of year), the river level was low enough for us to access the lag deposit material. In the field with us for the first time were a few of Ray's @aerogrower "magic cubes." They came in the mail about an hour before I headed south with the boat and I was hoping they would bring us all good luck. Obviously, they did that and more! I just wish Don @sixgill pete could have joined us. Maybe next time.

 

Most of us met Friday night at the hotel, had a great dinner at a local steak & seafood place across the street and then hung out chatting and catching up about life since our last fossil hunting trip together. Two of our group were still gun shy of the hotel from their encounter with "bed bugs" during our December trip, so they drove in early Saturday morning to meet us.

 

Saturday morning started out with perfect weather and eight (8) very excited fossil hunters. Getting the boat in at the ramp was interesting to say the least, given its shad season and the fishermen were everywhere on the ramp, dock, etc. They didn't like having to stop or move even for just a few minutes so we could launch. Water temp was in the low 70s and we headed out to our intended location.

 

When we got there, we perused the area, discussed and debated what was the best strategy and where to start. 2 others started a spot to the right of the boat and I started a spot to the left of the boat. My very 1st screen produced a bunch of sharks teeth and 2 deinosuchus vertebrae, 1 with very fresh shovel marks, if you know what I mean. I will try and post photos of the shark teeth & vert, coprolites, misc. croc teeth and other stuff this evening. One of our group moved farther to the left and started exploring and surface collecting. Dang if he didn't come walking back up with a nice deinosuchus tooth and other stuff, right off the beach. Here's a photo of some of @Daleksec and his dad's croc/deinosuchus teeth. They have quite a few more. Note one of Ray's "cubes" getting its inaugural photo op.

 

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Eventually, the guys to the right of the boat gave up and helped explore my area. They are nice folks and good friends, so I only minded a little. :-) j/k  So, wouldn't you know that it would have to be one of my buddies who pulled this beauty of a Hadrosaur vert out. This particular friend is known by all to have a lucky golden horseshoe in a certain place.

 

58ff55a5e2429_Hadrosaurvert.2.jpg.f3831922b2abd8cf600eb1b218e60b02.jpg   58ff55bfd5092_Hadrosaurvert.3.thumb.jpg.300a73b62661dab027679954ae12c467.jpg   

 

While all this was going on, @Daleksec had walked farther down to the left where his dad was exploring and found this vertebrae exposed in situ. Note, Ray's @aerogrower "magic cube" making another appearance in this photo. As you can tell, the vert came out in several pieces despite our best efforts. Daleksec will put it back together as best as possible and we'll post more photos of it.

 

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During the course of Saturday, one of our friends found 2 nice Theropod teeth with one being about an inch and one being about 1/4 inch. Both were serrated. I will add photos once they are cleaned up.

Besides the multitude of croc and shark teeth and the 2 deinosuchus verts I found early on, one of my prizes from Saturday was this gorgeous, but yet suggestively shaped object. :-) The laughter and stories going around about my coprolite find are not fit for printing on a family oriented website.

 

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We finally finished up hunting/collecting about 415pm Saturday with most of us filthy and sore but VERY happy as we headed back to the boat ramp. Saturday evening was another night of hanging out, chatting and a great dinner with good friends. Though, we did go to bed much earlier than Friday night and Ibuprofen was definitely on the menu.

 

Sunday morning we woke to drizzle, low-50s and breezy. It was going to be a cold/wet ride in the boat back to our spot. Not to mention, at least one thunderstorm had come through in the early hours of the morning. Forecast looked OK though with a little drizzle but most of the rain holding off till after 1pm.

 

We got back to our spot and started at it again. Quite a few more deinosuchus teeth/verts were found along with many more sharks teeth and other assorted goodies. Given the awesome and spectacular finds everyone else had on Saturday, I rubbed my newly acquired "magic cube" for some personal good luck. About an hour into the hunting, the magic cube came through for me. While working through the matrix I heard this distinct "chunk" sound of metal hitting on something very solid. I should have snapped a photo right then but there was no way I was vacating the spot so one of my friends could jump in given the heads turning around at the "chunk" sound. I probed a little more and pulled this beautiful hunk of bone out. This is the very first Hadrosaur vertebrae I've ever found. I've been present when several others were found (by the friend with the golden horseshoe), and he even found a very nice dino toe bone in front of me. But this one is mine.

 

20170423_112954.thumb.jpg.1162e97eae33e19c63112c6d03001a75.jpg   58ff5ceda0644_Hadrosaurvert.1.thumb.jpg.217e5f45b80e0264dae3a53a4377aa3b.jpg  20170423_113101.thumb.jpg.36e6d32ffd2cda2b24fe686b7857f3d2.jpg

 

After all the excitement and joking about my "happy" dance died down we went back to the task at hand. And, of course it didn't take long for the golden horseshoe to show up AGAIN!!! He pulled this Hadrosaur tail vertebrae out about a foot from where I had found mine. The cube was working it's magic.

 

58ff5ed8566b7_Tailvert.jpg.5131ea9cac041ceefdb78c0116ff64ff.jpg

 

About 1230p it started sprinkling and was threatening to turn into a steady rain. We packed up and headed back to the ramp.

 

Photos of all 3 Hadrosaur verts in the next post.

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Once back at the ramp, we took some photos of all 3 verts together. Here's one of them.

 

58ff5f90ed72b_HadrosaurVerts.thumb.jpg.47271fe8eaa1e93e5e85fd973f468a7f.jpg  

 

As we all work through our awesome finds I will post more photos. We found quite a few interesting things, some like one of my deinosuchus verts are labeled "some assembly required" on the bag, and will take some time before it's picture ready. Here is a photo of Daleksec working through his smalls as soon as he got home Sunday evening. I doubt he even showered first. He is such a lucky young man (17 y/o) and I hope he thanks his dad every now and then for bringing him or letting him go on so many of these adventures!!!!! Trevor - you better, we have 4 more trips scheduled before the end of May.

 

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A special thanks to @aerogrower for providing the scale cubes. They are great in the field and I still think they might have a little luck or magic in them.

 

Cheers,

 

SA2, Daleksec and his Dad 

Don't know much about history

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Don't know much about science books.........

Sam Cooke - (What A) Wonderful World

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I don't know about magic but very nice finds! Sounds like you had a great trip.

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Nice stuff.... dinosaurs form back east are always interesting.  Thar little vert in your three verts photo... are you sure it is a hadrosaur?  The chevron attachments are huge, and it is rather long (compared to its height).I think it is a croc tail bone.  And the big vert is possibly too round to be hadrosaur.  I am not familiar with the east coast dinosaur fauna, but if I found that out here I would call it a ceratopsian.  The other is a nice heart-shaped hadrosaur vert.  

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31 minutes ago, aerogrower said:

I don't know about magic but very nice finds! Sounds like you had a great trip.

 

Ray, I will get a box of goodies in the mail to you this week.

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Im just glad that you like and that they will get used. Keep an eye out on the forum for my metric version! Turned out pretty good. 

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6 minutes ago, jpc said:

Nice stuff.... dinosaurs form back east are always interesting.  Thar little vert in your three verts photo... are you sure it is a hadrosaur?  The chevron attachments are huge, and it is rather long (compared to its height).I think it is a croc tail bone.  And the big vert is possibly too round to be hadrosaur.  I am not familiar with the east coast dinosaur fauna, but if I found that out here I would call it a ceratopsian.  The other is a nice heart-shaped hadrosaur vert.  

 

JPC, I will have to look into your suggestions. We knew the smaller of the 3 was a tail vert but thought it was probably a different hadrosaur species. Could be some type of croc. I really had not considered ceratopsian for the larger vert. There are only a few dinos identified from this locale and some of them were from broken teeth or bone. I will have to research it and send some photos off to people obviously more knowledgeable on the subject. Thanks for the info. 

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1 minute ago, aerogrower said:

Im just glad that you like and that they will get used. Keep an eye out on the forum for my metric version! Turned out pretty good. 

 

I did have 2 people who said they would like a metric version.

 

My mother-in-law is going to make me carry cases with velcro so I can attach it to my back pack for easy access.

Don't know much about history

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1 minute ago, SailingAlongToo said:

 

I did have 2 people who said they would like a metric version.

 

My mother-in-law is going to make me carry cases with velcro so I can attach it to my back pack for easy access.

Love the idea of the Velcro cases! That would be a great way to carry them too. Don't have anymore metric ones going but sounds like I will for next batch!

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5 minutes ago, SailingAlongToo said:

 

JPC, I will have to look into your suggestions. We knew the smaller of the 3 was a tail vert but thought it was probably a different hadrosaur species. Could be some type of croc. I really had not considered ceratopsian for the larger vert. There are only a few dinos identified from this locale and some of them were from broken teeth or bone. I will have to research it and send some photos off to people obviously more knowledgeable on the subject. Thanks for the info. 

Tom Holtz at the U of Maryland is your man.  

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57 minutes ago, jpc said:

Nice stuff.... dinosaurs form back east are always interesting.  Thar little vert in your three verts photo... are you sure it is a hadrosaur?  The chevron attachments are huge, and it is rather long (compared to its height).I think it is a croc tail bone.  And the big vert is possibly too round to be hadrosaur.  I am not familiar with the east coast dinosaur fauna, but if I found that out here I would call it a ceratopsian.  The other is a nice heart-shaped hadrosaur vert.  

 

 

I agree with much of what jpc states.

 

Isolated vertebrae except for the last third of the tail can be difficult to ID even to family.

 

We impose bias on to a photo but i'm seeing a Hadrosaur, Ceratopsian and ? Not an end hadrosaur caudal.  Theropod mid caudal?...perhaps croc.  It depends on perspective.

 

One issue with Hadrosaur and Ceratopsian is that much of the photos, etc. are of Edmontosaurus and Triceratops. Their vertebrae are 'typical' for each family.  With other genera it can get more nuanced.  Even when walking around our badlands with researchers who have written papers on dinos, they are hesitant to ID an isolated vertebra unless obvious.

 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Canadawest said:

 

 

I agree with much of what jpc states.

 

Isolated vertebrae except for the last third of the tail can be difficult to ID even to family.

 

We impose bias on to a photo but i'm seeing a Hadrosaur, Ceratopsian and ? Not an end hadrosaur caudal.  Theropod mid caudal?...perhaps croc.  It depends on perspective.

 

One issue with Hadrosaur and Ceratopsian is that much of the photos, etc. are of Edmontosaurus and Triceratops. Their vertebrae are 'typical' for each family.  With other genera it can get more nuanced.  Even when walking around our badlands with researchers who have written papers on dinos, they are hesitant to ID an isolated vertebra unless obvious.

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks CanadaWest! I will go back and look at the specific dinosaur family, genus and species that have been identified from this locale. I'm definitely a novice when it comes to dino stuff, but I will admit, I might be getting that bug!!

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Jack, I do wish I had been able to make the trip last Saturday; especially now with all of the rain that has fell in the area. The river is at 17.5 feet now and expected to crest at over 22 feet. Maybe several weeks now until it is back down to manageable levels. 

 

Those verts are amazing. I'll make it down there with you guys one of these days. If I don't see you before, I will see you at the Fossil Festival.

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This angle it looks theropod. The texture is right  The ends are hard to determine as they can get filled in.

 

 

 

 

IMG_6706.JPG

IMG_6708.PNG

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5 minutes ago, Canadawest said:

This angle it looks theropod. The texture is right  The ends are hard to determine as they can get filled in.

 

 

 

 

IMG_6706.JPG

 

I will get my buddy to take some photos from other angles.

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A ceratopsian tooth was recently found in Mississippi, so they did exist in the East. 

 

Nice finds by the way! My Eastern dinosaur collection consists of two hadrosaur teeth, one in great condition and the other hardly recognizable and some isolated bones that I have not ID'ed.

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On 2017-04-25 at 8:35 AM, aerogrower said:

Im just glad that you like and that they will get used. Keep an eye out on the forum for my metric version! Turned out pretty good. 

You must be talking about mine... Haven't had a chance to put it to use yet but here it is - and I found the perfect thing to carry it in, too! :D

cube 1.jpg

cube 2.jpg

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2 hours ago, Wrangellian said:

You must be talking about mine... Haven't had a chance to put it to use yet but here it is - and I found the perfect thing to carry it in, too! :D

cube 1.jpg

cube 2.jpg

 

So who is selling these cubes?

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:popcorn: John

I had a friend once, but the wheels fell off. Sad, very sad. - Nightwing

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39 minutes ago, JohnBrian said:

 

So who is selling these cubes?

Ray (aerogrower) is making them, I don't know if he is selling any of them. Maybe he should..

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OMG!!!! I'm not used to seeing that amount of dino and croc material from anywhere on the east coast. You guys really hit pay dirt. Big Congrats. Looks like you had an awesome day. Amazing what those cubes can produce.

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9 hours ago, Wrangellian said:

Ray (aerogrower) is making them, I don't know if he is selling any of them. Maybe he should..

 

I told Ray @aerogrowerI would buy the cubes from him, just come up with a price that makes him some $$ for his time and materials. He wanted to give me a few to try out. I still think he should patent them and sell them. He could make a nice hefty profit to fund his fossil hunting excursions or new acquisitions to his personal collection. I guarantee you I could sell a gross (144) or more of those in a few weeks, especially with Aurora Fossil Festival coming up Memorial Day weekend.

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A ceratopsian dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of eastern North
America, and implications for dinosaur biogeography
Nicholas R. Longrich

(from North Carolina)

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