Peace River Oddity(2)

[Shellseeker]

Out hunting today.  A relative disaster. I forgot to bring paddle for my kayak and thus reduced the time we had to fossil hunt and increase the pain in my muscles.  For all those who have not tried, paddling with a shovel is NOT an efficient means of transport.

I did find an unusual fossil so 3 photos and an old TFF thread may help in Identification. Size 2.5 L;1.5 W;1.0 H inches

 

 

Edited May 29, 2017 by Shellseeker
Add size

[Sacha]

10 hours ago, Shellseeker said:

For all those who have not tried, paddling with a shovel is NOT an efficient means of transport

 

Especially when your shovel has a 9 foot handle! 

 

I'm going to the elephant graveyard on Tuesday this week Jack. Thanks for the tip that the river has cleared up!

[GeschWhat]

13 hours ago, Shellseeker said:

For all those who have not tried, paddling with a shovel is NOT an efficient means of transport.

A true fossil hunter knows how to improvise! Better to forget the paddle than the shovel! You are a rock star...I so wish I could have seen this! 

[Shellseeker]

John, it likely would have worked better with a counterweight but then the shovel_paddle would have weighed 20 pounds and I would be in far worse shape today.

17 minutes ago, GeschWhat said:

A true fossil hunter knows how to improvise! Better to forget the paddle than the shovel! You are a rock star...I so wish I could have seen this! 

 

Lori, Thanks for the kind words. A mind is a terrible thing to lose. It is 2 hours between home and the Peace River and I have forgotten minor items (hat, food, bug spray, sun lotion, drinks, collection bags, etc) and more significant items (wetsuit, boots, paddles, ) and one time my shovel!! Fortunately I found and dug next to a fantastic person whio shared her backup shovel with me, I found a lot of good fossils that day and made a new friend. Sometimes hunting trip disasters are just opportunities. I am proud to say that I have NEVER (yet) forgotten my kayak or sieve.

 

Now back to this find. One of the strengths of TFF is to move knowledge and understanding forward. These Petrous temporal ear bones are an opportunity. I would ask Peace River fossil hunters to not to throw away these strange looking bones but post them on the forum. Petrous of temporal bones are one of the most dense bones in the animal.

In this PDF , I found a photo of a gazelle Petrous that seems to almost match the bones I have been finding. In the Peace River , there must be Petrous bones from deer, horse, camel, bison, etc and goven a little time I'll figure out how to differentiate them.

FOCUS: on the use of the petrous bone for estimating cranial abundance in fossil assemblages

Article (PDF Available) in Journal of Archaeological Science 34(9):1356-1360 · September 2007

[Shellseeker]

After searching the net and finding Petrous bones from sheep,goat, deer,horse, peccary, humans, I no longer am leaning so strongly to Petrous bone. All of thise look similar to the gazelle Petrous bone above. I am wide open to other thoughts on this find.

[JohnBrewer]

I sooo wanna see a guy paddling a canoe with a shovel....