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Bone Valley Florida did not disappoint


Bone Daddy

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Went fossil hunting again in Florida's Bone Valley Formation.
 
We returned to the Mammoth site where the large tusk section was recovered on the previous trip. After extensive searching in the area, no further Mammoth specimens were found. We still believe more of the beast is buried nearby, but this site is large and it's like looking for needles in a haystack. So, we are done with this site for a few months until the river drops further to allow better searching.
 
We left the Mammoth site and continued downstream until we arrived at another one of our "honey holes" - a spot in the river that has previously produced numerous Pleistocene megafauna fossils. The site did not disappoint. We were likely the first hunters to arrive at it (it's too far downstream for casual lookers) and there was a lot of low-hanging fruit laying around.
 
Josh  proceeded to do some diving in the murky waters, and I waded around the knee-deep tea-colored water - doing a lot of the same bending and stooping that I do while shelling at the beach. The sun was directly overhead at this time, so it illuminated the coffee-black water and made it appear a tan tea color that was much more transparent. Things on the river bed could be easily seen. Lots of pebbles, logs, branches, clay lumps that resemble rocks, and fossils. All of these things are laying in a chaotic mess all over the riverbed in certain places.
 
This lighting would not last, once the angle of the sun changes, the level of illumination drops and the tea colored water slowly changes to opaque coffee black. While the Sun was good, I found numerous bones including some vertebra and phalanges - the former is likely alligator and the latter is probably deer. Some of those appeared to be recent Holocene specimens and some were fossilized and were late Pliocene to late Pleistocene.
 
Also found were numerous turtle scutes, some soft-shell turtle plastrons, some unidentified "chunkasaurus" bone fragments, a piece of Miocene coral with calcite replacement, and a strangely shaped bone of some kind.
 
I left the best for last. Although not a fossil, I found an intact coyote skull that is in wonderful condition and has almost all of the teeth, including the canines. Also found was a partial small skull that is likely a raccoon or possum. These will clean up nicely and go into my growing collection of skulls.
 
Footnote : strangely, we found NO shark teeth, which is very unusual for this site. Although, to be fair, we weren't really focused on shark teeth this time.
 

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Awesome stuff! Congrats!

Max Derème

 

"I feel an echo of the lightning each time I find a fossil. [...] That is why I am a hunter: to feel that bolt of lightning every day."

   - Mary Anning >< Remarkable Creatures, Tracy Chevalier

 

Instagram: @world_of_fossils

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I had meant to bring my camera and shoot some photos/video, but forgot it again. It never fails - I will always forget one thing on every trip.

 

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On 10/28/2018 at 9:32 PM, Plantguy said:

Cool stuff...so how long is that awesome skull? looks pretty big...thanks for showing us!

 

Regards, Chris 

It's approx. 8 x 4 x 4 inches. It would be a little bigger if the lower jaw was still there.  

 

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