when did you realize what you had

[ober]

Getting into a new activity typically requires a lot of learning. One of the things I am learning is pretty basic; how to look at what I have and actually see what I have. Seeing sometimes requires recognizing patterns overlooked on first glance. And sometimes it takes me awhile to see what I have. This picture is a nice case in point. I picked it up last summer and kept it because it had a nice shell impression, which I marked with the red tag. I mailed it home, washed it off, looked at it and put it on the shelf in my somewhat dark office. Around Christmas I moved it to a brighter area of the house and there it sat for a couple of weeks. One evening as the sun hit it, I noticed the curved pattern of an ammonite, which I marked with the blue dot. A day or two later I realized the ammonite had an additional ring. This piece, which I picked up for one reason turned out to have much more interesting when I actually saw what I had. It is an invitation to look at other pieces with a sharper eye, and finding that some fairly ordinary finds are actually much more interesting than they appeared on first look. I imagine anyone more skilled would have realized at the outset what they had, but for me it was discovery after discovery. Neat. Looking at this picture now, I can image you thinking how could he miss that, it is so clear? But not to the untrained eye, at least me eye.  Have any of you had similar experiences? Tom

[Miocene_Mason]

I thought the tooth in the bottom right corner was a normal bone chunk till I found a sliver of enamel indicating it was a broken meg a few days after finding it. I always pick up bone chunks or strange objects because you never know what they will turn out to be.