Florida Fossil Hunt , Part 2

[Shellseeker]

Mike,

I took a trip from South Florida to Hartford this evening and there was this white stuff falling from the skies!!!!  WHAT is this ??

Your photo before the Shark verts is likely  Paleolama Mirifica tooth.

You have a way with words and skills with photos, crafting them into a fantastic journey. You also give freely of yourself, enthusiastic about small things that make the fabric of our memories and good times.

You are an easy person to like, Mike.

[digit]

Lovely trip report--the Florida TFF members did you right!

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[Nimravis]

Mike,

 

Great trip report and finds, and I love the way that you arranged the pictures.

[Monica]

Hi Mike!

 

I think I know how you feel - it was a brutal February up here in southern Ontario, too - I'm so happy that spring is finally upon us!!!

 

As for you recent trip to Florida - I am envious!  I like all of your echinoids, and I especially like how you arranged them in a swirl-like pattern - very artistic!

 

Re: the little guessing game you've set up:

 

1. Is the bird in the picture a Blue Heron?

 

2. Are the unknown marks made by Native Americans?

 

Thanks for the Florida fossil-and-scenery show! 

 

Monica

[Kane]

Thanks for the great visual journey! It is so nice to put faces to screen names -- looks like quite a great crew, and you had a lovely reprieve from winter.  I'm hoping that our Floridians are finally seeing much more reasonable river levels given the later start this year.

[dalmayshun]

think the marks are on the side of a Wagnerii shell. So glad you had a great time. All your pre-planning paid off handsomely. Great pieces.  Beautiful. (Ark Shell)

[minnbuckeye]

We have a winner!!!!   

@dalmayshun.  Hope you are recouping well. Let me know your address if you are interested in the prize. 

 

 Here is the shell that has the pattern. 

 

  

 

  I purposely did not show this side! These shells amaze me.

 

 

 

[ricardo]

Mike,

Great trip report and fantastic fossils. Thank you for sharing your journey with us.

[digit]

16 hours ago, minnbuckeye said:

Who can ID the bird in this picture?

Assuming we're not talking about the old Coot holding the paddle in the kayak , I think you are referring to the small slate blue bird on the bank. There are too few pixels available in the scaled-down image to tell for sure but if the bird had white feathers running up the underside of its neck, then it was a Tricolored Heron--if not, then it was likely a Little Blue Heron.

 

Without trying to bring back in all of your large images, I'll try to add my two cents for IDs to your finds that started this topic (in the order they were presented):

 

• Unknown vertebra??? If it is concave on both sides (which it seems to be) it is a fish vert, highly worn.
• Sort of fish plate?? This is another example of what we call "pufferfish mouthplates" you can see the biting teeth along the edge and the crushing plates on the upper palate.
• I am hoping tooth, but I think it is a barnacle. You are right--barnacle.
• I am hoping hoof core, but likely is just a suggestive rock. Not the right shape for a hoof core (too downturned at the tip). Would need to see the broken end to be sure it is not a suggestive rock but I think it may very well be a broken root from a mastodon tooth. Do an image search for "mastodon tooth" and compare to your find in hand.
• Buck??? I'm thinking base of a small broken deer antler.
• No guess on this!! Though I'm still not great at distinguishing tortoise leg spurs (osteoderms) from very similar (to my naive mind) osteoderms from the tails of glyptodonts but the former are more common.
• Unknown??? Stumped me too. Others with more experience might be able to make this one out.
• Tortoise Shell. The larger image certainly looks that way but the small one is almost shaped like a toe/claw core--would like to see more of that one.
• Dolphin Tooth? About the right shape and size for small cetacean teeth. Can you see a distinct enamel cap to these? I've seen inflated fish Tilly Bones that look very similar.
• Unknown Tooth. Recent vs Fossil??? Likely old enough to be fossil. I'm terrible at distinguishing deer molars from camel so I'll leave this to the experts.
• P2, P3 toe bone?? Maye suggestive ROCK Looks like it has bone texture. I'm terrible with worn bones so I won't show my ignorance.
• Turtle foot Pad/Turtle spur These would be tortoise and not "turtle". @Harry Pristis did a fine post a while back discussing the proper terminology of these. I can try to search for that later or maybe he can find it and comment again.
• Baracuda teeth?? Yup, Barracuda teeth (two r's in that word).
• Vertebrae, Snake?? Yup, this appears to be a modern snake vertebra.
• Fish Mouth???? Yup, these little bubbly teeth are pharyngeal (throat) teeth. I don't think these are from drum fish but I'd need to look in my ID books to figure out what it is from. I find these a lot picking micro-matrix.
• Burfish Mouthplate Burrfish, Porcupinefish--I just call all of these "pufferfish" mouth plates. Might be possible to distinguish different types but I've never tried.
• Puffer Mouth Plate. See above.
• Mastodon tooth chip?? The flat nature of this suggests mammoth tooth frag rather than mastodon.
• Unknown land site rib Yup, doesn't appear to be the ubiquitous dugong but I've never tried to put an ID to an isolated rib.
• Tiger Shark, Galeocerdo sp. The one on the lower right with the more elongate tip appears to be Physogaleus contortus and the large one in the middle may be Galeocerdo aduncus. I have trouble distinguishing these and usually need to refer to references like this:
• https://www.fossilguy.com/gallery/vert/fish-shark/galeocerdo/galeocerdo.htm
• The Tilly Bone. Found a bunch of these in Cookiecutter Creek when Dave was down from NY recently. There was a side discussion on these which I can probably relocate.
• Hemipristis upper Snaggletooth Shark The smaller one in the upper left appears to be a Carcharhinus (note the notch in the root of the others and the extreme serrations).
• Ear Bullas, Equine???? This is a new one for me. Never considered anything other than the somewhat common cetacean bullae. You've got a number that look similar--this would be a question for @Harry Pristis
• The baby meg! Such a pretty little tooth. I like how baby teeth from this species can have slight indications of side cusps like its ancestor C. chubutensis. An example of Ernst Haeckel's phrase "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny".
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recapitulation_theory

 

That's my uninformed but experienced thoughts on your plethora of Florida finds. What a trip!!!

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

 

 

 

[Darktooth]

@minnbuckeye See, I told you there would still be plenty of goodies left for you to find! I am glad that you had a great trip. Lots of nice stuff.

[minnbuckeye]

33 minutes ago, Darktooth said:

@minnbuckeye See, I told you there would still be plenty of goodies left for you to find! I am glad that you had a great trip. Lots of nice stuff.

 

@Darktooth, between the 2 of us, we probably cleaned them out of Florida.

[Darktooth]

11 minutes ago, minnbuckeye said:

 

@Darktooth, between the 2 of us, we probably cleaned them out of Florida.

It is nice when us Northeners can atleast get a small taste of what our Southern friends get to enjoy on a regular basis.

[digit]

1 hour ago, minnbuckeye said:

between the 2 of us, we probably cleaned them out of Florida.

That's okay--when I was up on Ontario with @Kane and @Malcolmt I cleaned their site out of all of those pesky brachiopods. I'm sure @Tidgy's Dad would have done the same.

 

We just let you out-of-towners come down here to clear out all those dugong rib bones so we can get to the giant ground sloth claw cores and complete mammoth and mastodon molars.

 

We are blessed in Florida to have a great wealth and diversity of fossils that may be relatively easily collected (no hammering and splitting heavy chunks of rock). We're happy when we can treat those from afar to our bounty. This year it has been supremely challenging so to do.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[minnbuckeye]

22 minutes ago, digit said:

pesky brachiopods

 

No comment from @Tidgy's Dad?????

[digit]

18 minutes ago, minnbuckeye said:

No comment from @Tidgy's Dad?????

Yes, that was an A-grade taunt after all.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[Tidgy's Dad]

Sorry, not feeling very well.

Just mention of brachiopods at the moment makes me feel dizzy. 

But I would certainly be up there with shovels and buckets to strip the place bare if I could. 

[BLT]

17 minutes ago, Tidgy's Dad said:

Sorry, not feeling very well.

I hope you’re feeling better soon!

[dalmayshun]

Re: fossil print i.d.  thoughtful of you to offer some nice prizes,  but as you know from our communication a few weeks ago.  I have lots of the same things from the same areas. I'd suggest giving those fossils to one of the other guessers. The reason I answered,  is because I think those patterns on ark shelves are gorgeous.  I actually developed a logo out of one a few months back.  Mine remind me of Frank Lloyd Wright patterns.  since I'd worked with them, they were easy for me to recognize (edited and added a photo of the arc as hello that reminds me of Wrights patterns

[jcbshark]

Excellent write up and pics Mike that little meg with cusps is a trip maker for sure. Don’t see many here like that

[digit]

7 hours ago, dalmayshun said:

since I'd worked with them, they were easy for me to recognize

This is one of the things I like about the learning phase of fossil hunting (especially in novel areas for novel fossil targets). Developing a search image that allows you to spot something that you would have previously overlooked gives you a sense of accomplishment. I took out a group of SCUBAnauts (teens/pre-teens) and their accompanying adults to the Peace River last weekend. It was fun to watch them develop their skills at discerning fossil from not-fossil. Some were nothing but eager when they began showing me just about every rocky chunk of matrix from their sifting screens and asking if it was a fossil. As they started (by luck at first) to spot some bone fragments or small shark teeth, their hit ratio improved. Some got really good at spotting the shiny gray of the tooth enamel from smaller shark teeth in their sifter and could spot one even if it was partially covered up. One group of three girls working as a team with a shovel and sifting screen got really good at finding small tumbled and worn fragments of the tooth enamel from mastodon teeth (distinctive when seeing the pearly striated cross-section of the enamel layer). They were picking out pieces right and left after I spotted and clued them into the search image on the first one I spotted in their sifting screen.

 

It's always fun to be able to use these learned skills that are so narrowly particular to the activity of fossil hunting. I think exercising our fossil search image knowledge is a big part of why members are so willing to assist others in making fossil IDs here on the forum. It both helps transfer that search image to new members and and to reinforce the notion that we've learned something useful.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[ober]

This is a great thread. Thanks for sharing, and for all the comments. I generally head out west to look for fossils and haven’t explored the options so much closer to home. Tom

[minnbuckeye]

9 hours ago, jcbshark said:

Excellent write up and pics Mike that little meg with cusps is a trip maker for sure. Don’t see many here like that

 

@jcbsharkGlad to hear from you!! I thought maybe my humor (adding a picture of my leg) might have created some ill feelings. For me trekking through the brush to get to a site only adds to its appeal, even if my soft wrinkle free skin gets abused! I wish I had thought of taking a picture with the three of us covered with burdocks!

 

As for the meg, I was very appreciative of the gift from Jack. I think I have 6 or 7 complete megs now from my trips to Florida. May have to think about building a table like yours soon. 

 

 When is the fishing good. I will have to visit my son more than once a year and could look at slipping in some fishing next visit instead of fossils (did I say that????) as you had suggested.

 

 Mike

[jcbshark]

1 minute ago, minnbuckeye said:

 

@jcbsharkGlad to hear from you!! I thought maybe my humor (adding a picture of my leg) might have created some ill feelings. For me trekking through the brush to get to a site only adds to its appeal, even if my soft wrinkle free skin gets abused! I wish I had thought of taking a picture with the three of us covered with burdocks!

 

As for the meg, I was very appreciative of the gift from Jack. I think I have 6 or 7 complete megs now from my trips to Florida. May have to think about building a table like yours soon. 

 

 When is the fishing good. I will have to visit my son more than once a year and could look at slipping in some fishing next visit instead of fossils (did I say that????) as you had suggested.

 

 Mike

Don’t worry about me mike look forward to doing some fishing with you when you’re back in town 

[minnbuckeye]

Just now, jcbshark said:

Don’t worry about me mike look forward to doing some fishing with you when you’re back in town 

 What is a good month?

[jcbshark]

11 hours ago, minnbuckeye said:

 What is a good month?

I like summer the most, it’s just a little hot