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My name is Wilson and I live in the Tampa area. Moved here two years ago from the Pacific Northwest. Last year my 6 year old who loves dinosaurs innocently asked if we could dig for fossils in our yard. Well, in lieu of trashing my lawn, I quickly Googled fossil hunting in Florida and immediately wanted to take him to the Peace River. This was mid May so we ordered permits, built sifter boxes, zip tied pool noodles to some shovels, loaded our inflatable kayaks and headed to the launch at Zolfo Springs. Went up river exploring for the day and found a few baggies full of smaller shark teeth and turtle shell chunks. A week later the whole family went downstream and found a lot of the same with a few other unique things. Then the season ended. We spent the last 8 months addicted to the thrill of finding cool fossils. Watched numerous YouTube videos, ordered a few books, and laid out the novice collection on the dining table a few times to show friends and family. This year we are giddy with excitement. Last week went to the river for a first this year and third time ever, a little wiser, and had a good day. Still frustrated at finding a good reference guide to what exactly we are finding. Many fossils are complete unknowns. We are now past the stage of grabbing every chunk of dugong rib we see. Still tempting and cool though. We would like to join in the community and learn about this wonderland of fossils that abound in the region. Looking forward to the interaction and sharing finds.

The last time I got out on the river was back in mid-January. Since then, I have watched the USGS gauges while the weather stayed mostly dry. The river height and flow was dropping steadily and just when I was ready to go hunting again, the entire house got sick with the flu - this was right before the coronavirus started grabbing all the headlines. It was very frustrating to sit inside the house while the weather was so beautiful and the river getting so low. Yesterday was the first day where the wife and I both felt close enough to 100% to brave the trip and go hunt some fossils. I loaded up the truck the night before and we headed out the door just before 7am. The drive was uneventful and we arrived at the Gardner ramp on the Peace River about 9am. We hadn't been back to Gardner since 2017, so it was a pleasant change of scenery from my usual spots. The plan was to revisit a couple of old spots we had found on previous trips back in 2016. I hadn't laid eyes on this stretch of river in a long time, so I was not sure what changes to expect. To my surprise, the ramp area was dead. Nobody else was there. Usually the ramp is quite busy, but our timing must have been very good. We had the entire area to ourselves. (Going on a tuesday morning helps) The last time I was at Gardner, the water level was almost two feet higher, so I was pleased to see how low the water was. The current was also quite lazy. The USGS Zolfo Springs gauge read 4.6 feet and the flow was about 120. You can tell in the photo below how low the water is by looking at the opposite bank. Now, I am not going out of my way to obfuscate the exact location of my search spots in this report. This is because this stretch of river is heavily hunted and these spots are known to other hunters. This fact was reinforced on me when we arrived at the first spot and found shovel holes and spoil piles nearby. But more on that later... I have been to Gardner a handful of times previously, but the water was never this low. In fact, I ended up jumping out of the kayak and dragging it behind me while I waded through knee-deep water. My wife rode like a queen in the front seat of the tandem kayak and snapped photos. Our first destination was about a mile upstream, so there was a combination of wading/pulling the kayak and paddling. The water was running surprisingly hard in a couple of places, but the paddling was never too difficult. Most of the paddling was fairly easy with the wind pushing us from the south. We were looking for a clayey layer exposure known for producing prolific quantities of common fossils of mixed types - Miocene and Pleistocene material intermingled and then compacted into a tight cemented matrix. This material falls out of the sandy banks and into the river, where it breaks apart into gravel, fossils, and sand. There are several of these exposures along the Gardner stretch in both directions from the ramp, but each one has a slightly different character and mix of fossils. Some are heavier on Miocene material and some are heavier on Pleistocene, but all are mixed from being reworked over long periods of time by river action. Before the fossil spots, we passed the entrance to Charlie Creek. You can't really tell from this photo (below), but the water is less than waist deep here. Charlie Creek is on the right and the main channel of the Peace is on the left. We didn't explore Charlie Creek today and we kept going. Finally, we found the first part of the exposure I was looking for. Flood action has lengthened the visible exposure and there was a gravel bed present that was missing on my previous trips. You can see it in the photo below as the dark stripe on the lighter-colored sandy bottom. The sun was lighting up the water and it had the color of weak tea. Here there was a fossiliferous layer of rocky-clayey matrix weathering into the river channel. You can see it as a white layer in the sandy bank in the photo below. There were shovel holes and a few spoil piles in the area, so other hunters had already visited this spot. The holes and piles looked fairly fresh, so it was likely within the the last few days. Still, the exposure is productive and a lot of new material is crumbling out the bank and ending up in the river. There is a lot of gravel and clay lumps to sift. Digging test holes along the water-line yielded a mix of small common fossils - dugong ribs, small shark teeth, megalodon teeth, turtle scutes, mammoth ivory fragments, mammoth tooth fragments, horse/camel/bison teeth, and the occasional vertebra/skull. I was hoping to find some nice intact megalodon or mammoth teeth. I found small pieces of both, but no large intact examples. Here are a couple of in-situ photos. In the first, you can see a nice bluish-colored shark tooth weathering out of the sandy matrix. In the second photo, you can see a piece of bone coming out of the matrix material - which is crumbly and loosely-consolidated with pieces of varying sizes. My wife was still not feeling too great physically, so she mainly surface-collected along the water-line while I shoveled a ton of sifters worth of gravel. I found a lot of dugong ribs. It was an All You Can Eat Ribs Special and I filled up a sack with them before I stopped picking them up. I left a bunch behind - just too many to mess with. I would work a spot for about 30-45 minutes and then move on further upstream searching out more exposures to sample. We sampled four different spots along a roughly mile to mile and a half stretch. All told, we spent about six hours on the river. Eventually, we turned around and decided to head back to the ramp to beat rush hour going back into Tampa. We had a leisurely, slow, and pleasant float back downstream to the ramp. On the entire trip, we only saw two other sets of humans. One was a husband-wife fishing duo who passed us in a flat-bottomed bass boat with a small outboard motor. The other was a group of three locals fishing from chairs near the ramp when we got back. Surprisingly, we only saw one small gator near the confluence with Charlie Creek. We did see and hear lots of birds though, which was nice. Here is some of the stuff we found. Some is still drying out. Big chunks of micro-matrix are on the right - those will be searched later from home. Lots of ribs in the foreground. Lots of bone chunks and oddballs on the left in the rear. Unfortunately, I didn't find a single intact megalodon. The half-tooth in the photo was a tease. I saw it sticking up out of the sandy bottom and was excited when I reached down for it. I was disappointed when it was only half! LOL.

The wife and I went to Gardner yesterday (report and photos will be forthcoming), and I found a bunch of stuff. This is an oddball that I am not sure about. Something about it says to me "pleistocene megafauna" - it has a wood-grainy texture on the less-damaged portion. It's broken, but I am hoping that the position of the hole and shape might be diagnostic. Does anyone know what critter this comes from?

I do not always attend my fossil club meeting, but made an exception last night. @minnbuckeye had generously donated some fossils for the upcoming club Auction (Thanks Mike) at the March Meeting and I was delivering said donations to the Auctioneer. Also we had a cold front coming in today , so I was out hunting yesterday. Found a couple of 100s small shark teeth, 4-5 turtle spurs a couple of mammoth fragments and some random bones, not much else. After hunting , grabbed burgers & fries at McDs , arrived to the club meeting an hour early. I also had a ziplok of fossils from my previous time out, which had some excellent fossils in it... like a mostly complete whale cookie..* (see below) I went back to my tailgate and was sorting fossils between a few I wanted and the rest to the prize table for tonight's raffle. A car pulled up next to me , lo and behold, it was Richard Hulbert, tonight's speaker on the Florida Fossil Permit and maybe an update on the Montbrook dig (https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/montbrook/) which he leads.... I could not have been more pleased... Richard started to identify those random bones left and right... This one was heading for the donation pile until Richard said, "Artiodactyl, ankle bone, maybe bison, complete...." That is more that enough to track down one of @Harry Pristis outstanding identification photos (THANKS Harry ) and that definitely reduced the possibly IDs for this fossil to.... wither Bison or modern cow. If Harry has a right side ectocuneiform, this one is also... My "feeling" is that this one is hard fossilized, but as I have seen previously , size may be a differentiator. So Harry, if you see this thread, let me know if you agree with "right" and have any reason to believe more likely Bos than Bison.. Whale Cookie !!! (I actually think of them as Oreos, but they do not have that chocolate taste...

If it is what I think, it is only the 3rd one of these I have found in 10 years, and all of them have been broken. I found my first in May of 2013 and 2nd in December of 2015. Neither of those finds had any serrations. Almost everything that I was finding was broken, broken Mako, broken GW, broken tigers, and many broken Bull shark teeth. I had one good upper hemi.... Here is a photo with a broken Tiger shark tooth. On picking it out of the sieve, I stopped immediately. Point and serrations like a tiger, but something was odd... Even though I was finding lots of tigers, I have chances of this one being a tiger at 15%... Here is the tooth.... and a blow_up of the serrations one one edge... The broken outer edge is .75 inch. Imagine it would have been 1.2 inch if unbroken.

Hello, I found what appears to be a fossil in Peace River FL today. It is extremely dense so I am thinking it could be a dugong rib fragment. Any thoughts?

No, not Sacha from Disney's Peter and the Wolf, no, not Sacha from Casablanca..... @Sacha So we went hunting yesterday meeting up with a couple of other fossil seekers in a location that has been very, very good to me in the last decade, but has taken a lot of hunting pressure and is not what it once was... However I can always hope to catch lightening in a bottle... or in my case, a fossil in the sieve. Nice day, a little cool, but 3 of us had wet suits on and I was comfortable. There was a younger guy from Minnesota, who was hunting in his bathing suit!!! I used to be young once!! I was hunting maybe 15-20 feet from Sacha and we carried on an ongoing banter, what we were finding, previous hunting successes, other likely locations and most important what was the other guy finding. One topic we discussed was how many of the numerous unknown bones you find, do you keep.. Sacha tends to toss and I keep almost everything to be tossed, if necessary , at some later date!!! I was finding mostly small shark teeth, but some were in good shape and big enough to encourage me to keep on hunting that hole I was digging. Sacha stayed at the same spot the whole day, whereas I stayed in one spot for 90 minutes, wandered around digging potholes for 90 minutes and eventually returned to my original hole , digging deeper and deeper, maybe because it was easier to carry on the conversation.. So here are my finds. What you see at the bottom are small shark teeth. Broken to the left worth $10 a pound that I donate to a fossil friend and relatively whole on the right ( young relatives, fossil club raffles and auctions, schools, kids organizations, etc. ) I have been doing this for 12 years. There is no lack of requests for teeth.. Average complete teeth go for $25 a pound. Consider what 30-40 pounds is worth. I try to be net zero on shark teeth by every year end. What is left under the white? Some more complete and/or interesting bones, broken or small bits that came into my screen. Fossilized wood, sea urchin spines, barracuda teeth, even one broken Meg, some upper Hemipristis, sting ray teeth, deer tine, small camel premolar, broken root dolphin tooth, sawfish rostral teeth, mammoth bits, dolphin bulla, calcified clam, etc .. normal stuff for the Peace River. I have some items I though worth their own photo: Closeup of the dolphin tooth, may be a ray barb fragment... the back sweeping teeth I did not recall seeing previously, and the reason for this post. Sacha asked what shark had the upward tip teeth with a rear nutrient groove. For that matter, why do some sharks have outward pointing tips? Finally, with whatever space I have left , I will flash up some of the bones. I may/may not add some to a fossil ID. Enjoy!!! Bone#2

Pulled this 6 inch square bone out of clay, shell, mud, sand, and a little gravel. It has retained many of the fine details and blood vessels. Initially I saw the horizontal bands and thought mammoth teeth plates, but not to be. So, large , broken bone I am pretty positive is lower jaw. I the 1st photo, I seem to see a Mandibular Symphysis groove moving directly left from the tip of my thumb. I am thinking Mastodon, but also wonder if Bison or Giant Sloth is a possibility. I hope that some other hunters have seen the kinds of parallel grooves present in the 2nd photo. Could these be huge blood vessels?? All comments and suggestions appreciated. Jack

I have been hunting in the Peace River so long that anything I can not identify must be unusual. Small molars are difficult. Maybe @Harry Pristis has seen this before. It is 7 mm long and 5 mm wide. I also said Canine.... a little broken but it has character !!! 2 inches in length All comments, guesses, and identifications appreciated.. Jack

Made a quick trip to the peace river today near Bartow today. Nothing too crazy but did find two things that I need some help on. My best guess on the first one is dolphin / whale tooth, but I haven't found many of them and the crown is kind of weird... maybe broken and then smoothed over by the river? The second is a very small fossil. I have found very similar ones before but never bothered to get them ID'd. My best guess is some kind of small mammal tooth. It is so small that I couldn't get a great picture with my iphone. The ends of the fossil (not pictured) are zig zagged, carrying on the patter from the sides (kind of like horse teeth). Definitely not ray dental plate like I originally thought. Any help is greatly appreciated! Thank you.

My wife and I found these yesterday and I need some assistance ID'ing them. These were all found near Zolfo Springs Florida, Peace River, Bone Valley formation. 1) is a tiny vertebra 2) is an oddball that I cannot decide if it is a chunk of tooth enamel/dentin, or a partial claw or tooth of some kind. 3) is a partial jaw with a tooth in it. 4) is an oddball that I cannot decide if it is an antler tine or a tooth of some sort. 5) is a partial vertebra with a pattern on one end than might be diagnostic (or not). First up, the tiny vert :

My wife Tina and I hit the Peace River yesterday for some fossil-hunting. The weather was mild with the temps hanging around the mid-70’s for most of the day. The forecast had called for a partly-cloudy day, but the sun was rarely seen. It was mostly overcast, so the sun wasn’t going to help us much with water visibility. One thing the forecast had mentioned was gusty winds coming out of the north. We both made note of that, but didn’t expect it to be an issue. We were wrong. More on that later. We made good time on the way out. We left the house just prior to 7am, and we managed to beat the majority of the morning rush-hour traffic out of Tampa. If you don’t leave before 7am, you run of the risk of getting caught in the death-grip of Tampa/Brandon traffic. Trust me, stay away from I-275 and I-4 during rush-hour. You can easily lose an extra 45-60 minutes of sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic trying to go the first 20 miles out of the Tampa/Brandon metro area. We arrived at the ramp shortly before 9am and began unloading the tandem kayak and our gear. While we were getting our yak ready, a Canoe Outpost bus pulls up and dumps off it’s load of 8 canoes and a gaggle of surburbanites. They proceeded to monopolize the entire ramp, leaving no room for anyone else to launch. Poor ramp etiquette for sure, but surely it wouldn’t take them long to get out of the way, right? Well, these folks looked like they were packing for a 10-week overseas safari. I had never seen so much junk loaded into canoes for an overnight or weekend camping trip. These folks just kept unloading more and more boxes, containers, coolers, and bags from the bus, that it started becoming comical. Those canoes looked so overloaded that I doubted they would float and they left little room for the paddlers. There was literally almost no room to sit in these canoes. Time ticked away and they made no sign that they were aware that at least two other boats were waiting on them to launch. “We didn’t make good time on the way out here to sit and waste it all at the ramp while clueless people piddle around with their excess of gear.” - is what we thought to ourselves. Finally, we decided to carry the yak across the ramp and down the hill-slope and just launch from the muddy bank. We were already a 1/2 mile down the river before the first of the canoes started to launch. So, after putting the crowd of rookie canoeists in our rearview mirror, we started the paddle to the search area. The wind was at our backs and the river was running harder than we had anticipated. I had hunch our work would be cut out for us on the paddle back upstream. The paddle downstream was nice. We saw a lot of birds of every possible type, but only a single small gator and no turtles. I guess the cool overcast day was not good for reptiles looking to soak up the sun. We made it to the search spot about 45 minutes later and unloaded our gear. This particular spot has been good to us in the past, but the last couple of trips made it apparent that this spot is hunted out and cleaned out. The haul from each trip was becoming a game of diminishing returns. On this trip, we decided to hunt the snarge out of this site one more time before crossing it off the list for the remainder of the season. My hunch was right. We didn’t make any major finds on this trip, but we did find a lot of interesting small stuff – some of which I will need help identifying. The spot is still productive, but it’s 90% tiny teeth, turtle scutes, and other very common pieces. The amount of highlight specimens coming out of this spot has definitely decreased and I think it’s time for this spot to “recharge” until next season. The highlights from the sifter this time included : a small but very complete fossil vert, a piece of tiny fossil jaw with a tooth in it, another vert, an unknown odd tooth, and some geological oddities including a nice piece of botryoidal chalcedony. Tina found a turtle leg bone, some nice (but small) teeth, and some oddballs that will need a closer look. The pieces are drying now and I will post some better photos later after they dry. All in all, we spent about 4 hours searching at the site. This includes a thorough walk-around to look for low-hanging fruit and obvious surface finds. Then the digging began. The last flood season had exposed a gravel bar in a new place that wasn’t there in previous years. In this season alone, we have spent a combined 30-ish hours searching this one spot. This represents hundreds of full sifters worth of gravel that has been searched. I sampled the entire length of the deposit working from one end to the other. The gravel layer is relatively thin – less than 12 inches in most places. Digging much deeper rarely yields anything other than fine sand, organic muck, and clay that is not very fossiliferous. So, we mostly worked the exposed surface layer, although I did dig numerous sample pits that were substantially deeper – all of those yielded nothing of note. We always fill our holes and re-distribute spoil gravel in a natural pattern. If you come across one of our search sites, you will never know anyone was there, except perhaps for the total lack of trash in comparison to the rest of the river. Well, this time around, one of the first things I noticed was fresh shovel marks in the bank near the gravel bar. There were no obvious spoil piles, but there were definite signs of someone digging the banks well above the water line. This tells me that “my spot” is no longer off the beaten path. Other hunters have also noticed the new gravel bar – and some of these hunters are illegally digging the banks and being obvious about it. Having said all of this, I now feel comfortable giving a bone to the reader – this spot is just downstream from the town of Zolfo Springs. Feel free to go look for it. It’s a healthy paddle downstream and you’ll have your work cut out for you on the paddle back upstream against the current. But feel free to go look. You might get lucky and find something I missed. I likely won’t be returning to this particular spot this season unless it’s for a group hunt. This is probably still a good spot for a beginner hunt, but I personally feel like I have tapped out this spot for the year. Plus, this specific spot has never been a good source of megalodons, so I don’t feel too bad about leaving a few hints about the location. While I am not just interested in megs, I’ve always been disappointed with the lack of them in this general vicinity. You will find everything except megalodons around there. And it’s not just me, the handful of other people I have brought to this specific area have never found any megs either. Weirdly, there are lots of small teeth from other shark species, but no megalodons – not even fragments. About mid-afternoon we decided to head back to the ramp. The wind was really whipping up and gusting strongly. When the wind picked up the water would get choppy and really start to run hard. The wind was coming out of the north and blowing directly in our faces while going back upstream against the current. The USGS Zolfo gauge said the discharge flow rate was approx. 321 cfs. Usually, that is not a difficult paddle for your average able-bodied or slightly-aged-bodied (like myself) person. But, trying to paddle it with a 16-20mph gusting headwind in your face is a different matter entirely. We had to take several extra breaks on the side of the river to catch our breath and wait for lulls in the wind. When the wind would calm down, we would set out again and paddle a couple hundred yards before pulling over and waiting again. We finally made it back to the ramp a little later than usual and we were both tired as heck – I’d use a more choice word to describe it, but I want to keep this family friendly. My arms, shoulders, and back were shot. My neck and shoulders are still sore as I type this – the old grey mare, she aint what she used to be. LOL. My next trip out will be to revisit some old honey holes that are in remote areas that are difficult to reach and will require an overnight trip. These spots near public ramps are just too hunted out and I am curious about what some of my old spots look like now. Some of my favorite honey holes have not been visited since about 2017. I am confident that few (if any) other people hunt those same stretches, so I am keen to see what Mother Nature has “recharged” for me at those spots. Those spots are next on this list for this season.

Last Friday, January 10th, is a day I'll remember because of this tooth. It is always a thrill to find one of my favorite fossils, and this one, by size alone, makes it a tooth from a small horse that predates Equus sp. I find enough of these teeth to consider my self above average knowledge on these late Miocene horses. An early Miocene horse: Parahippus is a horse that evolved in North America about 18 million years ago and one of the best examples of Parahippus in all the United States comes from Thomas Farm, a fossil site that’s about an hour northwest of Gainesville. Unfortunately, I do not find Parahippus teeth. I do find Calippus, Nannippus, Cormohipparion, Hippohiparrion, neohipparion, many of which filled the gap between 13 mya to 3 mya. Look at this Cormohipparion from FLMNH and compare to my newest find above. Having seen 100s of these small teeth, the new find is very different, even though the size (17 by 15 mm is exactly the same as Cormohippaion that I have in my collection.) My new tooth has to be pathological or extremely rare. Here is the new addition after it is completely dry: So what did I do. Sent an email to Dr Richard Hulbert, Director of the Vertebrate Paleontology Research Lab at the University of Florida. What does he think? Not many choices here. This afternoon, I sent this tooth (after taking photos) to UF Vertebrate Paleontology Research Lab so Richard and his team can perform that "detailed analysis" he indicated at the start of his email. @Harry Pristis @fossillarry@PrehistoricFlorida Maybe the tooth will become famous, mentioned in many research papers. Maybe not, either way I love this hobby..... Jack

No time, Out today with TFF friends. Found this oddity. Up at 5am to go out again. So, Is this a mammal tooth? What are the options? Tapir ?, Mammoth? ... ? I will not be able to check this thread until 6pm Eastern Sunday..

Last Thursday, I was hunting the Peace River watershed with a friend. When we returned to his home (close to the Peace River), he pulled out 2 small teeth. One he had found during out hunt that day and the other a couple of months back. He asked me to identify them and leverage the TFF community if possible. To me , this was obvious. While I can not explain the size and I have no idea what the species is, horizontal "banding" on a canine shaped tooth means one ID and one ID only: Whale. I underline that statement because I want to be challenged if my assumption is incorrect. In the experience of TFF members, have they ever found a tooth, other than whale, that shows this telltale banding? Here is a marine mammal tooth I found 8 years ago in Horse Creek, a tributary of the Peace River. Horizontal banding and an enamel tip!! I know better than to ask for an ID below the level of "whale" on these teeth. As far as I can tell , no one has done a scientific study in the state of Florida on fossil whale material. I was fortunate, almost exactly a year ago to host a TFF member and fossil hunter to a couple of Florida fossil hunting trips. @JBMugu found some really nice Florida fossils but he gifted me something I valued much more. STH Whale teeth See the telltale banding close to the root? Maybe these small Peace River whale teeth are in the same family as Aulophyster. Maybe not... I would love to have Bobby comment on this, but I think he is busy with his day job. Next best thing is an old Bobby comment on the same topic of Small whale teeth. http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/95733-sharktooth-hill-teeth/ What I read from this is that Bobby thinks "small kogiid sperm whale" is an option!!!! Harry has a great picture_photo of Kogiopsis .sp Whale teeth, and I myself have found many at the 3-5 inch size. So, what is this thread about beyond small Florida whale teeth that can not be identified by anyone? There are numerous TFF members who hunt in Florida, hunt on the east coast of the US, find whale teeth while hunting worldwide. Please attach photos of any whale teeth under the length of 50 mm and around a diameter of 10 mm. I am trolling for whale teeth that look like these, and the names of whales like Aulophyster who had small teeth. Thanks for any contributions , Jack

This is my first post on this forum, although I have relied on it for some time as a great resource for learning how to ID fossils. I would really appreciate some help identifying a small molar (or premolar) we found while sifting gravel in the Peace River near Wauchula, Florida, US. Based on its shape, I'm gussing that it's from a terrestrial mammal but I really don't know for sure. From what I've read, the Peace River terrestrial fossils are generally Pleistocene, while marine fossils are typically Miocene. For those unfamiliar with US coins, the tooth is about 13mm tall and about 7mm wide. It has a three-prong root, and a pretty aggressive crown.

Out hunting today, and doing some prospecting. The weather was supposed to be warmer (high of 79), and the air was fine, but the water was cold. We had 3 hunters, but not many unique finds, a nurse shark and an unusual bone, neither found by me. When I say unusual, we are 3 experienced fossil hunters, and none of us has an ID.. Hopefully TFF can assist.

The stars have finally lined up : schedule, health, weather, funds, and river gauge. That means it's time to hit the river again! Tomorrow I am going to a location that is one of my secret honey-holes. Let's call it "Alpha". It's on the Peace River and has produced plentiful Pleistocene and Holocene specimens. Want a fuzzy clue about it's location? Ok, here goes : it is in a counter-intuitive spot that is easily overlooked. That's it. I have not laid eyes on Alpha for months, so I am unsure what to expect. Hopefully it is fruitful (it usually is). Only three other people on the planet know where this spot is - my wife, my stepson Josh, and my daughter-in-law Alaina. Tomorrow my wife and I are going - so wish us luck! The truck is already loaded up and we will be on the road when the roosters are crowing. I typically post a report after the trip, so that report (and photos) will go here via replies. Stay tuned...

On Saturday, I met up with two TFF members for a hunt on the Peace River. It was cool (cold) at 8 am, especially in the shade, but the best fossil location was in the shade. While many fossil hunters have certain qualifications for "keepers", I keep almost everything, especially a fragment that I can not ID. I also keep a lot of fossils (like turtle) that many hunters toss. Weather wise, we had a fantastic day. Especially when the sun warmed up and covered out hunting location... the wet suits came off. Here is a photo of some of my finds: At first, I thought upper_right would be my Find of the day...but there is something else, very interesting in this photo.... The above photo is a Glyptodon scute, that Strongly resembles a strawberry. It only has TWO !!!! connection points to other scutes. I have never seen another like it , and I have seen plenty of Glyptodon tail scutes. So I will be searching Glyptodon for this scute --- Help me find it.!!!! And this is an earbone... I think I know, but whose ?? There are many "common" fossils in the 1st photo. Can anyone Identify all the fossils in the photo? Saturday was a great day. Great variation in finds. I went again today, In addition to back pain, I only found ray, barracuda, and shark teeth.. Best find was a 1.4 inch hemipristis.. Today was overcast ,and chilly. It was also a great day. I was on the Peace River.

My better half has been away for the better part of two week, severely limiting my hunting trips. Today I managed to get away to a location on the Peace River where I have taken some TFF friends previously. It was cool 53 degrees driving there , but once the sun came out , it was OK -- as long as I had my 5 mm wetsuit. I was by myself because getting a dog_walker was a last minute offer. This location has a line -- clearly Miocene marine on one side and Pleistocene mammal on the other. I had found some medium sized Hemis, 5-6 Armadillo osteoderms, about half of a good sized dolphin tooth, some gator teeth, a couple of verts... no fantastic finds but a very soothing experience on a bright sunny , cool day. So, I am thinking last sieve, and this comes up.. for a second laying in the sieve , I thought it was whole.... but no. I did go back for a couple more sieves to try and find the rest of it, but no such luck. Carnassials are very distinctive. I think this is enough to not only identify the mammal, but also the exact tooth position. The length of the broken enamel is approx 13 mm. Enjoy !!! Jack

I recently found a distressed canine in the Peace River. When possible I really want to identify all such fossil canines. The length is 1 and 1/8 inch. At the river I seemed to see (photo #1 & #2) "latitudinal banding" which means marine mammal. At home, I note that the root end turns to the side of the canine (photos #3 & #4), a characteristic that I mostly associate with porpoise. So , what is my question: Do all Dolphin/Porpoise teeth have such banding? The only reason I do not detect it on 95% of my Florida Dolphin/Porposie fossil teeth is that the banding is covered by cementum. I appreciate all responses, Jack Here is a picture of Whale tooth composition. These are Peace River or Bone Valley Whale Teeth:

I get out hunting as often as I am able. In addition to the fossil finds, I am at a point in life where exercise has great value and fossil hunting the Peace River watershed 3 times a week does get the muscles moving and the blood flowing. Add the great feeling with getting out into nature which I share with numerous animals of all types and this is just about a perfect hobby, BUT, not always a successful one. I think that I, over the long run, find one impressive fossil a week... What about this week? A lot of folks are saying that the Peace River water depth is dropping and this is open for success in fossil hunting. Last Sunday, I went to one of my favorite locations that have been very successful for me in the past, as recently as last spring. I usually kayak to to/from this location for an hour each way and hunt shovel and sieve for 5-6 hours --- good exercise. The Peace River is still high. Right this minute , the USGS gauge at Zolfo Springs is over 7 feet. That is un_diggable, except in isolated spots. You need to cling close to the banks and the currents are fast. !!!! I found a couple of chipped Equus teeth, turtle shell and spurs, 120 small teeth 70 % broken. Largest of the small shark teeth were 3 30-40 mm hemipristis (2 lowers and an upper). I did enjoy the day, sunny, cold out in nature. So , Monday was my 2nd day out to the Peace River this week.. Somewhat better, with 2 frequent fossils hunting friends, staying close digging in a 2 foot layer that had been uncovered by the heavy summer currents. They found it and invited me to partake. Not a show stopper , but some good fossils. I tend to remove (and donate) broken and small shark teeth from my "finds" photo. So the finds from a home to home 12 hour hunt. Some osteoderms, barracuda teeth, a few larger Lemon and Hemipristis teeth, a broken tapir, broken llama incisor, Thresher tooth (relatively rare). and then some closeup photos below. I liked this last hemi best and another sun_shiny day in paradise

I found this bone in Florida's Peace River in a gravel bed that contained Pleistocene and Holocene land vertebrates. I am unsure about this bone. Is it a small deer, or is it a turkey bone? Or, am I entirely wrong and it's an alligator? Thanks in advance! MikeG

Here is nice little fossilized phalange bone that I found in Florida's Peace River. Like verts, almost all phalanges look alike to me, except for size differences. I'm having a hard time ID'ing this one. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I found this nicely-fossilized vertebra in the Peace River. It's broken, but there might be enough features left to ID it. It has a "Y" shaped imprint on the ends. Does anyone know what critter this came from? These verts confuse me when I try to ID them and I am never sure. Any help would be appreciated.