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Made another trip to the Peace River today. Got on the water by 8 am and headed for a spot where I have previously found mammoth and mastodon teeth. Started digging and by 9 am I had a partial mastodon tooth! Came up with a nice complete deer proximal phalanx, a handful of tiger shark teeth and some mammoth and mastodon tooth chips. My pouch was getting full so I went back to the kayak to safely put the mastodon tooth and other finds in bags and stow them away. As soon as I got back to where I was digging I heard the shovel "clink" on something. Reached down and pulled up a nice vert about 4" across. My probe then bumped something and I came up with what I believe is a mammoth or mastodon patella! Kept digging and started pulling up large bones ranging from 8 " to 12" long and up to just over 4" wide. Ended up with four of them. I was wearing some new gloves recommended by @Shellseeker and was very glad I had them on. When getting up these large pieces I was doing a lot of hand digging trying not to damage the bones while pulling them up. I found an additional large bone that was quite rounded and took a good deal of hand work to free from the sandy bottom. When I finally pulled it up my first thought was - looks like a baboon's behind (lol). I have been through my fossil guide and done some searching on line but haven't found anything that compares to it yet. I had decided ahead of time to head home by 2pm and about 11:30 I began moving all the finds back to the kayak as I knew it would take several trips. When this was done I headed back to the dig spot and the first sifter gave up a nice 1 1/4" meg. This was followed by what I believe is a mammoth germ tooth. More searching on line will be needed verify it. A few more shovels of gravel went into the sifter when I turned around to see an alligator (4" to 5") swiftly heading right toward me! I dropped the shovel and splashed out of the river so suddenly the gator stopped and turned sideways as it kept watching me. It floated there looking at me as I caught my breath and started wondering if I was going to get back in the water to retrieve my shovel and metal probe. We had a bit of a standoff for about 5 minutes. I took the time to load my pouches with the remaining finds I had placed on the bank. Seeing that the gator was just holding in place I mad a quick grab for my equipment and then decided to climb the bank and return to my kayak on land. I had never encountered an alligator in this spot before. Being it is gator mating season they do get more aggressive and territorial. Which means I won't be back to this site for the rest of the season. Thanks to the aggressive gator I called it a day at 12:30. Some photos of the best and largest finds - The stuff in the pail are small pieces that I believe came off the large long bones. Looks like I have another puzzle - like the tusk pieces found previously. Two close ups -
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