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Since the weather is (finally) behaving and the Peace River water level has now stabilized at a depth where South Florida fossil hunters can get in and get their hunt on, Tammy and I found a free day in our busy schedule and planned a day trip to Arcadia to try our luck on the Peace River again. If we do not drive over and spend the night in a local hotel, hunting on the Peace River involves an early morning wake-up call at the painfully early hour of 3:00 AM. We're all packed up and leaving the house at just around 4:00 AM with a long quiet drive through mostly empty highways--up the Florida Turnpike to the aptly named Beeline Hwy which makes a beeline straight northwest for the town of Okeechobee at the northern tip of Lake Okeechobee (the large lake that looks like it was hole punched out of the map of Florida). A stop for something approximating breakfast at the 24-hour Micky D's in Okeechobee (bring a jacket if you go because the AC is set for 60F ) and then it's a straight show west on State Road 70 into Arcadia. When we arrive we make a quick stop for a bag of ice for our cooler and a few snacks for the day. Then we roll into Canoe Outpost to fill out our paperwork and wait for the bus to take us to the put-in location. As we had a free day to make this trip on a Tuesday, Canoe Outpost is far from busy--in fact we are the only ones there save two employees who had to come in early to tend to our canoe rental needs. Today's hunting area of choice is on the lower half of the normal full-day rental. Usually, we put in at Brownville Park some 8.5 miles upstream of the Canoe Outpost dock and we stop at various locations along the way. We wanted to focus on some spots downstream from their half-day put-in location at the primitive campground area that is owned by Canoe Outpost (called Oak Hill). We've wanted to get dropped off here on some weekends when we only wanted to hunt along the lower 4 miles of the river above Arcadia but usually they have others going to Brownville on the 8:00 AM run and we just end up getting put-in there. We spend the first hour paddling the 4.5 miles down to the half-day put-in. This time we were lucky--nobody else was signed-up to go out at 8:00 AM so they were accommodating enough to put us in at the halfway point and save us an hour of paddling. We enjoy the peaceful paddling down the river looking for birds and spotting gators along the banks but the thought of saving an hour of paddle time was too good to pass up--more time for sifting. We made it down to the spot where we had found some nice armadillo bits two weeks before--a tooth and an astragalus from Holmesina septentrionalis a two meter beastie clocking in at around 250 kg. According to Dr. Hulbert specimens from this species are pretty rare in South Florida and the astragalus that we found last trip is earmarked for the FLMNH next time we are in Gainesville as the museum does not have any specimens of this bone from this species in its collection. We were hoping to possibly find some additional Holmesina bits though that was a long shot at best. We poked around the site chasing down areas with nice chunky gravel hoping to find some nice items and though we struck out extending our Holmesina finds we did come across a few nice items. On only the first handful of screens, a familiar triangular shape appeared in the sifting screen. Though the root was a bit dinged, this meg tooth that topped out at just about 3 inches is just shy of the 3.25 inch size that most teeth seem to max out at in the Peace River. A little while later a beautifully shaped smaller meg (just under 2 inches) turned up in the sifting screen. Here are some in situ (well, in sifter anyway) images of those teeth at the moment they revealed themselves. A little while later (after many smaller shark teeth and broken megs--fraglodons) we turned up one of the larger Carcharhinus teeth I've seen come from the Peace River. It was a nice surprise to see such a large example of a requiem shark tooth. No more interesting shark teeth turned up though we did find quite a number of the normal nickel and dime (size) teeth which will end up in an ever growing jar of teeth on display in the family room. Two other novelties helped to make the day a successful hunt in the record books. I turned up a tiny unerupted tooth that I believe to be tapir peccary though I've never seen one with six cusps (two small ones off one side). EDIT: Fixed ID, see below. As with many of these teeth the hollow nature of the tooth and fragile roots mean that usually only the enamel crown are recovered--at least this pretty little thing is solidly in one piece. The other tooth is a bit of a mystery. I'm sure @Harry Pristis will likely recognize this as it looks reasonably distinctive. The tooth looks like it has a complete crown (no parts missing) but it only has a trace of the roots left. Looking at the photos I can see that there are cracks forming on this tooth and it looks like it is ready to disarticulate into a puzzle of pieces. I think I'll be attempting to consolidate this item a bit with some B72. There is less than a month to go before the official start of rainy/hurricane season in June. Hoping to find some time in my schedule to make it back out to the river a few more times. It's been an extremely shortened season this year but the few finds we have been able to make have been enjoyable. Cheers. -Ken

I found the item on the right a couple years ago and wrote it off at the time as just a unique Giant Tortoise osteoderm. I'm having 2nd thoughts now that I've found another one yesterday when digging at Zolfo Springs. The newest one (on the left) is still wet so it shows what looks like a Fossa or a Facet on the underside more clearly than the one on the right. Both display (or would have displayed) a very definite ridge down the centerline. So, just a different osteoderm, or something different?

I was out hunting today at a location that has larger "small" shark teeth. I really like lower hemis and that keeps me coming back. They can be found but are not "common", even here/ I was looking for them, and almost missed this tooth. That "bump" on the left photo is a cusp. Cusp means predator. The tooth is .95 inches long. Because there is only 1 cusp on the tooth, does that help to identify the position in the jaw of this incisor? I could guess at which predator, but would like confirmation from someone who knows. Thanks Jack

After a long long wait, the periodic heavy rains that have repeatedly pushed the water level of the Peace River up and out of range for Florida fossil hunters, our "dry season" is finally starting to act like the non-rainy part of our year. Tammy and I got out two weekends ago with a group of SCUBAnauts from the Tampa/St. Pete area. While checking the levels right before that trip, I visited one of my favorite spots along the river to see if it would be accessible for the group. The water two weeks ago was nearly a foot higher than at present but even with the higher level the locality worked for the group (11 canoes of kids and their accompanying adults). I like this site because it has more chunky gravel which results (on rare occasions) in finding larger items. I've pulled substantial chunks of mammoth molar from this site several years ago--as well as a gold wedding band (no inscription) and a gold tie tack (no Jimmy Hoffa jokes, please). The main draw though is dugong. Though fossil hunters who've spent any amount of time on the Peace generally have their share of the solid rib bones from these cousins of our modern-day manatee, newbies to the concept of fossil hunting in Florida never fail to enjoy these large and substantial items. Tammy and I went back this weekend without the crowd of two dozen we were guiding on the river at the end of March. We went on a Sunday and the river was reasonably quiet and peaceful. We met another couple on the bus ride up to the put-in and gave them some tips on hunting the river as it was their first time. They were the recipients of many fossils and fraglodons that (while interesting) would probably would have either ended back in the river or handed out to kids in passing canoes. I was prospecting around my "dugong" site (that's what it is called in my GPS ) and could feel with my feet the little pits and piles of chunky rubble left over from our last visit stripping out countless dozens of dugong ribs now scattered in the nascent collections of those we took down the river on our previous visit. Most of the site is still too deep to get to even with the river 10" lower than last time. The air and water temps were much more pleasant than last time and it didn't take as much motivation to walk into chest-deep water. I dug for about 4 hours and had little to show for it other than a bag of nice specimens of dugong ribs (to reload my "paleo paperweight" gifting stockpile). After a break back at the canoe for a drink and some more salty snacks, I ventured off in the direction where I used to dig but which was now probably too deep to dig. En route to that spot I passed a rise in the bottom that was so steep that it looked like I was walking up submerged steps till I was only thigh deep in the river. My trusty probe--which I carry like a walking cane, probing the sand with each step to test the subsurface composition of the river bottom--detected the delightful crunchy sound indicating some substantial gravel deposits not far below the sandy covering along the bottom. I did a test screen from this spot and was rewarded with a nice little Whitetail Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) molar. These are not as common (in my experience) as the Equus horse molars that are occasional finds in the Peace. This one came complete with a reasonable portion of the roots intact and will bolster my meager number of these in my collection. A few screens later would end up bringing in my trip-makers and the high point of the afternoon. While picking through the contents of that screen I spotted the very distinctive shape of a peg-like tooth from a member of the order Xenarthra ("strange joint") aka Edentata ("toothless"). I have just a few similar but larger teeth from ground sloths which are highly valued by Florida collectors. A few years back I found a similar but smaller peg tooth that turned to be from the armadillo Holmesina floridanus. I assumed this tooth might be from a larger individual but was pleased to learn more in a quick response to my query from Dr. Richard Hulbert from the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville, FL. Richard confirmed that the peg tooth was from a Holmesina but that it was from the larger (2 meter long) species, Holmesina septentrionalis, that roamed Florida from the middle to late Pleistocene (500,000 to 11,000 years ago). The smaller H. floridanus that preceded it was in Florida from the late Pliocene to the early Pleistocene (2.5-1.5 mya). Contained in that screen was a very oddly shaped bone with curved parts and flat articulating surfaces. I assumed this was one of those odd bones in the leg like the navicular bone that I hear about but haven't seen enough examples of to fully understand or recognize. Richard commented that, the odd-shape bone that appeared in the same sifting screen was, coincidentally, from the same species (H. septentrionalis) and that it was an astragalus which articulates with the navicular so I get points for being close. Then he added something that made my whole morning: This is actually a rare find, especially in the southern half of Florida, for which we do not have a single H. septentrionalis astragalus in our collection. Please consider donating it. I quickly replied that I'd set this aside and would bring it up with me next time I visit Gainesville (where Tammy and I are looking for our next house). You can bet I'll be keen to get back up to the Peace to see if any other Holmesina bits might be hiding in the gravel nearby. These two items are likely not associated and it was probably just luck that I'd come across two very different items from the same rare species in a single sifting screen. If the two pieces were closely related in the skeletal structure I'd believe that they might from the same individual but I believe this is probably just a happy coincidence. A couple more hours of digging in the same area turned up no further identifiable bits from this species but you can be certain that I'll devote some extra effort to that spot next time on the river. Enjoy the wrinkly finger tips in the in-river photos below. Cheers. -Ken

The winter of 2018-2019 was rough on folks from Minnesota, people who normally judge their self esteem on surviving mother nature's cold and snowy fury. So when the time came to depart for my snowbird trip to Florida, I could not have been more excited to go. Here is the local landscape as we left. Then on arrival to the Sunshine State. What a stark contrast. I could never give up my winters for this , as nice as it is to visit. Hunting for fossil treasures in Florida is usually limited to a single day per trip for me. But this time I was blessed with three outstanding excursion from three wonderful members of the forum, JCBShark (alias Jeff), Shellseeker, (alias Jack), and Sacha, (alias John). Unfortunately my hopes for finding fossils were dashed due to high water, but my friends were nice enough to attempt to conquer mother nature and we pressed on. I will let you decide if they were successful. Here were the participants for Day 1, a trip on foot to get to some special spots. As can be seen, it was NOT an easy hike. Here was Day 2. Kayaking up the creek for a few miles was not easy due to high water. But going back was a very peaceful float, as these pictures of Jack show!! Something needed after an old man (me, not Jack) paddles like he did and then shovels gravel all day!

Hey everyone, I found this fossil last February on the Peace River, I believe I posted it with a bunch of my other finds from that trip a while ago and the ID came up inconclusive. I was hoping the folks on the forum could help me out with this one again. It's about 3.5 cm in diameter and I first thought it belonged to a glypodont but I'm not so sure.

Found this on my 2018 trip to Florida, I believe it is a rodent incisor and I would like to confirm that. And if it is, does anyone have any indication as to what variety it belongs to? It's about 2 cm long.

I have had the delight of hunting the Peace river and it's Tributaries for a few years now. Time was taken to combine my finds and I discovered some unknowns that I hope someone can help me with!! Rib. It does not appear to be Dugong. Any chance of a broad classification?? These look like bullas, but so different than whales. I was told horse. Could this be correct?? Unknown Teeth:

Hello Fossil Forum community, This is my first post. My name is Ben and I recently learned about the Peace River. After getting my fossil collecting permit, decided to try my hand at it! I loved collecting trilobites and sea animals in upstate NY, so to know there is a place in FL with abundant, remarkable and unusual fossils, makes me so happy! I live about 45min away from Paynes Creek Historic State Park; here the creek and river join. I collected these fossils just past the border of the park. I would like your help to try to ID them, please! Where Paynes Creek (right) meets lazy Peace River (left) Here are some fossils I think I know, but I am still unsure. Horse tooth? Dugong rib bone? (very dense feeling, like lead): Left: barracuda tooth? Right: claw? Back of "claw": Front: Front, zoomed: Side: Many thanks for any help, I love this River! Thanks for your time, Ben

Found this in the Peace River, Florida. It looks different than any of the countless bone fragments I’ve collected in the past. Looking at photos online I feel like I have a good chance of this being the outer layer of a tusk! Any thoughts?

Finally made it out to the Peace River this weekend. Tammy and I spent a day canoeing down the river on Friday checking some of our favorite spots between Brownville Park and Canoe Outpost in Arcadia to see if the river was low enough to guide a group of teen/pre-teen SCUBAnauts for a fossil hunting trip on Saturday. Though the river is still about a foot higher than I'd like it to be, the group got lucky when they planned this trip some six months ago. The river gauge at Arcadia is the lowest it's been this year and still dropping--though rain is expected for Tuesday so that could put a halt to the drop if it is a heavy rain. Kept a few items I would not otherwise have if I didn't need them for for a bit of fossil show-and-tell with the group before our trip on Saturday. Gave everything away but two items: a tiny laminid shark vertebra that is just a hair over 7 mm (I'm surprised it didn't pass through my 1/4" mesh sifting screen) and the other was my trip-maker as it is something of a mystery and a novel find for me. It appears to be a fully-rooted mammal incisor about 2" (52 mm) long and the crown is about 0.6" (15 mm) at its widest. When I pulled it from my sifting screen, my first thought was that it might be a camelid incisor. I've seen similar images online now that I'm back home with access to the internet. As this is something new for me, I'd love some confirmation. It would be great to hear from someone with more experience in finds similar to this like @Harry Pristis Cheers. -Ken

Small black herbavoric tooth/molar found in peace river. About 1/2 inch, need help IDing it.

Hi. I wanted help identifying a fossil tooth found in Florida. My son and I found it on the Peace River North of Wachula. We were sifting gravel from the middle of the river last week. I thought it to be alligator, but someone noted the ridge was distinctive enough that they didn't believe the tooth to be as such. It is slightly larger than an inch long. I can provide other pictures. Thank you Ken

Hi. I wanted help identifying a large bone fossil found in Florida. I believe it to be a rib bone; and one person indicated either Whale, Mastodon, or Mammoth. My son and I found it on the Peace River by the edge of the water in between about Brownville and Arcadia (closer to Arcadia). One photo shows an additional section; and with that section is about 19". It is broken on each end so would be much bigger. Color is closer to the image with the shark teeth; the other photos were taken during sunset so appear redder in color than it should be. I can provide other pictures. Please advise if you have insight on how to narrow what this is. Thank you Ken

Finally managed to get out for a few hours when I visited Florida earlier this month. Walked in to a Peace river tributary where I got to spend a few hours shifting gravel while keeping an eye on the local wildlife. Was interesting how different the finds were when compared to the previous site which was about 25 miles further north. Nothing overly special, but was a pleasant way to spend an afternoon. Found a lot of bone fragments this trip, but no dugong which surprised me after my first experience. There were also fewer shark teeth this time around. Not sure what the big bone chunk in the upper left is from as there is very little of the surface left, but the fragment is 4 x 5 x 2.5 inches

Last week I went to a little spot in the Peace that I can dig at high water levels. Found very few things, but wondered if anyone has an idea of what the little bone in the lower left corner of the picture is.

Hello I am setting a 4 day trip to Florida with my son to find Shark Teeth and bone mid March. He is a teenager and experienced; we did a Summer trip to Summerville, SC. We hear rains have Florida rivers and streams fairly high right now? We have never hunted for fossils in Florida; but are looking to areas along the Peace River and researched Arcadia may be a good central location? We are thinking of doing: * Day 1 - Excursion with a guide (allows us to familiarize us with the area; dos and don'ts) * Day 2 - Hit Peace River (I have some general ideas of locations, but could use help) * Day 3 - Try some adjacent Rivers (I have some general ideas of locations, but could use help) * Day 4 - Either repeat above if we have success, or try Casperson beach in Venice Any insights/guidance would be fantastic. Thank you! Ken

Trying to find new places on peace river or Venice Beach, heard about cookie cutter creek... but I’m not sure where it is? Somebody help me!!!! Also I have a cool vert and some rib bones I found 25ft down, (digging a pond) I live in Sarasota but I’m willing to travel anywhere in Florida for a weekend of adventure! I have something that I need help identifying (the media uploading is killing me here) the bigger object next to the vert, it’s heavy like a rock Porous like coral, but also looks like a bone of some sort....so if anyone has input on any of topics It would be much oblige, thank you! (P.s. the arrowheads are not real)

So today I was going to try to get in the Peace for a bit. I know where some gravel beds are that you can get in when the water isn't quite as low as you want. I messed around for about an hour but then it just wasnt paying off. One good hemi and everything else was just jar teeth. So I packed up and headed to my old stand by spot. Did pretty good but also put in a lot of hours. *In the pic the top is a section of mammoth tooth it is hard to tell looking at the pic now.

Hi everyone, Happy to join the group. Went on my first fossil hunting trip on the peace river in arcadia with my husband and friend and we are hooked. Found megalodon tooth, horse teeth, turtle scutes, bird bones, sharks teeth and so much more. This has been a dream since I was a kid, excited to share what we find with the community!

I'm interested in collecting in the Peace River and my kids are finally old enough. I've been lurking around the forums for a little bit and I've seen a few do's and don'ts, are there rules somewhere? For instance I have read you can't use a 2 handed shovel but seen numerous pictures with normal spade shovels in them. Digging/ looking for fossils in the bank? Collecting on state land(I thought the river bed up to the high water was OK) I'm looking for a little guidance, I don't want to run into any trouble or afoul of any laws. Any tips for a newbie are also appreciated.

I found this in the peace river a while back and I’m not sure if it’s turtle shell of something interesting. The level change kind of throws me off. Measured roughly 1 inch by 1/2 inch

Believe I'd heard somewhere it's illegal to hunt north of bowling green, or at least there's less fossils? Also heard someone had hunted near Bartow many years back.. so many questions marks here but I know hunting in the state park boundaries is not legal

I found this in the peace river a while back, it’s worn and a bit beat but worth a shot I guess. I think it’s a mammal tooth of some kind

I have not been hunting the Peace River since October. On Saturday, I was sorting some ziploc bags of finds back in October and found this tiny tooth that I did not know I had. What I do know is that this one looks different from my normal small shark tooth finds. I am amazed that it did not slip between my quarter inch screen.