Bone Valley Phosphate Mine Hunt

[ajracrew]

This past weekend I was lucky enough to get to hunt in C&F Industry's phosphate mine. This trip was very educational for me in several ways. I learned a lot about the mining process in particular. C&F industries filter through their materials several times, and when the material is too large, it goes through a process that literally pounds the material down. Unfortunately, this means the teeth and other fossils are pound down too. Every meg tooth was chewed up pretty badly by the process and only a few were close to be considered complete. Nonetheless, we had a great time and found a ton of stuff. There was one fossil in particular that I could not identify. I included a shot to see what everyones opinions are. Mark Renz led our trip and his opinion was that it was a rhino tooth fragment. I did a little research and it appears that he is right... but I just want a second opinion. Towards the end of our hunt, I talked awhile with one of the mine employees, and she told me that she used to work in another phosphate mine in the area that didn't put the larger material they sifted out through the pounding process. This means that the teeth found there are mostly whole!! She can verify this because she occasionally hunted there when allowed and found teeth that she described as complete and larger than the palm of her hand! Now I'm going to do everything possible to try to get to hunt in that mine.

Edited February 8, 2012 by ajracrew

[ajracrew]

Here are pics of the finds as well as some shots from inside the mine

[ajracrew]

And lastly, a close-up of what I suspect to be a rhino tooth fragment. What do you guys think?

[edd]

It looks like it... Take more photos of the fragment so we can be sure

[MikeDOTB]

All those broken teeth make me sad Looks like a great day though, a lot of those smaller teeth are great! I see a few complete makos in there as well. I take it, those top right teeth werent found in this location?

[cowsharks]

Too bad you don't get more opportunities to collect there. It would be neat to bring home some of that material in 5-gallon buckets for sorting like we do with the Lee Creek material. Do they allow you to take any home with you?

Daryl.

[ajracrew]

Yeah finding every tooth was disheartening.. most presented themselves as whole until I picked them up. Two of the teeth in the top of the photo are from bone valley but were purchased a few weeks ago.

As for the rhino tooth frag, I took other pictures but the rest of it is chewed up so it doesn't really help with identification.

You could definitely bring material home, but you honestly would not really find anything. All of the smaller teeth were found in spoil piles and not inside the actual mine. The material we hunted was pre-sifted so nothing small really made it through.

[Taxman56]

I wonder if these plants thought how much much they could make if they pulled the "big ones" out before thier crushed and sold them on Ebay or some other site through the company. May make enough to pay the employees a nice xmas bonus or party at the year end.

And give us a chance to buy nice teeth at a reasonable price

[Auspex]

I wonder if these plants thought how much much they could make if they pulled the "big ones" out before thier crushed and sold them...

Nice thought, but, given the scope and pace of production typical of the mechanized extraction industries, the net value of the teeth would probably not amount to a rounding error on their books.