Ahhh, The Good Old Days!

[cowsharks]

How many times have you been around the "old timer" fossil collectors and hear them refer to the "Good Old Days"? The days when the finds were plentiful and you could fill both pockets and then some! The days of easy access to beaches, quarries, etc. No or few limits on collecting time, areas, etc. No "No Tresspassing signs".

I've only been collecting for 16 years, but even I can remember the "Good Old Days" when I first started back in 1996. However, back then, I remember some "old timers" (folks who had been collecting for decades before me) telling me stories of how when they first started collecting, they were practically the only person on the beach and every trip they found several large sharks teeth and tons of the smaller teeth. Well, I thought collecting was pretty good back in 1996 at various places along Calvert Cliffs and the Potomac River, I can only imagine how good collecting was in the decades prior to when I first got started.

There have been times when I have tried to imagine what collecting would have been like 200 years ago along places like Calvert Cliffs. Except for maybe Native American Indians, no one would have even known about the fossils. Were places like Calvert Cliffs just littered with teeth? I wonder what it was like for the first few folks to ever go collecting there? Did they find hundreds of large teeth?

From 1996 until about 2000, collecting along Calvert Cliffs was really good, at least for me. I did notice however, that as each year passed, I went home with fewer fossils, even though I was spending the same amount of time and effort on my hunts. After 2000 or so, each year saw a steady decline, the result of less new material eroding from the cliffs and a lot more people out there hunting. It seemed like my "Good Old Days" of coming home with a hundred teeth (nice Hemi's, tigers, mako's, cows, a Meg or two, etc.) were over.

I've heard of folks who have been to Lee Creek over 500 to 800 times, dating back to the mid-late 1970's. They had unfettered access every weekend, could drive their cars right into the mine, park their cars and take off into the mine all day. I can only dream of what they found.

I'm curious to hear from the "old timers", no matter what part of the country/world, and to hear your recollection of what the "Good Old Days" were for you.

Daryl.

[Auspex]

While I have no doubt that the famous hunting grounds of yore no longer produce the way they used to (fossils are a non-renewable finite resource, after all), I think some of the accounts of long-ago hunts of mythic magnitude may have been 'enhanced' by the compression of memory, wherein the most memorable events coalesce into memories of 'the norm'.

[Uncle Siphuncle]

although i've seen competition increase in texas and quarries become more restrictive in my 9 years of collecting, its best for me to treat today as tomorrow's good old days, and get myself out there finding new and untapped sites!

[Shellseeker]

I'll add a little hearsay here.

There is a friend who searches the Peace River Wauchula area. She and her husband came to the area in the 60s and started searching for fossils. Obviously over a long period of years looking, there are some lucky stretches. After a heavy wet season, she and husband drifted down stream from Zolfo Springs to Brownsville over a 10 day period. They found 2 complete Mammoth teeth and numerous other fossils partially uncovered in the River. Another time she crossed the river with gear and placed her car keys on a 6 foot mammoth leg bone she thought was a rock. She almost drown, dragging it back across the river. Over a couple of decades, they found more than 170 Mammoth and 40 Mastodon teeth.

I think a lot of this stuff is still there -- it is just not as easy as it was in the "Good Old days"

Having said that, I agree with danWoehr -- These are my good old days...

[Jocky]

I have no doubt that these days will be the good old days.

When my life moves away from Qatar I will have fond memories of roaming the desert and not picking up any of the multitude of fossils I find because they are not adding anything to my collection.

If I move back to the UK I will bore people rigid with stories of fields of shark teeth and gastropods the size of a basketball.

There are only a handful of people who actively hunt for fossils here so I guess I am one of the "Old Ones"

CHEERS

[fossilselachian]

You want to trust the memories of these "old timers"? Remember every time they (we/me) tell the story it gets better. Of course many of those to whom we tell the stories can' t remember hearing them previously. So the cycle continues.

Just kidding of course.

[Ddc_fossil]

I feel like there is a turnover rate. However the more people who embark on a quest to locate these fossils renders less fossils for others to find. However the earth and environment is constantly changing. I can recall watching people walking past four or five teeth before they bent down to pick up one half of the missed teeth size. It's all about knowing what to look for and being in the right place at the right time. Keep looking because it keeps changing. You don't find as many because people and or the conditions of the environment don't allow the newly uncovered fossils to accumulate like they did when barely anyone searched for them.

[erose]

Always a kernel of truth...quarries are harder to enter, landowners have become overly cautious, and sites have been built over & filled in. But hey do you think that maybe one reason a site is less productive might be because we DID pull hundreds of teeth out each trip? My favorite example of a site that was always getting dumped on by the "old-timers" is Big Brook in New Jersey. People have been collecting it from the mid 1800's and it still produces good fossils. Maybe not hundreds of teeth for every collector but new and special stuff is still found every year.

This is a growing hobby and there is more competition but I am also so glad to see more people turned on to earth science and paleontology.

And here in Central Texas we just had a good 24 hours of steady rain. Some of those old "worked out" sites might just be awesome this weekend. See you there!

[cowsharks]

Have any of you ever been the first person to collect in an area and have it turn out to be a honey hole? I've often wondered about finding a sport that no one has discovered yet, finding teeth laying all around...sort of the way Lee Creek probably is right now with no one being able to collect all those piles for the last few years. There's probably several huge teeth just laying there out in the open. Hmm, makes me think about flying a remote control helicopter in there with an onboard video camera and retractable claw mechanism...just kidding of course .

[bear-dog]

I can look back since,i'm a fossil as well.The good old days were in the late 60's.You could go the phosphate mines in Fla. and hunt for fossils legally.For 4 years I hunted for big Megs untill others told me there were other fossils as well.Other elders would talk me out of big money fossils.

It was some years later,to teach me what I was doing.The big Megs could be found,about 3 a day in the range of 6 inches.A big large bag would be used to collect the other fossils into .Shorts, Megs shorter than 3 inches were tossed.If I only knew what...........

One of my favorite spots in the mines we called Shark Tooth Hill[not the real one].You could fill a large coffe can with large upper sand shark in about 5 mins.The funny thing was the only shark teeth you would find in this mine was sand sharks.

Edited September 25, 2012 by bear-dog

[Missourian]

I think the advent of the internet made it easier for people to scout out sites and share in the competition. In the "good old days", one would have to pore through dusty journals to find leads to potential sites. I was lucky to have use of a nearby, large science and technology library. Now, Google searches and satellite images can open up more areas.

[Missourian]

Have any of you ever been the first person to collect in an area and have it turn out to be a honey hole?

Yes. For someone who likes large horn corals, I was delighted to come across a road cut that resulted in this:

[cowsharks]

Yes. For someone who likes large horn corals, I was delighted to come across a road cut that resulted in this:

That's pretty neat. I haven't been so lucky yet, but I continue to search and do research. In the meantime it's great to dream.

[Terry Dactyll]

I have heard stories from 20 years back about filling your rucksack then throwing half of them away because you find better fossils and you cant carry it all back up the cliff... I cant say its ever happened to me though....although I have filled my rucksack a few times plus a carrier bagfull to collect next visit....

[Angus Stydens]

Well, I have to confess to being one of the "old timers" with a bucketful of stories about collecting back in the good 'ole days. I started collecting in the Chandler Bridge formation in North Charleston, S.C. way back in 1964, but for a few years, I had no idea what a lot of my finds were. I moved away and then returned in 1980, moving to Summerville, S.C. By the luck of the draw, I just so happened to move here during the start of a big building boom. All the developments along Old Trolley road were just being built, extending down into the Oakbrook area. Those of you familiar with Summerville will know just where I am talking about. Back in those days (how many of my stories start with that phrase?), every time they built a housing development, they would dig a nice big ditch alongside one or two sides of the development, and connect it to an existing creek or stream leading to the Ashley River. Of course, this was done for good drainage while the development was being built. The ditches were always dug through any Pleistocene layers all the way down to the Ashley formation (late Oligocene). All the dirt was piled up alongside the ditches, so I had the bottom of the ditch to collect in, the banks of the ditch, and the spoil mounds. If I tried to explain to you how good the collecting was then, you would swear I was lying. Beautiful angustidens, makos, and hemipristis by the hundreds. Lots of fantastic whale teeth, bird bones, turtle fossils, dugong.... you name it. During that building boom, there were usually two to three really good sites being dug at the same time, and I swear, I can't remember running into another collector more than once or twice in the early 80's. I sometimes would wait four or five days after a heavy rain to go to one of my sites, and when I started collecting, there wasn't another set of footprints to be found. Ahhhh, yes, the good 'ole days. But disaster struck in the 1990's. About halfway through that decade, the Army Corp of Engineers had a meeting to decide how to cut down on the silting problem in the Charleston harbor. They decided that the silt run-off from all the ditch digging inland from Charleston was contributing tremendously to the silt problem, so they passed a ruling prohibiting new ditch digging in Summerville and other coastal areas. So, at the drop of a hat, the unbelievably good collecting days in Summerville came to an end. In addition to not allowing any ditch digging, they also prohibited the widening or deepening of any existing ditches when they became clogged with vegetation. Years ago, all my favorite ditches were cleared (widened and deepened) periodically, and the collecting would start all over again. Now, all that is allowed is removing the vegetation while carefully avoiding doing any digging.The only lucky break after the 1990's was when they widened the main flood control ditches in Summerville. I was right behind the digging machines the first day it rained (and for two years or so afterwards) but that hundred stories will have to wait for another time. Yeah, I really miss those days... But I do have a large supply of matrix stowed away that will give me some micro collecting to do when I finally become too decrepit to walk the ditches and slopes any more.

[Missourian]

The good 'old days for my area was when they built the interstates in the area. All at once, they opened up so many outcrops. Holliday Drive in west KC metro was incredible back in the 1980s. People would come out there with several crinoid crowns. I started hunting there around 1990 and came out with several calices among other things. Today, now that overburden and vegetation has covered the slopes, one would be lucky to find one calyx.

[Wrangellian]

Nice haul, Missourian! Wish I knew where to go to find the untouched sites around here..

I am certain that here on the Island collecting was better in the Old Days. I'm not old enough to have gotten in on this. I visited an old couple who had an amazing collection from their days of rockhound field trips to Brannan Lake (Benson Creek + quarries) and the other sites that were 'new' at the time. I bought all but their best stuff off them. I only wish they had taken better care to record exactly where everything came from, but memory had faded by the time I could ask them. Also they tried to prep some of them with primitive tools... I don't know what ever happened to their best stuff after my visit, I just hope whoever ended up with it realized what they have.

Nowadays collecting is more popular, and promoted and facilitated by the local Paleo Soc's. Only occasionally do new sites get excavated and I have been not the first but close to it, to collect there. One of these sites is still collectable but will soon be developed, so I'm sure I will be looking back on these as the 'Good Old Days'.

[cowsharks]

After reading some recent GMR posts, I started to think about what it would have been like to collect there - in the good old days. I bet you could just walk the stream after heavy rains and just pick up tons of teeth off those gravel bars. With so many folks collecting there now, you obviously can still find some nice stuff, but it takes a bit more work now.

[BNN]

This is an excerpt from a site maintained by George Langford III the son of the author. I'm sure a lot of forum members are already familiar with it. His father and grand father built up a massive collection of 25.000 specimens the best 10,000 wound up at the Field Museum. There are lots of pictures of the material they collected. His grandfather was also an amateur archaelogist as well. George Langford III's passion is collecting handtools. A lot of the site is devoted to them. This is just a small excerpt from a site ithat gives a fascinating look into a past era that no longer exists. Ironically Mazon Creek is still an excellent collecting site but it is difficult to get access since it is all private land. Enjoy

http://www.georgesbasement.com/

Father's Grandfather Robertson had acquired a few Mazon Creek fossil plant nodules in the 1890's, and Father saw a lot of them at the British Museum in 1904. So in 1907 he took me on a "search and collect" trip to this long-known site. We went by horse and buggy from our home to the railway depot in Downtown Joliet, then on a Chicago & Alton Railway local to Morris, Illinois, then by rented horse and buggy to a spot near the creek. A farmer showed us where other people had collected, said that he "didn't see any fun in it," and left us. Wearing only a pair of shorts, I waded in waist-high water, feeling the nodules in the soft mud with my toes. I would bring Father a pail-full at a time, and he would crack them open on the riverbank, saving only the nice ones. It was a hot day, and the farmer came back with a cantaloup, "to cool us off." Then, back home to Joliet. We may have made more than one trip like this; I can't remember. For many years, Father's time was fully occupied managing and operating the three rail rerolling mills of the McKenna Process Company and, in spare moments and, on holidays, excavating the Indian burial mounds on the Fisher farm southwest of Joliet. In 1937, we learned that the strip mine spoil heaps contained nodules just like the Mazon Creek nodules, and our dentist-naturalist guided us to where they were being found. At this spot, they were scattered by the hundreds all over the ground, but they were all of one species, so we spent about half of our time looking for other, more interesting sites. We were very successful and found a very wide variety of leaves and bark and a few animal specimens. We didn't know what any of them were. So Father, using his appointment as "Research Assistant in Anthropology," found from Dr. Cole of the University of Chicago Department of Anthropology, that a Dr. A.C. Noe, considered the top man in paleobotany, was Professor of Paleobotany at the university and arranged a meeting at the university to have him look at the specimens and tell us what they were. We put four piles of cracked-open nodules in Father's car, each specimen carefull protected by wrappings of Saturday Evening Post pages, and showed them to Dr. Noe. Dr. Noe nearly exploded. These were the finest specimens he had ever seen, and he brought out all his graduate student class to share in the excitement. As fast as he would identify a specimen, I would write the name down on the wrapping. But, time after time, he would say, "This is new to science," and, "I believe this is new," and persuaded Father to leave them with him so he could take a more careful look. Dr. Noe was awfully nice to us; he persuaded Father to bring him a load of specimens on a routine weekly basis, and we did this most of that Summer. He always returned the new-species specimens to us. and Father carefully preserved them as "type" specimens, valuable to science as being the first of their species ever found, and Father gave Dr. Noe a great many particularly fine or showy specimens of the already-identified species. This was really a fine period for both Father and Dr. Noe, but it lasted only the two years until Dr. Noe's death. Father, having only his right arm, hung two leather bags from his neck, cracked open nodules as he found them, wrapped the fine ones in Saturday Evening Post leaves, and continued until both bags were full. I, with two arms, followed the same procedure, but filled two, five-gallon pails at a time. Then we would carry our finds to where we had parked our car and drive them back to the McKenna office, where Father would wash and identify them. This style of collecting was hard, physical work. We parked the car as close as we could to a collecting site, but we often had to walk between half a mile and a full mile each way. Father's bags weighed about 35 pounds each, and my two pails, about 60 pounds each. After they were filled, we would start walking towards the car, stopping each time my fingers got so tired that I couldn't carry the weight. And all this, not on level, clean ground, but over steep, pebble-strewn clay hills and valleys, through marshy spots, and in, through, and out of drainage ditches. We got pretty tough, physically, and we found thousands of specimens. After about 80 trips, Father did a little counting and computing and came up with a total of 250 thousand nodules that we eventually cracked open.

We were the first serious collectors, and we really skimmed the cream, so to speak, from the spoil heaps.

[BNN]

Just wanted to clarify that the actual creek is still an excellent site if you can get access but the strip mines the Langfords collected are gone.

[Bullsnake]

When I was a kid, my dad owned river bottoms land. The access to it was through the sand plant, so dad had access to gravel and sand dredged from the Kansas river. Everybody knew everybody back then. I used to play in the sand piles, and find really cool stuff in the gravel and rock piles.

Armed with what I've learned recently, and being more serious about collecting, I'd love to be able to search those piles again. However, a few years ago I went to the plant to just ask if I could get a bucket of sand (as I had done before with no problem), and the kid (relative to my age), was very rude, and basically told me I didn't even have any business asking such a thing!

[Herb]

Last fall my girlfriend and I found a new roadcut outside Savannah, Tenn. It was Silurian and l.Devonian. Brachiopods, gastropods and trilobites 4" wide. We did not have long to hunt as it was getting dark and we had to get back to Louisville. We decided to make a trip back 6 months later ( 5 hour drive). As the roadcut came into view we were stunned to see that the whole hill side had been covered with rip-rap cobbles, every inch along with every other cut within miles. Needless to say we were not happy. So sad!

[RickNC]

After reading some recent GMR posts, I started to think about what it would have been like to collect there - in the good old days. I bet you could just walk the stream after heavy rains and just pick up tons of teeth off those gravel bars. With so many folks collecting there now, you obviously can still find some nice stuff, but it takes a bit more work now.

I've heard stories. I have made some really great finds in there, but I busted my butt to do so.

[jpc]

I've often wondered what it was like out here in the Morrison Fm, f'rinstance back in the 1880's when the dinosaurs in it were first being discovered. Then I got to go to Niger for a diono expedition and found out. Yeah, we were the first ones there for dinosaurs and it was pretty impressive. we did our prospecting by car at 40 mph and actual;ly found stuff that way. Occasionally we would get out and find all sorts of bones.

Closer to home, I am sure that some of my southwest Wyoming Eocene sites have never been seen by others and the richness can be pretty impressive. But then I have also heard from an old timer that the way she collected back in the God Ole Days was just to wak out onto the land and collect... asking permission had not yet been invented, it seems. Those days are certainly gone.

[Boneman007]

The good old days:

When I could go to the North Sulpher River and come out with dozens of beautiful vertebrae and a handful of complete shark teeth.

When I still had access to dozens of Ranches in western Kansas. Now they are all leased to money grubbing fossil dealers.

2007: SW OK, permian. I spent 8 hours filling my tahoe with mud. Over the next 6 months of acidizing and hunting the material I ended up with 17 skulls, 6 complete skeletons and about 20,000 bones. Up to that moment Acheloma dunni, the apex predator of that time period, did not exist.

Next? Who knows, but I cant wait!