Shark tooth glamour shots

These things are just so beautiful.

It's a dog eat dog world in the river

     Being new to fossiling, I try to balance between helping other fossilers by sharing info on areas to dig, and being so tight-lipped about what I'm doing that anyone asking me for pointers might conclude I don't speak English.

    

     

     You have to be a little secretive when you find a good spot. In the beginning I would get excited and verbose when I found a good area and then watch in dismay as the old guys shamelessly moved in on it. I had to start containing my enthusiasm.  Jack told me that if I found a good spot, I shouldn't tell anyone and he added, laughing, "You shouldn't even tell me."

     No one owns the river; it's all fair game, and that lesson was hammered home one weekend with crushing clarity.  I was spending a Saturday working an area with Fossil Steve.  He is methodical and prefers to cover an area in a grid as opposed to "pot-holing" or digging willy nilly.  That day, I wasn't finding much at all and right before I had to pack up and leave, I gave a frustrated stab into the mucky clay at the bottom of our trench.  And I hit something.  It wasn't clay and it wasn't small gravel but it wasn't the solid rock of the river bottom either.  It was large chunks of tightly packed rock.  As I struggled to loosen them, Steve kindly moved right in to "help" me (I protested, to no avail).  Our first screens produced passable megs, horse teeth, large chunks of mammoth tooth, etc.  We began to dig frantically as we both had obligations that would force us to call it a day.

     Right about the time we had dug ourselves into a hole nearly chest deep a man comes canoeing along with his young son.  Steve and I looked at each other and our dismay was apparent.  The man said he wanted to "try" fossiling with his son but he had a boatload of gear and obviously wasn't a newbie.  We pointed to an area where we knew he would find shark teeth but he was studying us closely.  In an area of the river that wasn't even hip deep, Steve and I were stand shoulder to shoulder in a chest deep hole.  Kinda obvious.  But we had to leave, vowing to return on Monday.

     Less that 48 hours later we returned to find the whole spot dug out and a huge pile of discarded rock  poking up out of the river.  To the side of the discard pile was a castle and wall made out of rocks: the project of the young boy while his dad ROBBED US!  

     No, no, no...I know that's not how it is.  No one owns the river.  And let's be honest, I would've done the same damn thing.  

     We still worked the area for the rest of the day, finding some nice fossils including the biggest segments of mammoth tooth Jack had found to that date, but who knows what treasures our usurper took home that Saturday evening.

To Pee or Not to Pee...

     Yeah, I pee in my wet suit. 

If I'm in my wet suit in the water, you can bet I'm peeing.

     I fact, I get so relaxed about it that when I get back in my kayak I have to remind myself to stop.  

     But 2 of my wet suits were given to me and the 3rd cost me $12.99 at the thrift store so as soon as I get home, I throw them in the washing machine and then dry them in the sun.

     I hope this doesn't make you feel squeamish but you probably weren't going to ask to borrow my wet suit anyway.

Mastodon Puzzle

     It felt like a test, a rite of passage.  

     Fossil Steve (this nomenclature to distinguish him from another friend named Steve) handed me an old shoebox filled with fragments of mastodon tooth and 2 tubes of Super Glue (I added the beer later).

     Steve is 70 years old and still digging in the river every other day during the season.  He stands up on his canoe while he paddles and I cannot keep up with him in my kayak unless I'm using the trolling motor.  He is a country boy and a character and the real deal and he has a way of turning a phrase.  He once told me about a young woman who was digging downstream from him and screamed so loudly when she found a huge meg that he "run down there coz I thought she was gator bit."

     I know Steve likes me but I also know I irritate him.  It's that usual issue of men liking an independent woman...until they realize she's independent and won't do what they tell her.  We go round and round about the size of hardware mesh on my screens.  He insists that I use 1/4" so that I get all the tiny fossils.  I prefer 1/2" so that I don't get frustrated sifting through all that little gravel.  Right or wrong, I am comfortable leaving the bird claws and baby snake vertebra for someone else to find but I also realized that he was on the verge of getting truly upset about it.  So I use 1/4" when I'm digging with Fossil Steve.

     Anyway, I took the shoe box and worked myself crosseyed over that mastodon puzzle for an entire weekend. I made excruciatingly slow progress but ultimately, even that came to a grinding halt.

     I posted a photo of my project on FaceBook and a club member pointed out that there was definitely pieces of more than one tooth in the collection.  

     I had done all that I could do.  I carefully wrapped the reconstructed sections and placed them with the remaining fragments back in the shoe box.  When I handed it all to Steve, he initially looked disappointed with a tinge of "that's what I expected" until he opened the box and saw that I had been able to put together the framework of one entire tooth and parts of at least a couple others.  His whole demeanor changed and he got that excited glint in his eye.  "I gotta get back there and keep digging!"  Of course he won't tell me where "there" is but that's ok.  I can use a break from the mastodon puzzle.

Winning!

       Did I mention how heavy my gear is?

    My kayak, alone, weighs 68 lbs.  I have a slightly lighter 14' kayak but it is older with no storage wells and the hull is too flimsy to handle the trolling motor...the trolling motor which weighs 17 lbs and its battery which weighs 25 lbs.

      I am a fairly strong woman but let's get down to brass tacks:  I only have so much upper body strength and I am 48 years old and I am an intrinsically lazy person.

     Many of the places I launch the kayak from do not come with a boat ramp and some areas include steep sand banks.  Dragging a laden kayak down to the river is relatively easy but getting that same load back up the hill at the end of the day is a different story.  The old guys would help me lug gear which, while appreciated, grated on my independent sensibilities but when I would fossil alone...forget about it!  I needed several miserable trips.  That got my little brain working.  There must be a better way...

    That's right, bitches!  The mother of invention rules again!

     A trip to the hardware store allowed me to puzzle out this simple rig.  There is another carabiner on the other end of the rope and I attached a U bolt to the bow of my kayak for the connection.  I back my truck to the edge of the slope, uncoil the rope down to my yak, hook it up, and then slowly drive forward until I see all my gear pop over the edge of the bank onto the flat land.  Works like a charm!

     Pam immediately recognized the value of this system as I would drag her gear up at the same time, simply keeping our kayaks tethered since I had usually towed her back with the trolling motor.  She hauls everything in a car so is still trying to figure out the best way to accomplish this setup for herself.

     The men were a different story.  The word I most commonly hear when men see me motor past them in my kayak or pull my gear up from the river with a rope is "Cheater!"  That makes me laugh.

     Cheating?  I'm winning! 

      And I have been gratified to spy some other fossilers I know emulating my idea.  Makes me feel warm and glow-y inside.

     Mike, alway alert to my needs, just hooked me up with this luxurious coil of rope for next season.  Might as well do it with style.

     And what would a Zookeeper Fossil post be without a pic of a fossil?

     One of the first times I went on the river by myself I found this perfect tapir tooth.  No one to shout it out to.  Dang!

It's not the size of your screen but how you use it...

     My first screens were made with 1/4" hardware mesh which means you will find all but the tiniest fossils but you will also have to dig through a lot of little gravel to get to the good stuff.  Since success is measured in how often you can fill and sort a screen of gravel, the smaller mesh can eat up time.
     Initially, I was trying to figure out why the guys did so much better than me.  I was digging almost as hard so shouldn't I be calling out, "Tapir tooth!  Meg!" and so forth, just like they were?  I saw that some of them were using screens with 1/2" hardware mesh and that seemed to be the answer.  Clear out that gravel faster, get the big stuff!  In truth, fossiling success is measured in many ways with experience and luck at the top of the list, but I prefer the larger hardware mesh.  When I am sifting through so much small gravel, I get bogged down and frustrated.  I've got to keep moving!

     I run the risk of missing fossils like this beautiful molar (peccary, I think) but I clear out a lot more gravel and have more success finding a wider variety of larger fossils.

     The photo above was from one of my better days as I gained experience on the river.  From the top, a complete tapir molar with intact root, a camel tooth with intact root, a couple of serviceable megs, and to the right, my first horse teeth.  

     At this point, I digress long enough to say, I CANNOT STAND THE STUPID CAMEL TOE JOKE!  I posted a photo of a beautiful camel tooth I found and every one of my intelligent, adult friends made a stupid camel toe reference.  Believe me, I have a sense of humor, but it's time to nail the lid down on that one.

     Whew!  Glad I got that out!  

     Back to the point I was making, I know I am missing a lot of tiny shark teeth and bird bones, etc. but being new to this hobby and coming into it long after the huge mammoth leg bones and intact land tortoise shells have all been found and cleared out, I want the biggest fossils I can get!

Necessity is the mother, and all that...

     The old guys kept telling me I should call "Pam" and go fossiling with her.  Well, maybe I didn't like that very much.  It had that feeling of my brothers telling me to go play with the girls and really, what other woman was going to dig like I dig?  I definitely wasn't holding the guys back, if, for no other reason, I am completely independent with my kayak and don't require an escort or assistance.
     But Pam is an officer of my fossil club and I wanted to get to know the other members so I arranged to go fossiling with her.

     Pam, please forgive me for ever doubting you!

     One of our first times fossiling together, she called, after we were both over an hour into our commutes, to tell me she had forgotten her paddle; not unheard of when you are wrangling a truckload of gear in the predawn hours.  I've heard stories of guys paddling with their shovel for the same reason.

     I was just passing the small WalMart in Wauchula so I told her I would come up with something.  I ran into the store and all they had were 2 expandable plastic emergency paddles.  I grabbed those and a roll of duct tape and we cobbled together a temporary kayak paddle.

     With this flimsy device Pam paddled a total of 5 miles, faster and stronger than me, and dug all day to boot.

You go, girl!

     

The best Christmas gift EVER!

     By the end of December of 2012 the river water was cooling down but the quality of my finds was heating up.

     I found my first turtle spurs.  When you see a shape like this in your screen, you know it's something but you might not necessarily know what.  Luckily, I always had the experts around me, usually Bill, Jack, and or Dave, to readily ID my finds.   

     But all that paddling!  Generally we start by paddling upstream at least a mile and a half but usually more.  Then we dig all day long in the water which was a whole new level of "demanding" for me.  Then we have to paddle back downstream which might sound easy, with the current moving us swiftly along, but it isn't so.  Low winter water levels in the Peace River equal very slow current; not much help with the paddle back.  

     I dreamed of having a trolling motor to attach to my kayak and poor Mike had to listen to all my bitching and moaning about it.  He solved the problem by giving me a trolling motor for Christmas.  

   OMG!  Joy!  I immediately ran off to my computer to Google ways to attach it to my kayak.

  Not easy.

     Sometimes I wish I had fewer choices and this was one of those situations.  It was Mike who, upon witnessing me making notes and sketches and cursing the men on YouTube for making things so difficult, told me point blank that I was over-thinking it.  Use the KISS method.  And so I did.

     I made a basic, sturdy frame out of 2x4 scraps, bolted it right onto my 14' barge (I have NO fear about drilling into my kayak...above the waterline, that is), and the battery sits in the back well in a waterproof battery box.  I use the kayak rudder for steering.

     I felt a little silly the first time I lugged all that heavy gear to the water's edge, and it took some practice to get a working system, but I'm so spoiled now!  And my fossiling friends are getting a little bit spoiled too...

     This photo was taken by someone I was towing after a day of fossiling.  I've been told it's a relaxing ride back there.  I think I look a little serious in this photo but mostly I'm just trying to keep all the details in check.  There's a trick to using this setup in the extremely shallow water of the Peace River.  I can only set the propeller so high before it's not even in the water any more, but at it's highest setting it still gets banged up by rocks and mired in the sand.  The water weeds are a whole other headache and I finally found that the best way to clear the prop is by cutting the weeds with the little blade on a wine bottle opener.  As I come upon shallow areas, I lean as far to the left as I can, thus raising the prop as high as possible and when the water is deeper, I lean to the right, lowering the prop for more efficiency.  My Wilderness Systems Tarpon 140 is extremely stable so I don't think I could flip it even if I tried.

     Trolling means I have more energy for digging.

     The meg on the right is my Arcadia beauty.  The meg on the left is only a fragment but it was still exciting to find it.  The excitement comes from seeing just the root of it exposed and thinking maybe you found an huge intact meg!  I'm still waiting to actually find a huge intact meg...

     

Heading north for the summer

     Summer rains bring an end to the Peace River fossil season and for those of us who spent a good part of the last several months digging there, we’ve been feeling a bit lost.  Since I live in the Orlando area I sent out a query through the Fossil Forum looking for summer fossiling locations in north central Florida.  Fossilers can be very tight-lipped about good digging sites so I was happily surprised when someone responded with a couple of spots in Jacksonville.  The provider of the information now lives in Texas which might explain his generosity with directions to his former Florida sites, but I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth.  

I loaded up my truck and hit the road by 4:30 am in an attempt to avoid the worst of the heat.  Silly me!  I arrived at my first destination, Quarantine Island in the St. John’s River, shortly before 7 am and the heat was already killer. 

     Crossing the river was uneventful but I have to work to control my fear. I wasn't raised around water and boats and a kayak is so close to the surface.  Who knows what's lurking in the depths of that dark channel?

Not the most scenic area in Jacksonville.

      The island is as big as a small city, desolate and full of trash, heavy brush, and snakes.  I’m not afraid of any of those things IF I have the proper gear.  I didn’t.  Brush pants, sturdy boots, and a can of industrial-strength DEET are musts, as well as a raised sifting screen (easily constructed by attaching a river screen to the top of a walker purchased at a thrift store).  

I call this "Still Life With Snake and Trash."  

I did my best to avoid both.

     What I had was plenty of water, sunscreen, and an obsessive need to find fossils so I did some surface hunting in a large gravel covered area directly across from my launch point.  Considering that I only spent about an hour looking, the results were promising, the best being a mako (1 and 3/8” long) with some root damage but a beautiful pearlescent color to the blade.  I also collected a small mako blade, a little chunk of mammoth tooth, a hemi upper, and a large but cracked alligator tooth.  

Who knows what a full day’s digging in cooler weather could turn up?

     My other stop was Ponte Vedre Beach, about 30 minutes from Quarantine Island.  The Fossil Forum contact had given very specific instructions regarding this area as it is a neighborhood of high dollar homes and they don’t want my 1995 Ford Ranger parked in their front yard.  I don’t really like it parked in my front yard, either, but that’s another story.  I parked where instructed, an easy quarter mile walk from the beach, and  got to the waterline at the start of the ebb tide.

     I’ve done my time beach combing, logging countless hours looking for little shark teeth on Manasota Key, and I don’t really want to do it anymore. 

Here's a pic from a cold-weather beach combing foray with a friend, whose face is blurred until I have her permission to include her picture in this blog. :-)

      So there I was walking along Ponte Vedra beach, mentally poo-pooing it as a waste of time, when I saw the unmistakable shape of a shark tooth root protruding from the crushed shell at the tide line.  I almost couldn’t believe it as I picked up a tooth from a great white shark!  I’ve never found such a big tooth on a beach before and I’ve never found a tooth from a great white shark before!  Measuring 1.5”, it has good serrations and a worn but complete root.

The great white tooth is on the left and the mako on the right.

     Needless to say, I’ve done a mild revision of my opinion regarding beach combing and I am sending happy thankful thoughts (and emails) to everyone who’s been generous with their fossiling information and I will continue to seek summer fossil sites north of I-4, but mostly, I want this rain to stop so I can get back to the Peace River!

Developing a routine

     Through December 2012 and into January 2013 I developed a routine for my weekly visit to the Peace River.

     My normal day to fossil is Friday.  I work a 3-day work week, 10-12 hours each day, and the thought of heading to the river Friday morning gets me through those last hours of work on Thursday.

     Thursday night I prep everything for my morning coffee, lay out my travel coffee cup, set a bowl on the counter with 2 packets of instant oatmeal, and program my alarm for 4:30 am.  During the fossil season I never took my kayak off my truck, securing it with a bike lock to discourage anyone thinking it might be a good idea to try and make off with it (I've had 12' long 2x4's stolen from my yard so it's possible).  I also always keep the milk crate that I bungee to my kayak packed and ready to go.  The contents change with the season but I always need sun protection, snacks, beverages, and a dry bag.  Then there is an assortment of bigger equipment that goes with me: paddle, shovel, sifting screen, metal probe, and life vest (I rarely see "the man" but I don't want to get a ticket), which pretty much stays in the bed of my truck all season.  I spent the winter months driving around like some kind of water dwelling Beverly Hillbilly.  With my shoestring budget lifestyle it's important that I manage pride:  I manage to do without it!

     When the alarm goes off at 4:30 am on Friday mornings, I quickly dress in my paddling clothes, make my coffee, microwave my oatmeal, and hit the road by 5 am.  I learned through horrible trial and error that leaving any later than that would get me caught up in the beginning of rush hour traffic on the nightmarish I-4 through Orlando.  

     One hour on I-4, turn south, one hour (more or less) on 17.  One bathroom stop at one of the hallucinogenically numerous Citgos on 17.  It seems there is a Citgo every mile and they are all bad; I've just had to learn which ones are not AS bad.  There are 2 very nice RaceTrac's but they are too distant from my stopping point on the river.  If only Quik Trip would come to Florida...

     I am parked and lashing  my gear to my kayak between 7 and 7:30, depending on where I have decided to fossil that day.  With the exception of the initial investments in waders and dive boots, my main expense, by an order of magnitude, is gas.  Lots and lots of gas.  When I started this hobby, my friends and clients were initially bemused, "You drove there 2 weeks in a row?!  That's crazy!"

     Bemusement turned to something bordering on mild concern, "You drive 4 hours round trip every single week?  Hmmm...that's pretty involved."  

     Mild concern, however, quickly transformed to acceptance, "How did you do fossiling this weekend?"

     I could honestly say I was starting to do better.  Determination was yielding more variety in my fossils and even though I wasn't finding the megs that the old guys seemed to pull out of their ass with every shovelful of gravel, I was finding some of the prettiest shark teeth I had ever found.

      The 2nd photo shows, among other things, some nice sting ray dermal plates.  I think they would make a cool pendant but I need to find some more before I start drilling holes in the ones I have.

     The 3rd photo shows tiger shark teeth.  They are not in perfect condition but they are still very pretty and nice and big.

     The last photo shows some of the increasing variety I was finding as I logged hours in the river.  These fossils would not excite a veteran collector but for me, they were amazing and gave me the strength to power on.  Top of my hand down: 2 very worn out megs, antler tine and tortoise foot pad, horse tooth and 2 bottom teeth from a hemi (snaggletooth shark).

Who's afraid of a little learning curve?

     Finally I synched my schedule with Bill, the president of the fossil club, and we met in Wauchula to look for fossils.
     There are a lot of things I'm not afraid of...

I'm not afraid to get dirty.

     I had to take this photo of myself after I got lost in a salt marsh north of Jacksonville, FL.  The getting lost part didn't scare me as I could see the highway and just had to wallow through some muck to reach dry land.  The only thing I truly feared that day was the embarassment of getting lost but amazingly, there were no witnesses.

I'm not afraid of the heavy work.

     I didn't say I liked it, I'm just not afraid of it.  This picture is my personal record for kayaks loaded on my poor old '95 Ford Ranger:  5!  That's alotta yaks!

I'm not afraid to get up at the ass-crack of dawn...

     As long as it's for something I'm interested in.  That's me in the knit cap, looking a little bleary.

Not really.

     I have a healthy respect but I don't foresee any problems.

     The thing that does make me anxious is the learning curve.  Everyone's got to start somewhere but I felt so lost, standing in the river with a shovel, trying to figure out how to find a fossil.  It's not as easy as it sounds.  Bill and his buddies would call out every one of their finds, "Horse tooth!  Tiger shark!  Small meg!" but I was conspicuously quiet.  

     How was it possible I wasn't finding anything?!

     Several hours later I was rewarded with a pretty little palate from a fish or ray (the bottom one in the photo.  The top palate came from Apollo Beach) and a few nice lemon shark teeth.

     Thank goodness for my makos and meg from Arcadia because I knew there was good stuff out there;  I just had to figure out how to find it.