Last season's fossils have been organized...
...a LONG time ago.
The rainy season leaves us Peace River addicts in the lurch and I've read plenty of suggestions to help us through the lean times. I've been organizing and labeling fossils, maintaining and repairing gear, powering through upper body workouts in preparation for getting a shovel in my hands again, etc.
Here's a few more ideas for the off-season:
Go for a hike.
Over the years, I've discovered plenty of animal bones while hiking through the woods. Animal skulls present a great opportunity to ID some of the teeth I've found and their position in the jaw. Of course, this only applies to non-extinct animals. The above photo is of a deer skull and a fawn mandible that I found on a recent walk in West Virginia. On the same trip, I got an unexpected chance to see a juvenile mastodon's upper and lower jaws, not on a hike in the woods but in the entry hall of Thomas Jefferson's house in Montecello, Virginina. Who knew?!
Visit museums.
I really just wanted to post this super-cute photo of one of my digging buddies, Pam, and she happens to work at The Shell Factory (https://www.shellfactory.com/) in Fort Myers, Florida where they have an ever-expanding collection of fossils from around the world.
Trade some stuff.
My ex-sister-in-law (but still my friend) is a geologist. Sweeet!!! In exchange for some Apollo Beach sand, she sent me the treasures in the photo above. The rice-looking fossils are fusulinids from Kansas that died out in the Permian extinction. At the top of the photo are fragments of crinoid stems and below them are 6 beautiful little brachiopods.
I realize that not everyone is lucky enough to have a geologist in the family but I suspect it would be fairly easy to find some fossil hunters willing to trade on the internet. Use a P.O.Box if you're worried about strangers showing up on your doorstep.
Pay a little attention to your other collections.
People with a collector's personality usually have more than one collection going on at any given time. I like fossils and I also like minerals. Once again, try to find a geologist in your family. My care package of fossils from the sister-in-law also included a block of clear halite, purple-streaked flourite pyramids, and orange-tinged pencil gypsum from a gypsum mine in Michigan.
I used my hikes in West Virginia to add a variety of samples of slate and limestone to my collection and even found some pieces with shell impressions.
Get creative.
I've been using some of my free time this summer to get creative with my SolOpsArt jewelry that I sell on Etsy. I don't own lapidary tools and I don't really want to get into the field of cutting and polishing stones but I did want to find ways to use some of the beautiful mastodon enamel fragments that I find in the river. I was able to make this mastodon enamel pendant with my Dremel tool.
The rains are slowing down, the days getting shorter, and soon, I can go back to filling my head with nothing but thoughts of where I'll dig next.
