Fossil Purgatory

All I wanted to do was get dirty!

And find some fossils in the process.

Finally, the long awaited trip to the Mosaic phosphate mine.

It's been a year since my last visit and I wanted to go again so badly that I begged, and whined, and volunteered, and grumbled, and begged some more...FOR A YEAR.  My gambit paid off and I won one of the 30 coveted spots on the field trip.

But right from the start, it was a frustrating day.

The convoy to the hunting grounds would pass areas of standing water so we were required to wear life jackets in the cars.  The problem was they didn't have 30 life jackets.  I had to wait for the Mosaic employee to escort the first group to the destination then return with the life jackets and escort us in the second group.  It didn't take that long but the minutes were ticking away.

Should've been another day in paradise.

Rocks, rocks everywhere, nor any fossil to find!

(to paraphrase Coleridge)

In other terms: it was slim pickin's!

We are only allotted a few hours, total, for fossil hunting and are excited for the opportunity and grateful for the help of the mine employees who volunteer their time...

but we really want to find stuff and we weren't.

It was announced, after an hour and a half, that we would drive to a different, hopefully better, location.  

As all the cars turned onto the highway to head to the new hunting grounds, half of the cars got cut off by traffic and didn't know where to go.  That's right, I was sitting in the back seat of one of the lost cars.

Om shanti shanti shanti...

A Mosaic employee found us and got us turned in the right direction, but had to run into one of the offices to manage some paperwork before he could continue to lead us back to our flock.

When we finally got there, I bolted out of the car and started scanning the ground like a crazy person.

Here's the sum of it:

Nothing much for the fossil cabinet with the exception of that little deer tooth next to the fish vertebra.  

It helped that I was still riding on the fumes of my coral high.

I had asked Pam if she wanted to dig Alafia coral, fully expecting disinterest, and was happy to hear her reply: "I thought you'd never ask!" 

We warmed up for Mosaic by digging in the Alafia river for 6 hours.

It's such a beautiful and interesting material and Pam knows a flintknapper who, hopefully, will craft a piece of my coral into my very own custom made arrowhead.  Cool!

It ain't easy, but we get it done.

I'm always a little anxious on the ride back, in case I tip over.  Not because of gators but because

I'd lose my coral!!!

There's a teeny tiny bit of fossil material mixed in.

Left to right: tiger shark teeth, a piece of jawbone with a tooth, a couple of small bones, sliver of mammoth enamel, 2 river-worn quarters (offsets our $2 parking fee), an orange-hued piece of coral (how'd that get in there?!), unerupted horse tooth, interesting mystery bone, and another piece of horse tooth.  The bumpy thing at the top is a botryoidal rock that is not done justice in this photo.

Now, back to that piece of jawbone in the upper left corner.

As I was rinsing it off I noticed 2 more roots in the sockets and the molar is worn completely smooth on the top AND underneath the molar, inside the bone, I found the fragile shell of an unerupted tooth.  This is going into the fossil cabinet.

The holidays are past and it's a new year.

SolOpsArt had a nice bump in sales during the gift season but things have quieted back down.  This year I'll add some items with silver like this Peace River mako and, assuming I can develop a few lapidary skills, coral!

Of course.