On being a size queen and other so-so days...

I admit, I'm a size queen.

We're talking about fossils, right?

I've always used a 1/2" screen to sift gravel in the rivers and a fellow fossiler always admonished me, saying, "You're missing all the bird claws and mouse bones."  

Well, since I can't even see the bird claws and mouse bones, I'm not actually missing them and with a 1/2" screen, I'm putting them back for someone else to find.

I like big, meaty fossils!

Of course, being the "finder of small things," I don't come across that many,

and lately, standing next to Tom, I'm relegated to the pure vicarious enjoyment

 of seeing him find the big meaty fossils. 

Sigh...

On our last outing he found

a gigantic gator tooth.

It's 2" long and 1" in diameter.

Here is his best gator tooth of the day next to my best gator tooth of the day:

Come on, man!!!

And that was the theme for the day.

Tom's makos, top row; my makos, bottom row.

Really?!!

And sometimes size comes in pure quantity.

Tom's hemis, top row; my singular hemi, bottom row.

The humanity!!!

Even Pam was in on it, finding a giant sloth tooth.

Still, it was a beautiful day 

and I'm so grateful to be back in the river.

Everyone found lots of gorgeous small shark teeth.

My favorite find of the day

was 2 perfect garfish scales cemented together with matrix.

A very nice giant armadillo scute:

The location we were digging yields handfuls of sea robbin skull pieces and I found a fairly large one of those:

And a plate of odds and ends:

I shouldn't pray for it not to rain but I need some more river time so I can find something 

BIG!