Aaaaaalmost there!

It's almost fossil season

but so far

I got nothin'.

Pamela and I made it to the river and worked an area we could reach.

The results...

...were less than stellar

but it was a good digging warmup.

So that's 1/2 of a tapir tooth, 4 tigers, 1 alligator tooth, 3 pieces of turtle shell, a cool chert-type rock at the top, a piece of coral at the bottom, and 2 cylindrical rocks that I have no clue what they are although we found a lot of it where we were digging.

I take a kayak camping trip every year

with a group of non-fossil oriented friends 

and they let me convince them to paddle the north Withlacoochee for 3 days.

I was curious about finding coral that wasn't right by the boat ramp.  I saw a lot of coral but it all looked kind of...gross:  matted with moss and super worn although that doesn't mean there isn't anything cool on the inside.  I limited the hammering, though, as I needed to be able to complete 27 miles of paddling.  A couple of my fellow kayakers

 found souvenir pieces of botryoidal coral so that was fun.

This WAS my new 1-person tent.

I really want to lighten up my camping load

 but the discomfort to weight ratio of this tent did not compute.

Thank goodness I kept the receipt.

This was, however, one of my all time favorite camping spots.  Look at that babbling brook! 

No need to use my white noise app for a sound night's sleep.

I'm used to urban sounds so sometimes it's hard to sleep when it's too quiet.

I was listening to a bit by comedian Anjelah Johnson who said she used an urban sound app that included noises such as quiet police chatter and urban bird (helicopter).

Kinda true...

Here's a piece of fossil coral I found this year and cut on the slab saw.

It was a discard, considered too small and ugly by the serious coral hunters,

but that's the kind of stuff I live for coz, well, it's easy to get to. Sigh...

Just look at those polyps! Va-va-voom!

And the botryoidal ain't half bad either.

So we continue to follow the river level gages.

I console myself by saying that it's easier to get through the holidays without all the fossil distractions.

Right?  Right?!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thank you for reading and please always leave a comment.

For your continued reading pleasure,

here's an article from Scientific American regarding how often dinosaurs became fossilized.

Paleontologist Gregory M. Erickson of Florida State University explains.

It is often stated in the paleontological literature that the chance an animal will become fossilized is "one in a million." This number is meant to be taken figuratively, the point being that the odds of surviving the rigors of deep time are extremely remote. Nevertheless, all field paleontologists know that the earth is biased when it comes to giving up its dead--the odds of an animal being preserved and consequently exhumed are much greater in some settings than others. 

Studies by taphonomists (paleontologists who study the transition of animals from the biosphere to the lithosphere; taphonomy literally means "burial laws") have shown that organisms that die on land in lush jungle locales are rarely fossilized. In these settings, there is little chance of being buried, scavenging vertebrates and insects are prevalent, bacteria that break down flesh and bones are abundant, and the soils are extremely acidic and tend to dissolve bones. As a result, remains of dinosaurs from such former surroundings are practically nonexistent. Conversely, dinosaurs are commonly found in areas that were once fluvial settings and in regions of extreme aridity. In the former case, it is clear that dinosaur remains were rapidly buried before substantial scavenging could take place. Remains of dinosaurs that were washed into the fluvial systems are found buried in actual river channels, whereas others are found out on the former floodplains at the location where they fell and were covered by sediments from floodwaters that breached river banks. Because river currents tend to scatter and break up bones, remains from river channels are often biased toward certain bones depending on the strength of the current. (Such aggregations are called Voorhies groups after one of the first paleontologists to study the phenomenon by which certain bones, such as ribs and vertebrae, tend to readily tumble downstream, leaving behind only partial skeletons.) Dinosaur fossils found on former floodplains also often show bias toward elements such as pelvises and larger long bones that were difficult for scavenging or predaceous theropod dinosaurs to consume. 

In any event, once bones were entombed in fluvial sediments, not only were they protected from scavengers and many types of bioorganisms, but they could also begin a process known as permineralization. Water percolating through the sands or muds was often rich in silica (natural glass) and other minerals, which could infill the pores of the bones and make them physically resistant to crushing by the overlying sediment. At least some minor replacement of the actual bone matrix usually occurred as well, typically by iron-rich minerals, but it should be noted that most dinosaur bones actually retain much of the original calcium and phosphatic minerals they possessed in life. As such, the phrase "turned to stone"--often used to describe fossil bone--is misleading.

Dinosaurs dying in arid regions also stood a reasonable chance of becoming fossilized. Aridity tends to desiccate a carcass, making it less attractive to scavengers. And unlike jungle or forest settings, deserts have considerably fewer organisms suited for the breakdown of animal tissues. Windblown sands, as well as drifting and collapsing sand dunes, were agents of burial for such animals. Subsequent rainfall during the wet seasons carried minerals into the buried bones. 

If dinosaur remains entombed in the ways described above did not later become metamorphosed (modified by upheavals of the earth) there is a good chance they are still around today, thus enabling the details of their burial to be pondered by taphonomists, either professional or amateur.