An Abbreviated Season

It's gonna be a SHORT fossil season for me,

due to all the rain,

so I'll make this a long post in the spirit of balance.

If you're anything like me, 

you're getting a little bored of seeing postings

from all these people finding complete mastodon and mammoth teeth.

(yawn...)

Allow me to mix it up a bit.

Take a look at this beauty...

Oh yeah...that's right...

100% pure rodent.

And the best part is, you actually have a fairly decent chance of finding one just like it or better.  

Just be sure to use your 1/4" screen and wear those groovy looking magnifying glasses while you sift the gravel.

It was so nice to finally have a weekend free 

where the rain had backed off for a few days and Pam and I were able to meet up for some much needed river time.

We're absolutely glowing!

I managed to find a few little items of interest and it was a gorgeous day on the river.

I'll never say, "No," to a whole tapir cap.

A really excellent dolphin periotic ear bone.

A handful of scutes from glyptodonts and giant armadillos.

Turtle and tortoise material.

Those strange little osteoderms that apparently came from the skin of certain species of giant ground sloths.  This is my entire collection. 

Only the 2 on the right came from this recent visit to the Peace River.

A glossy fragment of a mastodon tooth.

Who needs the whole thing anyway?! Right?!

Some more rodent material, this time in the form of a chunk of capybara tooth.

Crystalized sea urchin spines.

Tiny stuff including garfish scales, barracuda tooth, stingray spine, and bone fragment.

One horse tooth and plenty of horse tooth fragments.

Fossilized deer jaw fragment with a couple of teeth.

A good haul of small shark teeth.  I find these using a 1/2" screen and it's not easy but, as you know if you've read this blog before, I don't have the patience for a 1/4" screen.

Soooo, no fireworks or anything too exciting

but still better than a kick in the head.

And now allow me to plump up the word volume of this posting by giving you some information on the deer population of the United States from actionbioscience.org.

White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) rank among the most charismatic wildlife in North America. Emblematic of the countryside, a deer sighting signifies we left the busy city behind. Spotted fawn sightings evoke images of Bambi, and such sightings serve as harbingers of summer. In recent decades, deer numbers have grown. In some places, deer are so numerous that they are degrading their own habitats and causing conflicts with people. Consider:

The U.S. is home to about 30 million deer.

• There are an estimated 30 million deer in the United States today. Under optimal conditions, deer populations will double every two years.1 They can reach densities of over 1 deer per hectare (100 deer per square kilometer).2
• Over 10 million people spend nearly $6 billion to hunt deer in the United States each year.3 Over 6 million deer are killed during the hunting season, based on state agency records. If each deer provides an average of 22 kg of meat, this amounts to 132,000 metric tons. An estimated 12 million fawns are born a few months after hunting season.

Car collisions with deer numbered over 1 million in 2008.

• In 2008, over one million deer collided with cars and motorcycles in the United States. According to estimates by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, this resulted in the death of 150 people, injuries to 29,000 others, and an estimated $1.1 billion in vehicle damage.4
• An average deer will eat nearly 500 kg of vegetation each year.5 The entire population of deer in the United States will eat the equivalent of 15 million metric tons of vegetation per year, which is greater than the combined weight of all aircraft carriers in the U.S. Navy! 
• One recent study of 13 northeastern states revealed deer caused $248 million damage each year to agricultural crops, nurseries, and landscaping.6
• In parks and other natural areas, deer consume wild plants. Over time, spring wildflower displays diminish. Plants highly prized by deer decline or disappear entirely. In some places, deer are responsible for the disappearance of over half of all plant species—in just a few decades.7,8
• Deer play a role in the transmission of tick-borne infections to humans, including Lyme disease.9

It is quite possible that deer provide more economic and aesthetic benefits to people than any other mammal in North America. At the same time, they may cause more harm and injuries to people than any other North American mammal. Confronted with the mixed blessing of white-tailed deer, wildlife biologists are broadening the scope of the discipline of wildlife management. 

Moose, elk, and other types of deer are also overpopulated.

The problems posed by white-tailed deer overabundance are by no means unique. There are several cases of overabundant populations of moose (Alces alces)10 and elk (Cervus elaphus)11 in parts of their native range in North America that lack native predators. Sika deer (Cervus nippon) have caused extensive damage throughout parts of Japan.12 Both native and introduced deer have caused extensive damage to woodlands and plantations throughout Europe, and introduced deer and elk have reshaped temperate rainforests in Canada, Chile, and New Zealand.13

The fall and rise of white tails in America

White tails were nearly extinct 100 years ago.

With an estimated 30 million white-tailed deer in the United States today, it is difficult to believe these animals nearly became extinct just over a century ago. The United States was undergoing a profound transformation, facilitated in part by a rapidly expanding railroad network. In some ways, environmental changes benefited deer. The bounty hunting of gray wolf (Canis lupus) and cougar (Felis concolor), and the subjugation of indigenous peoples, reduced predation pressure on deer. At the same time, market hunting, weak enforcement of game laws, and habitat loss conspired to drive deer to dangerously low numbers by the late 1800s. By the early 1920s, deer were extinct in some states—including Kansas and Indiana. They were endangered in many others.14

Active conservation efforts, including hunting restrictions, conservation law enforcement, predator control, game refuge creation, and deer reintroduction were used to restore endangered or extirpated deer populations. These conservation efforts were initially financed by governments and were later financed in part by deer hunters through state licensing revenues. Deer populations responded by increasing 1-2 orders of magnitude throughout their range over the next 100 years. Even today, the recovery of white-tailed deer is a premier example of successful wildlife recovery and management in the United States.15

Wildlife and hunting measures aided the deer’s recovery.

Initially, deer hunters and state wildlife agencies were partners in this recovery. Hunters provided funding and political will, while the state provided increasing numbers of deer. Over time, deer populations grew to the delight of both hunters and state wildlife agencies15; however, new stakeholders emerged: 

• Animal rights groups objected to sport hunting. 
• Farmers wanted more control over the deer on their properties that were eating their crops. 
• Park managers wanted more say in the numbers of deer on the lands they managed. 
• Public health officials expressed concern about the relationship between deer abundance, tick-borne diseases, and human health.16

Such disparate views confounded wildlife managers. Serving the public became a lot harder when there were multiple competing interests.17

Recreational hunting is a major way to keep deer numbers down.

Historically, deer densities varied from 2-6 animals per square kilometer (km-2).18 Today, white-tailed deer inhabit a range of natural, semi-natural, and anthropogenic environments, and they can reach densities in excess of 40 km-2, in the absence of hunting or predation.19 Even where deer are managed through sport hunting, populations typically exceed 10 km-2, even though negative impacts to vegetation and fauna become apparent at lower densities.20 Recreational hunting remains the primary mechanism that limits white-tailed deer throughout most of their range.21 This leads us to an obvious question: why are deer densities increasing? There are several reasons:

Nature’s deer predators have disappeared.

• Absence of predators.22 Historically, wolves and cougars preyed on deer year-round. Wolves and cougars are now absent from most of the eastern United States. Other predators of deer—black bears (Ursus americanus) and coyotes (Canis latrans)—typically prey on fawns but not adult animals. Additionally, unlike wolves and cougars, deer are not their primary prey item. 
• Declining numbers of hunters.21 The number of hunters in the United States has been declining since the 1970s. Fewer hunters in the woods during deer season will translate into larger deer populations over time.
• Expansion of “no hunting” zones.21 Where deer hunting is prohibited, deer populations can grow and spread to surrounding areas. Parks, open green space, small towns, and in many cases, suburban developments are de facto deer sanctuaries. In rural areas, private landowners that once welcomed deer hunters are increasingly turning them away, due in part to legal liability concerns.

Vegetation grown by humans is gourmet food for deer.

• Habitat changes. The agricultural fields and pastures, orchards, fertilized and well-watered suburban landscapes, as well as parks provide a greater abundance of high quality food for the deer than the eastern deciduous forest they replaced. Greater habitat productivity leads to greater numbers of deer.23

These factors combined create conditions favorable for the maintenance of high deer densities for the near future.