I said I was gonna do it...

I said I was gonna scoop up a bucket of sand

to sift through for tiny fossils.

Someone remind me why I thought this was a good idea!

   I've got the fever and the cure is fossils (not cowbell) but now I know, the cure is normal size fossils.  I went back to Apollo Beach with two 5-gallon buckets (holes in the bottom to let water drain out) and braved a heat index of 106〫F  to collect the sand/shell/fossil mix and take it home.  Better to sift through it for fossils in the AC.  I had also promised a family member who teaches geology in Michigan that I would send her a box of sand as a class project for her students.

     It didn't take long to realize that I wouldn't even be able to lift 5 gallons of sand so I ended up making 2 trips from the truck to the beach and back, collecting a TOTAL of approximately 4 gallons of sand.  Never has the truck looked so far away as it did when I started back with that second bucket.  I was mentally comparing Apollo Beach with Wauchula which had a listed heat index of 113〫F; another good reason fossil season doesn't kick up again until the fall.

I really thought I had enough sand to fill this box to the brim.

    Half of the sand barely filled the flat rate postage box halfway and after it dried out, it only weighed about half what it did (or so it seemed), but I can't wait to find out what young people with young eyes and good microscopes will discover in it.

     My half of the sand yielded 3 more fabulous tiny teeth.

Very cool!  Very small!

Front

Chewing surface and back

Front

Chewing surface and back

I can barely even pick these things up!

I need to dig out the old jeweler's loupe and tweezers I have buried around here somewhere.

Among other things...

I discovered my new favorite shirt

during a summer of activities on Florida's west coast.

Lightweight, SPF 50, quick dry, and check out the mesh inserts along the inside of the arms and down the sides: breezy and cool!  The company is Breath Like a Fish and the shirts run about $40.  I have to save up for a second shirt because digging for fossils is going to wreck this one.

I mailed another SolOpsArt at Etsy.com fossil necklace

to its new home in Pennsylvania

...marking off the days until fall...

         

Mission Apollo

The message on this coffee cup

really encapsulates how I'm feeling at the end of July...

(and not in a cute, sexy way)

     Yes, yes, this Florida summer is just as it should be:  blisteringly hot and punctuated by outbursts of dangerous lightening.  I was reading a post on The Fossil Forum and the originator of the thread invited everyone down to south Florida to dig on land sites with him.  I was tempted...but only for a second.  I imagined myself laid out on the sand like a piece of raw meat in a frying pan, trying to remember, through a haze of heat stroke, exactly what I was supposed to be looking for.

Pass!

     Yet, when I found myself on the Tampa side of the state this weekend, I blew past my Orlando exit and continued down I-75 to Apollo Beach.

I needed some fossils in a bad way!

     A couple of years ago I spent a summer scouring Apollo Beach while I waited for the waters of the Peace River to recede.  Apollo Beach is an ugly, bizarre place but the small strip of easily accessible sand yields some great little fossils, "little" being the operative word.  I've made no secret of my disdain for 1/4" screen when I'm digging in the Peace River; the tiny stuff frustrates me and my search for that big perfect meg (that I still haven't found!).  However, after my recent visit to Apollo Beach, I'm rethinking my feelings about "micro" fossils.

     Look at this tiny incisor; smaller that a squirrel, bigger than a mouse.  Maybe a Pleistocene rat?  It has beautiful sheen and color and I can't wait to buy a magnifying glass so I can actually see it.

And I believe this is the smallest alligator osteoderm ever.

     I'm currently reading Florida's Geological Treasures by Iris Tracy Comfort and she writes, "Because of the ample supply and...ease of collecting and storing, many collectors have...begun to specialize in microscopic material."

     I'm not ready to commit to a microscopic fossil collection (sounds like a migraine in the making) but I can now see the allure of the tiny fossil.  Next time I'm in the area, I'm going to scoop some of the beach "slurry" into a bucket and take it home for closer inspection.

Armadillo scutes, Apollo Beach, Florida

Take stock

It's summer.

That about sums it up.

     Considering the ferocity of the daily thunderstorms we've been having in the Orlando area, I'm surprised that the Peace River gage isn't reading higher, but it's still 3 feet higher than a depth I can dig in.  And, of course, it's wicked hot.  It was around this time last year that I spent a day in Jacksonville avoiding snakes on Quarantine Island and rabid locals on Ponte Vedra Beach.  I'm thinking JAX again but someplace different...

     I've pursued a couple of Jacksonville-based members on The Fossil Forum and one responded with a few coordinates of known fossil locations so I'm going to line up a weekend in August to explore.

     I also remembered that my brother's first wife is a geologist and she used to hunt the Kansas road cuts for cool fossil specimens.  Google brought her up on the first try and I contacted her for the first time in many years.  She is still the same intelligent, kind person I remembered, and she's still a geologist.  Hopefully, I will be able to tag along on one of her student fossil hunts in Kansas sometime soon and she also told me how much she enjoys visits to the Wyoming quarries.  As usual, all I need is money!  It's nice to dream about, though.

     I did some arranging of my fossil cabinet and peaked into the box of Apollo Beach finds for the first time in 2 years.

I forgot I found these awesome little armadillo scutes.

I need to pull everything out of that box and take stock.

     I finally made it down to a fossil club meeting in Ft. Myers and bought 4 more riker boxes with the goal of laying out all the shark teeth that I have deemed to be particularly beautiful.

These are the best of my best.

     I ran out of riker boxes before I got to the lemon shark teeth and I keep megs and makos in my little curio cabinet but it's wonderful to be able to store these gems in a way that makes them so visually accessible.

     If only I didn't have to work!

I need time to explore the rivers to the north and west of me, too.

I need to dig!!!

Close of the regular season

Rain

     All season long I've been keeping tabs on the water level in the Peace River by checking the online gage.  

The message is clear.

The river don't want me no more.

     My last 2 visits were fairly typical for this season:  no fireworks, just basic fossils.  I first went to the area I had been working for over a month of Fridays...

...and found another satisfyingly big chunk of mammoth tooth as well as some impressive dugong/manatee ribs.  Those rib bones add up as they are fairly common in the Peace River.

I started lining my deck railing with them.

I also found another handful of mixed horse teeth and a porpoise tooth.

     The top 2 are "modern" equus, meaning Pleistocene epoch horses before they became extinct in the Americas.  It wasn't until the Spanish started riding roughshod over the new world that horses were reintroduced to our continents.  The bottom 3 "horse" teeth are from ancestors of equus that I had gotten into the habit of calling "3-toed horse", an ancestor of equus, but then I read a lengthy discussion on The Fossil Forum and learned that the modern horse had MANY ancestors and not all of them were 3-toed and even a modern horse can be born with a vestigial toe or two.

     

I studied this chart for about 5 minutes before deciding, in the future, to just say "pre-equus."

     I'm back to thinking I'm done with that location.  I found some great stuff but for the work put into it, I could have been prospecting and potentially found some fabulous stuff.

Case in point:

I made a 5 hour pilgrimage to the fossil club meeting and saw the fruits of another hunter's labors.

I definitely put in the effort but, as I'm often reminded, some of it is luck, too.

     His booty from this location includes a mastodon tooth (on the table in front of the large vertebra), several beautiful 3+" megalodon teeth, and several big makos.  I have yet to find even ONE tooth anywhere near this quality (wiping tears from my cheeks) but I must look on the bright side and acknowledge that this means there's more out there so I will continue my search!

     Meanwhile, back in my sad world...

     I made what could be my last trip to the river this season.  The water was high so I went to an area that is normally dry land and well dug.  A couple of nice gator teeth and...

      ...a couple of nice hemis (with the end of a shotgun shell for scale), but not much else.

My biggest find of the day seemed to sum it all up:

Better luck next season!

     The summer is a good time to regroup: catch up on household projects, create some fossil jewelry for my first fossil show as a vendor, get my back and my mind right with some yoga (can you say, "Ommmm...."?),  and head up to Jacksonville again for some lighthearted shark tooth hunting.

I'll keep you in the loop. :-)

Redneck nation

     The remnants of Memorial Day celebrating were truly disheartening:

This photo doesn't even begin to show all the garbage strewn around the boat ramp.

On the back of the sign that instructs, "Pack in, pack out," a few self-described rednecks took the time to admonish the litter bugs:

Seems like a waste of a good Sharpie, to me.

I guess I'll take a trash bag and some thick rubber gloves with me next time

 and try to pick some of it up.

Bummer.

Because without all the trash, the Peace River looks like this:

Nice...

     The afternoon thunderstorms have started but not heavily enough to raise the river level yet so we keep digging, but this late in the season, I'm not 100% upset to hear that first rumble of thunder that signals an early end to the day.  My back hurts!  Wahhhh!

     I keep digging in the same area but no one else really wants to dig there anymore because it's all or nothing.  There just aren't any small shark teeth there and not many fossils.

     But still...

Chunks of tan-colored mammoth enamel...

A couple of intriguing megalodon teeth...

Very good horse and bison teeth...

And check out this freshwater turtle scute with gnaw marks from a Pleistocene rat.  I can just picture the rodent holding it like a cookie and nibbling all around the edges.

I sent a photo of my finds for the day to Jack, along with a note saying I was done digging in that spot.

I got a hearty "LOL" in reply.

     "A day like that and you're not going back?  You must have digging spots to burn."

Point taken.

     But if you get there before me and you have one of those long-handled grabber things, could you hang it from the sign for me?  I'll pick up some trash but I want to save my back for digging!

Necklace made with mammoth tooth fragment and a mix of wood, agate, and tiger eye beads.

Visit my Etsy store, SolOpsArt, to check out my fossil jewelry!

My Coozie Runneth Over

Memorial Day weekend emboldened me

to spend 2 days on the river.

In reality, I should've done the opposite.

     Friday's digging, with Pam and Jack was wonderful:  warm and breezy and not a soul passed us all day long.

     But the vibe changed drastically on Saturday

Don't get me wrong, everyone was very happy and friendly...

But how many times can I answer the question, "Have you found anything?"...

(My new reply is, "I found a skull but it still had a lot of skin on it so I threw it back.")

...or laugh good naturedly when people say my trolling motor is "cheating!"?

Apparently, I can answer those questions hundreds of times.

Hindsight is 20/20 because I should've accepted all the beers that were offered to me, then cruised up and down the river that evening, selling them back.  I never think of these things until it's too late!

All in all, it was a good weekend.

The friendliest campground in central Florida, Highland Hammocks in Sebring, 

had a tent space for me.

Saturday morning I treated myself to a town meal for breakfast.  The Pioneer Restaurant was everything I'd hoped it would be: run-down, homey, table of old men regulars in the corner, and a cheap tasty plate of eggs.

Friday's digging was great!

I found a jaw fragment from a giant ground sloth.  How cool is that?!

Here's a pic from a reference book showing the unique S-shape of the tooth that would've fit into this socket:

I found my first ever manatee tooth.  Excited!

Some big pieces of manatee/dugong rib.

These are so abundant, most people throw them back but when I find big chunks, like these, I bring them home.

Best gator tooth yet!

And a good selection of other fossils including 2 horse teeth and a very good meg.

     Then it was Saturday...

     Day 2 saw significantly reduced enthusiasm for the exhausting digging needed to find a single good fossil in this location.

     After 4 half-hearted hours of dredging heavy chunks of clay like this:

...I decided to pack it in.

     I still have the monster 40lb battery for my new lightweight trolling motor and I found it rides better if I put it up front with me.  The benefit of this arrangement is it makes a very nice footrest for the relaxed cruise back to the boat ramp.

     When I looked at my "haul" for the 4 hours of poking around on Saturday, I am torn about whether to return to this spot or not.

     It's not a lot but it's not "nothing" either.  Jack told me, at the beginning of this season, "I don't stop going back until I find nothing."  

     Maybe after a few more good nights' rest and some yoga to unkink my back, I'll be able to wrap my mind around 6 more hours of dredging clay...maybe!