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!

Going far, far away...

India.

That's right.

I'm going there.

But not to hunt fossils as most people assume.

I'm going purely as a tourist and I'm going to pose with Tom in front of the Taj Mahal, clutching a selfie stick, and I'm proud to do it!  I've always taken issue with tourists who scoff at other tourists in foreign countries, believing in some mysterious algorithm

 that somehow sets them above everyone else.  

I'm a tourist, plain and obvious.

But don't think I won't be looking at the building blocks of ancient temples and monuments,

looking for a fossil photo opp.

Hopefully I'll have some interesting fossil news from India and if not, 

you'll just have to look at more of my GD coral.

I pulled this photo from a recent issue of 

National Geographic.

A millennial with a very cool tattoo showcasing some extinct mammals.

I posted a query on my fossil club's FB page asking if anyone else had a fossil oriented tattoo and got a big goose egg in response, so if you have or know anyone who has said type of tattoo, please share it with me in the comment section.  I'd love to see it!

Even though Tom and I are set to fly 

to the far side of the planet,

we are already planning our June trip out west with the usual suspects 

and I cannot wait!!!

With great patience, I chipped away at the cast enclosing my Blue Forest "log" 

from our last trip and found a perfectly preserved branch inside.

The picture doesn't do it justice. 

I came to a stopping point on the cleanup of my Blue Forest tree stump.

Here's a recap of the photo right after I found it:

and here are some photos after chiseling and Dremel-ing it, slabbing the ends, and having Tom put a mirror polish on the cut ends:

He has been encouraging me to slice it in half lengthwise and after practicing on several smaller pieces, I'm finally convinced.  A lengthwise cut will expose a broad swath of the wood grain,  blue-hued chalcedony, and golden calcite, and with his amazing polishing skills, Tom will make it shine.

Photos to come!

In the meantime, he has been turning out 

some beautifully polished smaller pieces of the wood that we found:

Yes, that's really a piece of fossilized wood!

I tumbled some of the smaller fragments and they have an appealing look as well:

Is it any wonder we're so anxious to return and throw our backs out again?!

Tommy's first tooth

It's the end of an era,

and I don't mean that in a geologic sense.

Florida's Mosaic Phosphate Company, the world's leading producer of concentrated phosphate,

is shutting its doors to amateur fossil hunters.

Mosaic has, for some years, granted an annual field trip to local fossil clubs.

(Fossil Club of Lee County members at Mosaic)

A spot on the field trip roster, usually limited to 30 club members, has been a hot ticket item since I joined the Fossil Club of Lee County 4 years ago and I've always been grateful for the opportunity to go.  That being said, as with any fossil hunting expedition, there's no promise of a slam dunk.  I've found my 2 best megalodon teeth in a Mosaic pit but I've also gone and pretty much been shut out.

October 15, 2016, marked our club's last trip to Mosaic and this time, my boyfriend, Tom, was going.  He is new to the hobby and more than anything, I wanted him to find his first megalodon tooth.

I often experience a type of visual confusion

when I begin to search a new area: jumbles of rocks; everything looks the same.

It can take a while for the occipital lobe to kick in and distinguish between "leaverite" and "OMG!"

I immediately ran off on my own, as I am wont to do, leaving Tom to his own devices, and since he has a very sharp eye for this sort of thing, I knew he'd do well.

My method has always been to climb around in steep areas

where it is hard for other people to search.

I was scanning along the top of a gravel ridge that formed a steep 6" drop down to an evaporation pond when my occipital pinged and made me do a double, triple, quadruple take.

There was a beautiful mako at the very edge of the water but how to get to it?

One of the first instructions the mine staff gave us was, "Don't go into the pond."

The mako wasn't actually in the pond but there wasn't an easy way to get down to it without risking a face-first tumble into the water.

Dilemma...

I hate being the wayward child and possibly making our group look bad, but then again,

this was our last visit and time waits for no man!

I skidded down the bank and managed to come to a stop on a tiny ledge of dry land, within reach of my beautiful new 2.25" mako.

But wait! There's more!

Tom was busy collecting not one, but 4 good quality megs.

Between the two of us, we found dozens of megs (none perfect, most broken, but a few decent),

(some of the better finds)

several rough horse teeth,

lots of fossilized wood chunks, and an awesome 2" long

double dermal denticle (say it 3x fast) from a stingray.

In the past, I would have offered up most of what I found to the kids' dig at Fossil Fest

but since this is the end of an era, I'm keeping everything from my last Mosaic hunt in its own bin

and will be forever grateful that I got to participate in such a unique experience.

Hide...

...and seek.

Dinosaurs: the Glamour Fossils, Part 2

It's hard to dig for dinosaurs.

Here's what I learned:

*Dinosaurs died in places that are now

FREAKING HOT!!!

(duck-billed hadrosaur teeth)

Our dig site was located in the Lance Creek formation,

a division of late Cretaceous (69-66 ma),

in Weston County, Wy, known for being short on people and shade.

YES, I drank plenty of water!

And wore a hat and lots of sunscreen 

and I still ended up imagining my brain was boiling in my skull.

*There's a lot of money involved in dinosaur bones.

This means the process of digging for them is 

INCREDIBLY SLOW!!!

That little divot in the dirt behind me is a full day's digging.

Consequently, much of the work can be done Roman style: in a reclining position.

Shelly demonstrates.

I feel the Mixed Nuts container is somehow apropos in conjunction with this hobby.

(triceratops tail vertebra)

*You really gotta want it.

Gary moved his life from his home state of Montana to South Dakota

 in order to be closer to good dinosaur hunting grounds.

(local pride)

*Every bone counts.

(tiny fish teeth and possible raptor tooth)

After we finished with our ham-fisted fossil digging, 

Gary said he would go back through our discard pile and carefully screen

 for all the little flakes and fragments we missed.  

(small alligator teeth)

I was very selective about what I kept.  Most of the bone fragments didn't look like much but I found a triceratops vertebra, a hadrosaur vertebra, and some nice chunks of triceratops frill.  I also kept all the teeth since enamel wears beautifully, even after 60 million years or so.

(triceratops teeth)

*Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in awhile.

It took two days of micro-digging in the scalding Wyoming sun

but I actually found a T-rex tooth.  

At 1.25" long, it's not the biggest T-rex tooth

but to me, 

it is the ultimate in dinosaur glamour.

Dinosaur digging: checked off my Life List. :-)

Dinosaurs: the Glamour Fossil, Part 1

It was time to dig for dinosaurs.

I didn't just wake up one morning thinking this, though.

I had begun a correspondence with a woman, Shelly, who purchased some of my fossil coral on eBay and she invited me to meet up with her in eastern Wyoming to dig for dinosaur bones.

It was not cheap.

By the time I factored in air fare, rental car, dig fees, and a room in a run down motel,

I was in deep.

So I viewed it as a once in a lifetime opportunity; a chance to explore

another venue of my fossil fascination.

I had a brief layover in Denver

on my way to Rapid City, South Dakota 

(the closest airport to my destination of Newcastle, WY)

and was surprised to see well-worn brass dinosaurs worked into the terrazzo floors of the restroom.

I believe this is a mosasaur. 

There's a first time for everything:

I was stopped by security after passing through the X-ray vision booth

because they needed to confer as to whether or not my megalodon necklace could be considered a weapon.  I'm sure it was a weapon when it was still in the mouth of the megalodon, but nowadays, megalodon related violence is at an all-time low.

Welcome to South Dakota!

Liquor and a casino.  Just add guns and we've got a party!

But I jest.

I stopped in for a bottle of gin and a lottery ticket.  

Only a couple more hours in a rental car

and I'd be smack dab in the middle of nowhere.

Exactly where I wanted to be.

After lots of emails, I finally got to meet

Shelly, and our fearless leader, Gary:

Love this guy's t-shirt collection!

Now that all the pieces to the expensive puzzle were in place,

all I had to do was dig.

That's when I learned a thing or two about digging for glamour fossils.

To be continued...

NOW it rains?!

It's been a very dry summer.

Oh yes, it's been hot, too, 
and just as I started to dream of lower temps in the not-too-distant future and a chance to get back into the Peace River,
it started to rain!
A good time to get out of town. 

Tom and I flew up to Kansas City, Missouri to visit family and friends and hard as it sounds to believe, we DIDN'T have time to look for fossils.

Whaaat?!

Well, there was a lot of BBQ to eat.  

Tom found some bones,

but they weren't fossilized...YET.

We had one opportunity

to pull to the side of a busy interstate and check out a creek bed.

Interesting chunks of shale but we had no tools to split them.

We found a varied mix of naturally occurring gravels and broken down building materials (bricks, tiles, granite, etc.) as well as a lot of multi-colored glass abraded almost to the point of looking like beach glass.

A few fossils could be found in small pieces of limestone.

Beat up crinoids and shells.

The large rocks used for retaining the banks of the creek

contained beautiful bands of crystalized brachiopods.

Tom thinks this rock is Alabama limerock rip rap, commonly used by the DOT and municipalities.

In case you're wondering about the term "rip rap", here's a handy definition:

Rip rap is rock or other material used to armor shorelines, streambeds, bridge abutments, pilings and other shoreline structures against scour, water or ice erosion. It is made from a variety of rock types, commonly granite, limestone or occasionally concrete rubble from building and paving demolition.

I only found one treasure in that creek bed.

A brick with worn white glaze on one side and the enigmatic lettering,

"AMERICAN EN.B.&T.CO.N.Y."

A Google search revealed this to be a brick from the American Enameled Brick and Tile Company of New York, operating from 1893-1934.

This is what's called a trace fossil,

and like dinosaur footprints,

 it contains no remnants of the animals that made it, 

only a lasting reminder of their past presence.