It's over!
I probably write that at about this same time every year when the water level of the Peace River gets too high for digging.
Luckily we worked in a final 3 day camping trip before the rains started, and dug our little hearts out.
I brought along a kayaking friend, Kitty, and although she is no stranger to hunting for fossils, nor kayak camping, the whole digging in the river deal was new to her.
She did a lot of digging but also took advantage of the peace and quiet of the area.
She looks like she's reading but she's not.
She's asleep.
But before the nap, she managed to find this really cool fish jaw:
Before I get into the fossils, here's one of my more interesting and unsettling finds:
A straight razor that is still incredibly sharp. Yucky thoughts of accidentally stepping on this the wrong way. The name "Cheminova" is imprinted on one side and all I could find on Google was an Indian agricultural chemical company which kind of makes sense for the area.
All that being said, watch your step out there!
And now for the fossils!
I found some more glyptodont scutes including a thick double section:
A nice pre-equus tooth (I think):
I found several equus teeth which made Kitty comment that a horse must have died in that spot.
Pam and I tried to explain how to know when things were and weren't "associated".
Here's a handful of little goodies:
Some gator teeth:
Small bison tooth:
Interesting crystalized marine items including sea urchin spines, coral, and a shell:
Antler:
Turtle:
Broken fish mouth plate, barracuda tooth, and twig/root:
(I know I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel here but I told you I didn't have a great season)
Mammoth and mastodon enamel:
And some shark teeth, always nice to find:
We made a new friend in camp:
and tried a new recipe that we will continue to perfect:
(That's butterscotch, chocolate, and marshmallow fluff on a banana)
Goodbye, dear camp! I hope to see you again next year!
I wanted to throw in a photo of a new t-shirt I bought:
Here's some additional information from Wikipedia regarding the Bone Valley area of Florida which contains the Peace River.
Large walking
draglines, operating twenty-four hours a day in surface mines, excavate raw pebble phosphate mixed with clay and sand (known as
matrix). The matrix contains a number of chemical impurities, including naturally occurring
uranium at concentrations of approximately 100
ppm. Because this
phosphogypsum is slightly radioactive, its use is banned in most situations.
[1]
The matrix is then dropped into a pit where it is mixed with water to create a
slurry, which is then pumped through miles of large steel pipes to washing plants. These plants crush, sift, and separate the phosphate from the sand, clay, and other materials, and mix in more water to create a granular rock termed
wetrock. The wetrock, which is typically of little use in raw form, is then moved largely by
rail to fertilizer plants where it is processed. The final products include, but are not limited to,
diammonium phosphate (DAP),
monoammonium phosphate (MAP) and
trisodium phosphate (TSP).
Waste byproducts are stored in large
phosphogypsum stacks and settling ponds, often hundreds of acres in size, and up to 200 feet (60.96 m) tall.
Phosphate processing produces significant amounts of
fluorine gas, which must be treated by filtering through special scrubbers.
Much of the final product (known within the industry as 'dryrock') is transported by rail to facilities along
Tampa Bay, where they are transloaded onto ships destined for countries such as
China.
Phosphate is a declining export to China. Previously, significant amounts of rock were shipped to China, where it was processed into phosphate fertilizer. The majority of phosphate mining in Florida is done in the
Peace River watershed. Phosphate mining companies use draglines to remove surface soils up to 60 feet (18.29 m) deep over thousands of contiguous acres. Once land is mined, state law requires that it be reclaimed. Wetlands are reclaimed on an acre for acre, type for type basis. Most modern mining permits actually require companies to recreate more wetlands than were initially present on the land. More than 180,000 acres (728 km
2) have already been mined and reclaimed in the Peace River watershed. As reserves in the northern portion of the bone valley are depleting, mining companies are now seeking permits for another 100,000 acres (405 km
2), which will replace reclaimed mines to the north.
One byproduct of the extraction process is
clay, which is stored in settling ponds and eventually comprises 30%-40% of a mine site. Some of these ponds can measure thousands of acres. Rain drains slower through these clay-laden ponds than typical soil. Critics argue that this, in turn, reduces baseflow to the Peace River. Some studies have indicated that reclaimed lands actually provide a more consistent baseflow because the sandier soils of the reclaimed land provide faster baseflow, while the clay provides a slower steady flow, creating more flow during dry periods than native land. Since the 1960s, the average annual flow of the middle Peace River has declined from 1,350 cubic feet (38.23 m
3) to 800 cubic feet (22.65 m
3) per second (38.23 to 22.65 m³/s). Critics argue that this flow reduction is due to phosphate mining, but studies by the Southwest Florida Water Management District have shown that the reduction in flow is due to multidecadal oscillation in Atlantic Ocean temperatures.
Critics argue that each holding pond has been perceived as a risk that threatens water quality, public health, wildlife, and the regional economy.
Dams restraining the ponds have overflowed or burst, sending a slurry of clay into the river, and coating the riverbed for many miles with a toxic clay slime that suffocates
flora and
fauna. One such incident in 1971 killed over three million fish when 2 million US gallons (7,600 m
3) of phosphate waste swept into the river, causing an estimated 5-foot-tall (1.5 m) tide of slime that spread into adjacent pastures and wetlands. Since the 1971 spill, clay settling areas are now constructed as engineered dams. No such spills have occurred from any settling areas built to these standards. The current dams withstood three hurricanes which crossed the Bone Valley in 2004.
In 2004, during
Hurricane Frances, a phosphogypsum stack was overwhelmed by hurricane rains and the levees were breached, sending over 18,000 US gal (68,137 L) of acidic process water into
Tampa Bay. Cargill Crop Nutrition, who owned the stack, added
lime into the affected areas in an attempt to neutralize the highly-acidic runoff. Due to the extraordinary amount of runoff created by the hurricane, the spill was quickly diluted and environmental damage was minimal. In a consent agreement with the Department of Environmental Protection, Cargill greatly increased its water treatment capacity at the facility. The facility is a no discharge facility and was overwhelmed by the above normal rainfall in 2004, in addition to being affected by three hurricanes.
On occasion, clay slime spills have prevented the
Peace River Manasota Water Supply Authority from using river flows for drinking water, forcing municipalities to seek water supplies elsewhere, or rely on stored supplies. On several occasions, the effects of heavy rainfall have created
sinkholes beneath the settling ponds.
Most recently, in August 2016, a sinkhole opened up under a gypsum stack at the Mosaic’s New Wales fertilizer plant in Mulberry, Florida. 215 million gallons of containment water dumped into the Florida Aquifer.
[3]
