Week of the Fossils

[Latimeria]

Long story short... I goofed and took the third week of November off for Thanksgiving...this was back in April.  Now a month ago, I realized the error of my ways and it was too late since I was the only one scheduled now to work the holiday week.
No sweat... time to hurt my back this week since it is now all freed up. I spent Sunday night pulling hoops and had plans to trilobite hunt on Wednesday and dig for megalodons on Friday with my buddy Todd.  This required a lot of planning, driving and splitting rock for the week, but it was well worth it.

Desert Bug Hunt (11/20)

Got to the end of the wash and realized it was going to be a little warmer than we anticipated.  We grabbed our gear and made the hike into the hills.
It's much further and steeper than the picture looks like, but we were ready for some shale splitting.

The Desert Sea Urchin was very abundant.


Can you see the truck?


Can you see me?   :lol:


The pick was tough, but we both made a nice little quarry to hunt and free these 550 million year old bugs.


I drew first blood.


Todd followed with a few finds...


The buckets were slowly filling.


I found the "almost" complete one that drove the dagger into my competition.


I found some nice big Cephalons from 4-5 species also.


We returned victorious.  Not stellar finds, but pretty nice material.



The sun was setting and we needed to get out from the hills asap before we got stuck out there.


The bounty was cleaned and it looks like 4 or five species.  Definitely Bristolia and Olenellus, but I have to look closer at the others.








I brought home a decent amount of material and left 10x the amount back in the tailings.  My back was broken after a long day of splitting shale, not to mention it was going to be 8.5 hours of driving total today!   :lol:

Miocene Motherland (11/22)

We used to have access to a friend's property to fossil hunt whenever we wanted to 10 years ago, but after his passing our access got limited to almost nothing. 

Finally an opportunity arose to get back to the bone yard and work our magic to uncover a megalodon tooth. the only issue was that it was raining and due to the clay roads, would have a headache trying to drive on the roads. 
Once again, another long ass trip in front of us...




This meant the "Motherlode" quarry was out of question, but we went to the closest and most picked over one.


We scoured the landscape before moving in with the heavy guns.  lots of bone and teeth littered around the area.


We also had a few friends keep us company as we dug.


Lots of stuff to dig and find.

Mako Tooth.


Whale Vertebrae.


It was getting towards the end of the day and we picked up hundreds of teeth between the three of us along with a grip of rib, vertebrae, femure, Bullae etc.
We tried to get the last killer tooth before the sun went down.


When I finally got home, I realized how much material I have to clean and categorize now!  This picture just doesn't do it justice.


Huge busted vertebrae locked in a concretion.  The other side is pretty killer also.


Cleaned a few of the matrix covered blocks and left them out to dry.


Cleaning station with 2 sizes of screens to capture all of the micro fossils.


Porpoise teeth.


Dolphin tooth and Sea Lion cheek teeth.


Mako with Matrix.


Some of my nicer teeth, although my friends got some really nice ones!  Much bigger!


Fish Vert


I also got a few Sea Lion canines, but this one was in the best shape. (That is rib bone and not the root messed up)


I also sifted a buch of matrix and brought back home with me for wid-week hunting in the garage.  :wink:


Sifting through the waste matrix is easy with 2 screens and water. Can you spot the teeth?







Lots of micro fossils in here!

Alas, the week is over and my back is wrecked.  It's not getting easier, but the drive to hunt definitely outweighs my sense of pain apparently.  :lol:

I'll post any pics of cool stuff I find as I sort through it.  Including micro teeth, it will be about 500 all said and done.

thanks for reading and sharing in the adventures of the week.   

[sasquatch]

 I like the cactus, the beer and the end product, but the rest of that looks like way too much work.

[Latimeria]

I like the cactus, the beer and the end product, but the rest of that looks like way too much work.

It actually is too much work, but worth it boss.  We'll stick with fishing. 

[WheresMyBeer]

This is really cool Tom. You gotta meet my pops sometime.

[Latimeria]

You gotta meet my pops sometime.

I'm sure you've told me before, but is he a Rock Hound?  I seem to kind of remember you saying that.

[MASSfisher]

So that's how you got those shark teeth. Pretty awesome! I've always been really interested in anthropology but don't get how those guys can excavate a site the way they do. This seem like a ton of work too but looks very rewarding. Congrats on some good finds!