The Pain of Lost Silver... (6/2)

[Latimeria]

Well, after losing a huge silver, I needed redemption and took a 15-minute drive to find the other thing that gives me joy... fossil hunting.  lol

Mission Accomplished.  Picking the bluffs for 2 hours gave me about 50 fossils including a vertebra I need to ID.   The crabs today were spectacular.











I also found this vert that almost seemed out of place, but it does have some matrix adhered to it.  I'm on the fence about this one though on actually being a fossil, or just an ancient coyote vert.  I'm still researching this one.



Anyway, it was a fun morning considering.  Plan was to head offshore with my buddy, but marine weather and small sizes of the tuna didn't warrant a $500 gas bill.  lol

[jrodda]

How old do you suppose the crabs are, or the vertebra? Those crabs look, dare I say, fresh, with that coloration and detail. Cool finds.

[Latimeria]

This is the first vert I found here, so need to make sure it's a fossil.  I'm suspecting it's an old artifact (hundreds of years old vs thousands/millions).  It doesn't fit into the other fossils of the area.

As for the crabs, I've worked on ID'ing these with some museum people before.  It's an issue, because all of the supporting evidence I gave is well received by them that it's Pliocene in age (5.3 million to 2.6 million years ago).  Only issue they have is none of the other Pliocene sites in San Diego has these crab fossils, but they do have similar ones from the Eocene of San Diego which is 56 to 33.9 million years ago.  Big difference, but since this is a fill site and not actually a deposit site, it's not worth their effort.

They are cool as hell though, but not easy to prep.  It's a lot of work getting that hard ass matrix off the crab.

[vdisney]

Very cool indeed

[Ethansauce_]

This is the first vert I found here, so need to make sure it's a fossil.  I'm suspecting it's an old artifact (hundreds of years old vs thousands/millions).  It doesn't fit into the other fossils of the area.

As for the crabs, I've worked on ID'ing these with some museum people before.  It's an issue, because all of the supporting evidence I gave is well received by them that it's Pliocene in age (5.3 million to 2.6 million years ago).  Only issue they have is none of the other Pliocene sites in San Diego has these crab fossils, but they do have similar ones from the Eocene of San Diego which is 56 to 33.9 million years ago.  Big difference, but since this is a fill site and not actually a deposit site, it's not worth their effort.

They are cool as hell though, but not easy to prep.  It's a lot of work getting that hard ass matrix off the crab.

Since I've been back in school, I declared geology as my major, but we have a whole paleo-bio lab I have access to. It would be pretty cool to take one back to Minnesota and I can put it on an XRF machine and try to give you a proper date!

[Latimeria]

This is the first vert I found here, so need to make sure it's a fossil.  I'm suspecting it's an old artifact (hundreds of years old vs thousands/millions).  It doesn't fit into the other fossils of the area.

As for the crabs, I've worked on ID'ing these with some museum people before.  It's an issue, because all of the supporting evidence I gave is well received by them that it's Pliocene in age (5.3 million to 2.6 million years ago).  Only issue they have is none of the other Pliocene sites in San Diego has these crab fossils, but they do have similar ones from the Eocene of San Diego which is 56 to 33.9 million years ago.  Big difference, but since this is a fill site and not actually a deposit site, it's not worth their effort.

They are cool as hell though, but not easy to prep.  It's a lot of work getting that hard ass matrix off the crab.

Since I've been back in school, I declared geology as my major, but we have a whole paleo-bio lab I have access to. It would be pretty cool to take one back to Minnesota and I can put it on an XRF machine and try to give you a proper date!

PM me your address and I'll send you one to test and one for yourself.