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Outdoor Activities => Outdoor Activities => : Latimeria December 03, 2014, 09:34:04 PM
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Last week, my buddy got back from a 3 day digging adventure up north and brought me back (3) 5 gallon buckets of dirt he directly dug out of the bone bed layer.
3 buckets of dirt don't seem like much, but this layer is a treasure trove for micro fossils if you could put the time in sifting through the fine dusty silt stone matrix.
I picked some obvious mako teeth to 1.5" as well as cetacean bone. I also found a sweet dolphin vertebrae in the mix, but it was time for sifting.
I started by bungeeing a small mesh screen on a bucket.
(http://i745.photobucket.com/albums/xx93/Latimeria2/Another%20Album%202011/May042012027.jpg)
Followed by a larger screen sifter. There are tons of angel shark and basking shark teeth in here and are very small, so I didn't want to lose anything if I could help it.
(http://i745.photobucket.com/albums/xx93/Latimeria2/Another%20Album%202011/May042012028.jpg)
I would put 2 handfuls of Matrix on the screen and fine stream it with water to remove the small particles and expose the treasure. Can you count the fossil teeth I saw just in this picture? Yep, lots of them! (I see 7 just at a quick glance)
(http://i745.photobucket.com/albums/xx93/Latimeria2/Another%20Album%202011/May042012029.jpg)
(http://i745.photobucket.com/albums/xx93/Latimeria2/Another%20Album%202011/May042012029-1.jpg)
It was a lot of work condensing the matrix of 15 gallons of "dirt" into a condensed fossil treasure trove! The coarse stuff is in the bucket and the fine stuff is drying on the right.
(http://i745.photobucket.com/albums/xx93/Latimeria2/Another%20Album%202011/May042012033.jpg)
All cleaned up and the trees got a good deep watering today!
(http://i745.photobucket.com/albums/xx93/Latimeria2/Another%20Album%202011/May042012034.jpg)
Here are a few of the bigger teeth and pieces I found. So far I pulled about 25 teeth out, but by the time I start going through my condensed matrix, I'm sure I'll have a few hundred teeth if not more. I even found partial sea lion and dolphin teeth.
(http://i745.photobucket.com/albums/xx93/Latimeria2/Another%20Album%202011/May042012038.jpg)
This will be fun when I start looking through the matrix and I'll update everyone as I find some cool stuff.
15 gallons of dirt sifted down turned into 1/2 gallon of fossil gold!
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So cool Tom. Love these reports 8) 8)
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Very cool. Thanks for sharing!
Just out of curiosity, were the samples taken from the coast or further inland?
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Very cool. Thanks for sharing!
Just out of curiosity, were the samples taken from the coast or further inland?
Inland about 40 miles.