Peace River 4/13/2024

[Shellseeker]

Out hunting yesterday and just declined an invitation for Tomorrow because my son is visiting and we are likely to hunt both Wednesday and Friday. I just can not take the wear and tear as often anymore.

 

This was a prospecting trip for new locations.  Basically we go to a place we have not been and then "walk" the river until we find gravel and then probe the gravel for depth and fossils. Many times the gravel is only on the surface or too small or does not contain fossils. Then we move on again and again until we find a place that does... or we just have a nice walk in the River in the Sunshine.. 

 

I did not find lots of fossils but did enjoy the ones I found...  At the 2nd spot we had 4 inches of mud, gravel and mussels in equal proportions.  1st sieve had a nice Nuchal osteoderm. Dug for 5-6 sieves,  found a deer tine but nothing else... moved on...

 

We stopped at 2 places with lots of gravel but almost nothing in them.. just a few very small shark teeth , some broken... This was not what I would call super_successful but we were 3 hours into a 5 hour hunt... So we moved downstream.. We always go downstream... it is easier than fighting the current on a long day...

 

We got to an area that had tightly packed gravel and not the normal darkness of Peace River gravel.  Light brown and cream colored gravel on a bed of clay.  MIOCENE !!!  We are about to find small shark teeth with colored blades and tan or cream roots... In the 1st sieve ,  there it was.... Be nice if the tip was complete , but definitely what I am looking for... Feels fantastic.  Not only did we find a spot to come back to (Steve found more that I did, especially small colorful teeth),  the prospecting trip was successful AND we had 2 hours to dig like maniacs and figure out what this spot could produce.

 

Today I spent most of the day cleaning off the table on my side porch that contained the finds of 4-5 previous trips ,  and processing the finds from yesterday.  

Top Layer.. Silicified shells, sponges,  Middle layer,  Bone heavily fossilized and sometimes silicified, Bottom layer Shark teeth,  best finds.  I usually bring out 2-3 times as much but it gets processed out quickly.  For example broken shark teeth go to my hunting partner,  good shark teeth donated to schools and clubs,  best shark teeth go to my daughter... She makes jewelry and collages.

Note the Blue Blades ,, Miocene... just like we get out of the Phosphate Mines.. 

So the notables... From the Pleistocene a turtle Nuchal and a Llama upper molar.. plus a Juvenile Equus Incisor

 

Seems I recall that an Equus Incisor with a shorter length of enamel are deciduous .. maybe /maybe not.. What about that , Jp  ?

 

Botryoidal "grapes" with little sprinkles of Druzy growing inside a silicified oyster...

 

 

 

Then the prizes and why I think spots like this are more "Miocene"  that other sections in the River..

These are quite rare for me...

 

Then a very small Dolphin Tooth !!! Obviously requires some level of salt water. Never identified in Florida with this rugosity of enamel... I would be happy if someone would identify any dolphin of this size with rugose enamel anywhere in the world...  I have no examples.

 

Finally ,  I did not recognize this laying in the sieve...

 

It also changed color  as it dried...

I have never found an Eagle Ray tooth of this size or this perfection Enjoy...

 

[Darktooth]

I loved your report Jack! That turtle piece is a pretty sweet find! It always amazes me, the diversity of finds in the Peace River. I need to get down there again.

[Balance]

Eagle ray… interesting 

[Shellseeker]

5 minutes ago, Balance said:

Eagle ray… interesting 

Agree.. Also, I have never quite understood this color change thing ... It has come up before and we discussed microbes in the fossil dying when exposed to sunlight.  I want to see a scientific paper with experiments and results... and explaining exactly how it happens   and why brown goes to blue... 

 

It is never a happy thing for me..  I like the brown AND the blue.  Just want to change them back and forth at will...

[MuckyBottles]

Idk, i always have better luck of venturing upstream. 🤷‍♂️ Nice prospecting finds.

[MuckyBottles]

34 minutes ago, Darktooth said:

I loved your report Jack! That turtle piece is a pretty sweet find! It always amazes me, the diversity of finds in the Peace River. I need to get down there again.

You'd be surprised on the "other" finds found in the peace..if people only knew

Edited April 14 by MuckyBottles
double wording

[Darktooth]

2 minutes ago, MuckyBottles said:

You'd be surprised on the "other" finds found found the peace..if people only knew

Well it is Florida, you guys are in the news atleast 20 times a day, so I can only imagine the wonders( or horrors!)

[Balance]

I have “electric echinoid” frags. When wet the veins look like white lightning bolts but when they dry it’s blah…. When I find a whole one I’m gonna mount it in some kind of distilled water desk fountain with an under light or something. 

i too have this dislike for drying. Have you noticed stuff shrinks too? Or do they just look bigger in the sieve? I really think the sharks teeth in particular get smaller. 

Now, Eagle rays… 😊

 

Edited April 14 by Balance

[MuckyBottles]

1 minute ago, Darktooth said:

Well it is Florida, you guys are in the news atleast 20 times a day, so I can only imagine the wonders( or horrors!)

I always bring one of my metal detectors on my digging trips, found copius amounts of jewelry and coins, even some very valuable ones..

[MuckyBottles]

The key to the peace river are dead falls and pukas in the limestone, sure..you may find stuff in the random gravel traces..

 

never mind the harmless swamp puppies 🤣

[Coco]

8 hours ago, Shellseeker said:

 

 

 

 

I don't know really what is eagle ray because the vernacular names change according to the regions, so let’s not talk about the names across the Atlantic, but such a tooth in the Miocene belongs to Aetobatis arcuatus in Miocene from France.

 

Coco

 

[Yoda]

@Shellseeker

Fantastic finds as usual - especially that Eagle Ray tooth. 

[Shellseeker]

6 hours ago, Coco said:

I don't know really what is eagle ray because the vernacular names change according to the regions, so let’s not talk about the names across the Atlantic, but such a tooth in the Miocene belongs to Aetobatis arcuatus in Miocene from France.

 

Thank you , Coco

I had never of Aetobatis arcuatus either by a scientific name OR any vernacular name.  It seems like there are multiple Eagle Ray Genus and possibly hundreds of Eagle Ray vernacular names. I do not imagine that A. arcuatus has a vernacular name.  Just did not know better.  Someone said it was an Eagle Ray. 

 

Item F looks like what I have. and I know about A arcuatus because of you.

So I now wonder can I identify this exact tooth...  Is my tooth broken?  a little or a lot ? Is it at the forward edge of the mouth plate and what general period did Aetobatus arcuatus exist on the east coast of the US.   @Al Dente @MarcoSr @digit

 

[MarcoSr]

21 minutes ago, Shellseeker said:

Thank you , Coco

I had never of Aetobatis arcuatus either by a scientific name OR any vernacular name.  It seems like there are multiple Eagle Ray Genus and possibly hundreds of Eagle Ray vernacular names. I do not imagine that A. arcuatus has a vernacular name.  Just did not know better.  Someone said it was an Eagle Ray. 

 

Item F looks like what I have. and I know about A arcuatus because of you.

So I now wonder can I identify this exact tooth...  Is my tooth broken?  a little or a lot ? Is it at the forward edge of the mouth plate and what general period did Aetobatus arcuatus exist on the east coast of the US.   @Al Dente @MarcoSr @digit

 

 

Your figure is very misleading.  See the below figure from Cappetta 2012 to see an extant Aetobatus dental plate set.  Your tooth is from the lower dental plate and is broken, but only slightly.  Ray dental plates continually grow during the ray's life, and the tips (first individual tooth) of the dental plates continually fall off.  So most collected ray dental plate individual teeth are shed from the front of the plate.  Individual teeth from other parts of the dental plate come from dental plates of rays that died.

 

 

 

 

Marco Sr.

[Shellseeker]

2 hours ago, MarcoSr said:

Your figure is very misleading.  See the below figure from Cappetta 2012 to see an extant Aetobatus dental plate set.  Your tooth is from the lower dental plate and is broken, but only slightly.  Ray dental plates continually grow during the ray's life, and the tips (first individual tooth) of the dental plates continually fall off.  So most collected ray dental plate individual teeth are shed from the front of the plate.  Individual teeth from other parts of the dental plate come from dental plates of rays that died.

 

Thanks for the knowledge add.  You told me 3 things that I did not know... My tooth is from the lower plate,  is only slightly broken and is likely a "tip" !!! while confirming A arcuatus while implyng A narinari as a natural descendant.  

[Coco]

@Shellseeker eagle ray (raie aigle in french) is a vernacular name. Aetobatus arcuatus is a latin name (with italic letters).

 

I really prefer to speak with Latin names because we can’t go wrong species, everyone can refer to a document and know what we are talking about (provided that we give the whole name, that is to say the genus name + the species name, unlike often where we see only the names of species without the genus !).

 

However, with vernacular names this is another problem. In France alone, depending on where you are, you will not give the same vernacular name to a species of fish or skate. So I can’t imagine the same on the American coast

 

As Marco said, your tooth is broken but not much. Normally it should have the same "tip" length on each side. But it’s still a nice tooth.

 

Coco

 

 

 

Edited April 15 by Coco

[Shellseeker]

4 minutes ago, Coco said:

@Shellseeker eagle ray (raie aigle in french) is a vernacular name. Aetobatus arcuatus is a latin name.

 

I really prefer to speak with Latin names because we can’t go wrong species, everyone can refer to a document and know what we are talking about. (provided that we give the whole name, that is to say the genus name + the species name, unlike often where we see only the names of species without the genus!)

However, with vernacular names this is another problem. In France alone, depending on where you are, you will not give the same vernacular name to a species of fish or skate. So I can’t imagine the same on the American coast

 

As Marco said, your tooth is broken but not much. Normally it should have the same "tip" length on each side. But it’s still a nice tooth.

 

Coco 

I agree with you Coco on all points.

But you and I are in a very unique universe.  We actually know that a latin name exists. That puts us outside the group ( about 85%) of humanity ) who do not.  One of my fossil friends identified it as "Eagle Ray"  which 95% of humanity could not do.  I do not have a single relative who could identify one of my finds as a Sting Ray tooth... Sometimes I think I may be going the way of the Dodo, but I am hopeful that new fresh blood will come along, know and exceed my level of knowledge. 

[Coco]

Oh my friend Jack @Shellseeker ! I sometimes feel like we live on another planet  It may start a discussion with MP ! If you have time between all your outings to the water

 

Coco

 

 

[Shellseeker]

On 4/14/2024 at 6:12 PM, Shellseeker said:

Seems I recall that an Equus Incisor with a shorter length of enamel are deciduous .. maybe /maybe not.. What about that , Jp  ?

Found this Equus Incisor last Saturday...  Yesterday,  my son found this Equus Incisor...  Note the difference in Enamel length.... above -- deciduous,  below Adult

[bockryan]

Fantastic finds as always, would be interested in seeing more of the sponges, it looks like they must be fairly common in some spots but I have never found one in my couple of trips

[Shellseeker]

6 hours ago, bockryan said:

Fantastic finds as always, would be interested in seeing more of the sponges, it looks like they must be fairly common in some spots but I have never found one in my couple of trips

I hope these photos make more sense to you than they do for me...

 

 

[Al Dente]

Fairly sure this one is a bryozoan.

 

 

[dries85]

On 4/15/2024 at 12:12 AM, Shellseeker said:

Then a very small Dolphin Tooth !!! Obviously requires some level of salt water. Never identified in Florida with this rugosity of enamel... I would be happy if someone would identify any dolphin of this size with rugose enamel anywhere in the world...  I have no examples.

 

Here in the Antwerp Neogene teeth with that type of enamel structure are sometimes being determined as Phocidae. Maybe u should look into pinniped dentition, just a thought as i don't know if they occurred in Florida..

 

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figures?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0137100

[Balance]

@dries85 very cool. Definitely want to learn the range. Started looking at the paper but gotta go to work. 
 

Jack, hers the age graphic Harry posted. I will tag you when I post the most recent one I found. It’s the shape of a 12 year olds wear but completely hollow. Just the outer enamel left. 

[Shellseeker]

On 4/19/2024 at 8:04 AM, Balance said:

Jack, hers the age graphic Harry posted. I will tag you when I post the most recent one I found. It’s the shape of a 12 year olds wear but completely hollow. Just the outer enamel left. 

I was not considering that... the shape of chewing surface  !!!

I was just looking at the LENGTH of the enamel... 43 mm on a long tooth and 15 mm  on a short tooth. 

but I guess it makes sense older horse means shorter enamel.. and Harry's chart might imply this Equus incisor from April 13th came from a 16 year old horse