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!
So cool Tom. Love these reports 8) 8)
Very cool. Thanks for sharing!
Just out of curiosity, were the samples taken from the coast or further inland?
: MASSfisher December 04, 2014, 01:32:53 p
Very cool. Thanks for sharing!
Just out of curiosity, were the samples taken from the coast or further inland?
Inland about 40 miles.