Racking up at the River

After the disgrace of having to forego our Aurora slots because of work obligations, da f0ssZ and I made alternate plans to salvage a part of a day in the name of fossils. The river was beautiful and I was glad to sink beneath her murky depths to find my little prehistoric de-stressers. As we approached our parking spot, I realized that I forgot to include diving booties in my fossilin' instruments. I brainstormed and mangled two inflatable cushions for inner tubes to cover my feet. df's socks served to keep the inner tubes in place. I strapped on my 6 year old wal-mart sandals and I was ready to go. I looked like a total doofus, but who's checkin me out in the river besides the alligators? We tried a new spot first, but it wasn't the best so we pulled anchor and went to another place. There were teeth everywhere and as I relaxed in the 80 degree water, I kept thinking to myself - man, this is so much easier than climbing hills in the heat! I plucked a nice angustidens early in the dive, so from the first hour my day was made. Then, minutes later I found a benedeni. I've wanted to find one of these for a long time in the Edisto because of the age of the formations here. They are from an upper lens of the ashley formation which is about 2 million years older than the chandler bridge, So there are little differences in the teeth that make them much cooler. I've been in this river for years diving, and this is the first complete one I've found. Just as I thought it would, it had cusps. Every Oligocene specimen I have now in my collection has them. Quite cool. I stashed that one in the boat when I found it. I wasn't taking any chances on losing it. A little later I found another benedeni, but that one was badly nicked on the tip. It had cusps, though! As I fanned the sand, a nice little medicine bottle from the early 1900s was my next good find. I think it has a big chunk of the cork still in it! It was getting tough to top my ever increasing finds! Then, lying perfectly in the ashley formation was the biggest ray plate I ever saw. It was lying face down, so I scraped away the layer and tried to remove it. It was missing a small section already, and I didn't want to lose anymore. I carefully removed the pieces and placed them in my dive bag. I was totally water logged, but totally happy with the day. My makeshift booties had withstood the day, and my sandals remained intact by a thread. I can't believe I paid 5 bux for these kix almost 6 years ago and they survived this day!