Ditched

This morning’s LaFarge hunt began at sunrise, and pleasant fall weather was the order of the day. I met up with Rivrdigr in the pit at about 7:30AM. This was his first trip to LaFarge, so I thought I would show him some fosspitality. We quickly gathered our backpacks and shovels and headed back into the mine. There was limited collecting on the older overburden spoils, but with recent rains I thought there may be some rics rinsed out. We both hunted between the tall grasses and spoil flats, but no luck in the first few hours other than smaller makos and goblin shark teeth. My luck soon changed as I spotted a root sticking out. I snared a beauty of a ric with rivrdigr providing photographic support (I forgot my camera, again). Just from brushing off the dirt I saw all the serrations, bourrelet and the tip!. It was rivrdigr’s turn next with a nearly complete juvenile archaeocete whale tooth. Only some root damage and feeding damage; a nice find. Just then we met up with DW and found a spot with little overgrowth. The rains had worked some fossil magic here. DW grabbed a few rics, and I bagged three more. The smallest of the lot came out fully serrated and with nice cusps. The three of us tooled around the Eocene limestone looking for hexanchus teeth and maybe some whale material, but nothing turned up. Satisified with the hunt, rivrdigr and myself headed to the big ditch for more fossilin’, and DW agreed to meet us there after a stop by the house. Rivrdigr and me walked the ditch and noticed there was not much pickens. From the earlier posts, DW had pillaged it good. It was time to sift the deeper holes. I only had about 2 hours, so I moved as much gravel as I could. We never met up with DW; as it turned out we hunted too far downstream from him. It was like he got, well, Ditched. Irony can be ironic...I ended up with some nice hemis, and a handful of teeth. Rivrdigr found a few nice angustidens, which are not common in Florida. The day ended with digging in some Chandler Bridge with only a fish vertebrae to show for it. Time to go home, but it will time to collect soon again.