Auriculatus Bonanza

Time for the first fossilin’ trip of the new year, and with some hard rains over the last few weeks, prime pickens were on order. Today was the LaFarge hunt, with rivrdiggr, his son, and a fellow collecting buddy from Florida joining me and DW. With temps in the 60s and clouds, the collecting conditions were simply ideal. As I approached the pit, I saw new material all over the place. I jumped out of my truck and hunted with fury. After a few minutes, as it became more light, I noticed the soil was not green or reddish, but rather dark brown. Sandy, clay overburden. Yikes…………. Are-la-cut-icus min-i-mus (translation – no rix). Little did I realize this would be my theme today. The green cap had been separated and dumped in a few piles on the top of the quarry. As I made my way over there, DW and I met up to hunt some old piles. Rivrdiggr and his crew met up with me there too. This dude was a walking zombie after his pilgrimage from the sunshine state. Because rivrdiggr’s mere presence brings out the collector in me, I subsequently walked about a foot and spotted some shiny brown enamel. Whale tooth!! Not a whole yoke tooth, but a nice find. After this, we decided to go our merry ways. I hunted some more older material, and came up with smaller makos and sand tigers. After this, I headed up to hunt the green cap spoils complete with a plethora of footprints. I hunted more closely, hoping to snag a hidden ric, but no dice. About noon, I headed down to meet up with DW and the crew. Well, DW had showed us all how to collect. As he happily demo-ed the fruits of his Eocene conquest, a river of drool began to flow like wine from me. Luckily, we were near a washout were my deluge of slobber could serve as an agent of erosion. Nice job, Weez! Well, we had a few minutes to collect some older material on the way out, but nothing turned up.