Nothing Like Making a New Fossil Hunting Buddy

With the previous day's last find fresh in my mind, and a few extra aches and pains on my frame, I eased out of bed to face the start of another potentially glorious fossil hunting day. It didn't take me long to get myself together and my gear and a cooler packed into the car. The sky was looking a little overcast as I made my way out of the driveway and over to get my morning brew. It really didn't look that bad and I didn't think that it was supposed to rain so I decided to stick it out and make my way over to the river.

Since I live in St Petersburg, I have no choice but to cross the Sunshine Skyway bridge. The nice thing about the drive over the bridge is that I get a good look at the weather in all directions. As it turned out the direction of my destination was looking pretty good so I thought to myself that it was going to be a good day and that I was going to make some good finds. Having a positive attitude for the hunt has always paid dividends and this day would prove no different.

Once I got close to the river access I noticed that there was a serious lack of cars in comparison to the previous day's crowd. A reason for the shortage of humanity became apparent once I saw the serious rut bog that lay in my path. The rain must have been heavy as there was a lot of water in the ruts. I wasn't going to let a little water spoil my fun so my VW Jetta became a mud boggin monster car. With that little stunt out of the way I could now focus on finding some good fossils.

I got my gear and headed for the water. I could tell the level had risen somewhat over the previous day but it was still well within tolerance for snorkeling so I headed downstream for the spot of my last find from yesterday. It didn't take long for the sun to provide excellent light for my hunt. I started finding big tooth fragments almost immediately. The sediment in this area wasn't that deep and close to the limestone bottom was a two inch layer of marine clay sediment that had all kinds of stuff in it. Most of the good finds I was making was coming from just above or sandwiched below the sediment and the limestone. I figured these were areas that didn't get screened from previous fossil hunters.

After a couple hours of fanning I noticed that the commotion had caught the attention of an opportunistic fish. He pretty much hung out with me the whole time I was hunting. He was my new found fossil hunting buddy. I managed to catch my buddy on camera during some the shots of the river bottom that I took while making some good finds.  

The weather stayed nice and I didn't see a soul almost the whole time I was hunting save for a couple canoes. I scored 4 mostly whole but well-worn sharks' teeth including a larger than average Hemipristis, a large number of sharks' teeth fragments, a few nice horse teeth, a sweet fish mouth plate, another nice piece of fossilized wood and more rib bone fragments. It was a great day of finds and more fuel to keep the fossil hunting fire going.




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