A Mammoth good hunt!

Fossil fever has been high for me these past couple months. I am always looking for a good opportunity to get back to the river. However, the summer rains have started to pick up and with it the water level on the Peace River. I had made plans to hit the river via kayak with one of my kayaking buddies when the level was low but by the time we were actually able to go it had risen almost two feet. I had no clue whether the hunting conditions would be good so I resigned myself to the idea that the trip might just only be a worthwhile paddle trip. While the spot I had been working previously was good for sharks' teeth, I did want to try to find some other productive areas and possibly have the opportunity to find some different types of fossils.

My buddy swung by my house at O-crack-45 to load up the gear and the yaks. After everything was loaded we headed out to grab some breakfast at a great local greasy-spoon. A big breakfast would be the ticket to lasting all day on the river. Once our bellies were loaded we made our way to the river. I decided to put in at the next bridge north of where I had been going so we could have some new area to explore. Once we got parked and got out of the van we had to laugh after looking at the number of shoes hanging from the telephone wires running parallel to the bridge. It was like we were in gangland. The weather was nice and the river was running swiftly. We put in and headed north. It took us probably a good 30 minutes of paddling before we found a nice place that was relatively shallow and loaded with gravel.

We parked our yaks and I donned my collecting pouch and mask and snorkel. The water was clear and the size of the rocks and bone fragments in this section of the river were pretty large which was a good sign. Dugong rib fragments were everywhere as were big chunks of freshly weathered limestone. The bottom of this section of the river had pockets and crevasses carved out all over the place and the current was very swift. One first glance I found a pretty big chunk of mammoth enamel... a good sign. It wasn't but five minutes after finding that piece that I found a large section (about a third plus) of a mammoth tooth... jackpot! I found another, smaller fragment but still larger than any other piece I had found before. I just knew this was going to be a good hunt. That got my buddy excited and he started looking in earnest for his big find.

The finds were pretty steady the whole afternoon but the current really took its toll on my stamina and after about six hours of fighting the currents and scraping along the bottom I called it quits. My buddy found a few nice sharks' teeth and some pieces of limestone that had weathered into interesting shapes. At the end of the day I had a nice selection of whole and broken horse teeth, sharks' teeth, mammoth and mastodon enamel fragments, a nice complete bone of some sort and species (any clues?), a nice vertebrae and two mystery teeth. If anyone can identify the tooth in the close-up photo below I would be grateful. It was a lot of fun and I am already looking forward to getting back to that spot.



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