this is what's nuts about hunting out here i just saw a gator go in over there in that bend
and i've gotta jump in this bin so at least i know it's over there but it still doesn't give
you much faith does it so we saw that gator go in right over there and i'm walking up the bank and
i noticed that we've got gator slides right here you can see where the claws went right there and
it's sliding up this bank multiple times a day i guess it's making some pretty large slides and so
i'm really hoping that it's not in there
so in this hole behind me are some very large mastodon bones the problem is they are so delicate
there's no way i could remove them without breaking them so if it's even possible if i want
to recover these bones we might bring some jacket material and take them out in the peat it seems
to be encased in and put them immediately into jackets or maybe even try to stabilize them here
but that's a really long shot they might just have to stay buried in that peat for for ad
infinitum they've been in there for a while they can stay in there for a little longer but really
cool hole really beautiful day and i got more hiking to do and one more spot to check so this
is a really beautiful bend in the river you can see the nice shallows over here but if you look right
over here there is a deep bend a sharp cut in the river and that sharp cut has caused some erosion
and hopefully in that hole right there there might be some interesting fossils for us to uncover
Cheers*
so as it turns out i did end up getting very lucky today
this is an incredible example of an adult mastodon tooth we can tell it's an older individual based
on how much wear is on the surface of the tooth normally these lophs up here would have been about
this high but over the course of going through hundreds of pounds of shrubs legumes and fruits
every day it's worn its tooth down now mastodons replace their teeth
horizontally rather than vertically so we have an interesting amount of wear right
here on the back of the tooth and that's where the tooth behind this one was pressing into it
and it was pressing into with such force that it wore into the tooth so it would have been a
really interesting position in the the jaw if we can find the other tooth they'll clink together
and i bet that would look so wicked now we did manage to get to this tooth just in time because
it's delicate this ivory is very delicate and you can see where it's cracking through here and so
the river was already taking it apart lost a chunk of the ivory root right up here where my finger is
but we got here just in time and as long as i can hike this the few miles out of here it'll be an
incredible addition to my fossil collection i love that polished surface on these teeth
really really incredible fossil in front of that incredible mastodon tooth we also did find this
perfect example of an extinct bison tooth now this wicked tooth can be identified by what's
called a stylid and it's this bump of enamel right here modern camelids and extinct camelids do not
have it so we can differentiate this tooth from the extinct camels and llamas that used to be in
florida based off that feature and to me it's an incredible reminder of the extinct animals
the diversity of them that used to be in florida this is bison antiquis antiquities bison and it
was about 15 to 20 percent larger than the modern bison do you see that over there that is the earth
letting out a gentle fart so that's actually methane this is a swamp the river cuts through
the swamp but all throughout here there's methane trapped in it and so if you step on something
wrong it'll bubble and that gas will come out and that's that smell now that methane is the classic
swamp smell that people hate personally though i have so many good memories attached to it
when i smell it it actually jump starts those memories out here fossil hunting and um weirdly
enough i enjoy it i'll be honest i almost gave up on today's hunt those mastodon vertebrae we found
earlier were cool but i cannot believe that right behind us is where we found that mastodon tooth
it is such a humbling thought to think that i am the first person to ever see hold
touch this incredible fossil the sun is finally starting to set and i have a very long hike out of
here if you guys enjoyed this video please make sure to like it share it and subscribe to the
channel and as always keep on digging science for today's video we are giving away this set
of fossil shark teeth representing 10 different species all of which can be identified with this
included guide to the common marine fossils of the southeastern united states all you have to
do to enter is leave a comment below describing your favorite of our fossil hunting adventures