Today joe and i are fossil hunting in florida at a location we haven't been to in years the
hope is that recent high water will have eroded some new fossils for us to find
we found some pretty good stuff here in the past and we're just hoping that we get lucky today
there might be something cool in this little bend one way we'll find out is by getting in there oh
i see that little right oop there joe needs to fix his wetsuit joe's been underwater for just
a couple of seconds and he says he's already got something so he's gonna toss it up at me and we'll
see what it is so here's that bone that joe tossed at me it seems to be a really well mineralized and
preserved ankle bone to either an extinct camel llama horse we're not sure we don't have enough
bones to tell but that is awesome it is an extinct ankle bone to a large grazing whoop grazing mammal
joe joe i don't mean to scare you but there is a gator slide over here so i don't know if you want
to get out or not and he's getting that one yeah that's one of the things that we're looking out
for when we come to the river is we got to see if there's gator slides and that is definitely
a classic slide you can see where the sand is smooth so a gator is going in the creek right here
and even though there was definitely bone in there and we could find something good it is not worth
the risk so we're going to keep moving further down creek and hope to find something else well
there's not a big lizard i walk now yeah your hair is good bro do i walk now yeah you can walk now
you can't put this on there now joe so joe over here is being a little scaredy cat
so he's making me do all of the fordings but this is what we have to do to be able to
hike through these woods and find stuff but so far so good you really can't tell how deep at
all it is right now we know over there it's about eight feet deep right here is only a
couple oh that's not that bad that wasn't that bad it's about to be river monster time
well there is stuff that's a piece of a giant armadillo scute
that's tortoise shell there are fossils in here unfortunately this spot has been mostly sanded
over just some turtle shell and not a lot of really good fossils so we got to keep moving
i do not see any gator slides but don't die i like you too much oh that's a little bit deep
you made it i think so all right i'm coming now how many of you would be willing to do this in
florida rivers just for a few rocks joe and i are i don't know about you guys but it is
totally worth it to be fossil hunting out here and i was getting hot anyway so why not take a swim
we found nice bend in the river but it's pretty dark and it looks pretty deep so joe and i are
looking around right now it's normally above my head and it's two feet higher than it is then
and we do want to find stuff but we don't want to mess with gators there's a gator in the water
swimming on top of the surface and oh no he just went down that was definitely a bigger gator
oh yeah look at the size of this boy look at the slides up here
we're looking at the slide right in front of joe i'm gonna see if he surfaces again but i
think he heard us how are we gonna get across here it makes you nervous doesn't it no yeah
it makes you very nervous you could be dragged under and fetched up under a log and marinated
for a month and then slowly eaten by a 60 million year old heavily evolved reptilian killing machine
that you don't actually have to be that afraid of because they're not evil they're just predictable
when we tell you guys we go to some wild places this is what we mean this is wild florida
this sucks so this is kind of interesting right now we're actually walking
along the flood boundary to the creek so during flood season this will get up 14 feet higher
than it is right now and these ponds represent the boundary to the river during those high
staging events so joe and i were originally thinking this was a game trail where all
this stuff has been pushed down but actually a single gator has done that you can see right here
the tail slide and then that right there is where the hand the paw of this gator
was so that is actually bigger than my hand which would put that at what a 10-foot gator
big gator real big gator so we're gonna cut through all these palm fronds and get back to
the river because we do not want to be hanging out here that is yeah that's huge that's a big animal
so we might be a little spooked right now but after all that we do need to get back in
the water because we did come here to find fossils and that's what i still plan to do
that's pretty sweet
there's stuff out here here's a better look at that partial mammoth tooth we just found
some mammoths were grazers and you can see they had these enamel plates right here for grinding
down hundreds of pounds of grass every single day so that's a cool find i wish it was whole
but joe's over here diving and hopefully he'll find something cool in just a minute that'd be
really sweet that's a mean looking snaggletooth serrations a deer antler oh you got deer antler as well
there as well yep a lot more down there maybe it's a good spot joe go go go go go dive dive
that's pretty cool joe yeah invert nuts like that yeah the invert guys oh look
at even the fossilized barnacles on the back yeah i'll try and keep that but they
usually fall apart i know it's a really awesome scallop it's pretty all right guys there we go
another set of gator slides that's its tail going back and forth and then big old claw
big old claw footprints tail going back more and more and then he dumped in or she dumped in the
river right there and i've actually run into this gator before in that bend over there and it is not
a small animal so today's been kind of really slow lots of gators not as many fossils as we hoped but
we've got one more spot today and then we're going home we're getting out here we're going to come
back here when it's lower and not so scary when the gators go home it's about time for the last
spot of today and hopefully we get a trip maker from here only one way to find out has to get back
underwater all right guys so this is ivory and i think i have the very tip to a tusk down there
which is pretty cool so let's go see if that's true i wish this had been whole but the rivers
and creeks are just not kind to this kind of thing so let's check it and see what it what it is
yep that's what that is that's cool, you guys don't know how long i've been waiting for this
moment i was talking to joe about this earlier but a couple of years ago i found the front section
to a big mastodon tooth with a tooth that goes up in front of it and i've always wanted to find the
missing part of it and right behind me in this hole is that missing part so all th ose gators
all that hard work today is absolutely so joe's over there shaking his head but it's so worth it
i'm gonna grab it i'll show it to you guys and we'll get home we'll put this tooth together for
the first time in i don't know how many years and that's really cool today that i don't know
-blah blah blah grab the tooth- it's hot and there's been a lot of gators but it's been worth it here we go
yep that's gotta be the missing piece that's incredible
i thought it either be buried somewhere over here underneath the bank here or it had already blasted
into a million pieces so i'm gonna check this out one quick time to make sure there's not any more
of this animal here and then we're gonna hike all the way home keep avoiding those gators and i'll
put those two parts of the tooth together and oh that just bit me dobson fly larvae ouch look at
that there's a lot of crazy stuff in florida like we said everything's here is trying to kill you
some giant tortoise shell
that's still a good find another awesome extinct animal that used to be here
we just wrapped up the last bend of today and the best thing that we found today was this section
of a mastodon tooth not only are mastodon teeth rare in general but we actually have the missing
section to this tooth and i cannot wait to go home click that together and share it with you guys
right in front of it we did manage to find these two sections of giant tortoise shell
we find a lot of these in florida because they have a large preservation bias towards them
due to the fact that they're so thick and solid already so these guys were as large if not larger
than the galapagos island tortoises and are a really cool reminder of the extinct reptiles
that used to be here in florida besides them we did find some tusk material to this mastodon
we've got these two pieces right here you can see the growth lines in this one
and this is the very tip of the tusk unfortunately these guys are made out of ivory
and they get blasted by even the smallest creeks so it's very rare to find a whole one
last but not least we have this ear bone so this is a porpoise ear bone which is really
rare and most people overlook them but that's probably a unique extinct species but it's no way
there is no way to tell from what but that's still cool to us we are both exhausted now we have a
long hike out of here as soon as we get home we'll click that tooth together and show it to you guys
all right guys we are out of the woods and i'm going to be completely honest with you we should
have never found this this is the remaining piece to a tooth that we found over three years ago
in this same creek during that day joe actually found his best mastodon too that he ever
recovered and i was to be honest pretty jealous so i spent the rest of the day trying to top that
and during that process i managed to recover this tooth now this is actually two teeth they
join together right here and you can see where the pressure of this tooth coming in wore out this
tooth right here i spent all day trying to find the remaining portion to this tooth right here and
i could not find it joe and i have been back to this creek a dozen times and we have never found
the running portion i actually rode it off i never thought we would find it i thought it was either
busted it was buried somewhere where it's never gonna erode out and it just was never gonna
happen but i kept checking this spot every single year after every single high rain and
thankfully today a little fossil hunting miracle occurred and we were able to put together this
tooth after i have no idea how long but i can't imagine how long they've been separated and
this is actually it's a very large example of a mastodon tooth this is an m3 it's the last molar
this animal would have gotten before it died and if you notice we've got a really cool thing going
on with the coloration of the enamel so this is the actual color of this mastodon's enamel
but most teeth you find in these creeks especially if they're tanning rich they've got dissolved
organics like leaves they get stained this black coloration so this part we found in
the clay three years ago and this part was stuck in the river channel itself getting
stained by those river tannins and so when you put them together you've got that kind of that
discoloration going on you don't have a balance and i actually really like that it tells a story
from today and this tooth is going to be in my collection for a very long time it's really
incredible that we managed to connect and save this history after all these years
now for those of you who have been following the channel for a while we are going to be doing
something really special we are giving away this mastodon tooth this is an authentic extinct american
mastodon molar found in the midwest of the united states and all you guys have to do to enter to win
it is go to diggingscience.com newsletter which is linked in the description below once you enter
to get our newsletter you're going to be automatically entered into the drawing
for this tooth we're going to be updating you guys on who wins it in the comments below as well as in
our community tab and i cannot wait to give this tooth to one of you guys we really appreciate
each one of you guys so much and without you we would not have built this channel into what it is
so stay tuned for future updates guys and as always keep on digging science