- [Coyote] I can feel it, fossils are in the air!
Man, this is so prehistoric looking.
Now remember, any body of water
in Florida can have an alligator in it.
Got him!
Banded water snake, first reptile of the day.
Oh buddy, oh buddy, where are you going?
Oh, he's in the boat, hold on!
Oh no, he went back there.
(cracking) (suspenseful music)
(dinosaur roaring) (suspenseful music)
- [Coyote] It's no government secret
that Coyote Peterson loves dinosaurs.
And I have been very vocal
in my self-proclaimed expertise at finding fossils.
But make no mistake, I am not a paleontologist.
And for someone that suffers
from chronic bouts of fossil fatigue,
I would label myself an amateur at best.
And that is why I team up with the experts.
On today's prehistoric treasure hunt,
Mario and I will be working alongside Paleo Chris
and Fossil Rick.
These paleontologic bloodhounds have a nose
for finding prehistoric treasure.
And they're taking us to one of their top secret locations,
nestled deep in the back country of Irvine, Florida.
As we venture up-river,
it feels as if we are traveling back in time
to the pleistocene epoch.
This epoch lasted from about 2.5 million
to 12,000 years ago.
It was home to some serious megafauna,
like Mammoths, Dire Wolves, and me personal favorite,
Siberian Saber Tooth Snow Cats.
Meow!
Cris, this looks like a spot where we may need to stop
and get out to pull the canoe.
- [Cris] Yeah, I think so!
- [Coyote] So here's what we're looking at...
Good current coming right down
through these prehistoric-looking trees.
I can just imagine what it'd be like
to see a prehistoric saber tooth cat moving
across these logs.
We're a little bit late on that but it doesn't mean
we can't find some of those fossilized remains.
After nearly two hours paddling up the river,
we finally arrived at the location Cris wanted
us to explore.
It's going to be a long day of wading in the river
with shovels and sifters.
All right guys, this is it.
We have made it to the top secret spot
and this is where we will be searching
for prehistoric treasure.
Now, I think to make this more interesting for the audience,
we're gonna keep this is a friendly competition.
Team Palo versus Team Fossil.
- [Mario] How are we rating the point system?
- [Coyote] So, I say we break it down
into three categories, number of species,
biggest fossil, and most unique fossil.
If you guys are ready I think everybody out there is ready
for us to find some prehistoric treasure.
May the best team win!
- They don't call this guy Fossil Rick for nothing!
- Yeah well I got Paleo Cris!
- My techniques pretty simple, it's just a shovel,
but it's a little bit of work to get the hole going.
You wanna kinda get it down in there
and the hardest part is breaking that initial seal.
But once you get that initial hole going
you start working at the same sides.
- [Mario] So it's gonna take some muscle, you're saying.
- [Rick] This is not easy.
- [Coyote] All right, let's take a look at what we got here.
Ah, I think we got some stuff here!
- [Mario] Shark tooth!
- [Rick] See, we got a tooth!
- [Coyote] Is it a Smilodon?
- [Rick] No, but it's really cool.
So that's a sharks tooth.
- [Mario] What species you think?
- [Rick] I'd say probably bull.
- [Coyote] Oh, sweet, look at that, Softshell Turtle.
- What's this right here?
It's a fragment of a horse tooth.
- [Coyote] Okay, little tiny fragment.
- Wow, right here.
It's the tip of a big shark tooth right here.
That's actually a Great White Shark tooth.
- [Coyote] We got the tip
of a Great White Shark tooth, guys!
- What? - Look at that!
Tip of a Great White Shark Tooth!
So guys, all these fossils go into these unique little bags.
Open that up, shark tooth going in, piece of a turtle shell,
piece of a horse tooth.
- [Cris] Man, just a couple scoops
and we're already having some good luck!
(suspenseful music)
(clattering) (suspenseful music)
- [Mario] So what are we looking for
in terms of texture, color?
- [Rick] Anything that kinda pops at you.
Teeth, normally the enamel is shiny or the bone.
- That's a bone. - Lot of bones.
- This looks like bone. - Yep, that's turtle shell.
- This is bone too. - Turtle shell.
- [Rick] That's two pieces of turtle shell.
(strenuous grunting)
- Nope, missed.
That's was a big miss right there.
I'm kinda hooked already.
All I wanna do is get the next scoop in here
because you just never know.
That's good right, the darker the rock better.
- [Cris] Absolutely.
- I'm gonna stick in that spot.
I don't know what I'm seeing there.
Let's sift this out and see what we've got.
(water sloshing) (clattering)
- Check it out. - Wow!
Juvenile Great White Shark tooth.
Sharp serrations still.
Right over there that is a tiny fragment
of a mammoth tooth right there.
You can see the enamel line right there.
So they grow in these big plates like this
and little individual plates flake off
as the tooth falls apart.
So that's what it is, just a tiny little piece.
- [Coyote] There we go, another good scoop.
- I think we got into a spot with like the show some shells.
- [Mario] Okay, yeah, I do see some shells.
- These shells are actually fossils.
- [Mario] Okay, so these are fossils, it counts.
That's a species.
What's this?
Really smooth.
- [Rick] Oh my gosh, Mario, you've done it, man!
- What?
Is that something?
- [Rick] You have done it, dude!
- What is it?
- [Rick] That the sloth tooth!
- The tooth of a sloth? - A giant sloth.
It's smaller, it might be juvenile, but that is rare!
They have really weird teeth as far as animals go.
You can see that is the chewing surface.
- [Rick] Oh man!
- [Rick] And it would have stuck I'm out of the jaw,
like this and they had some molars to go with it
that looked a little different.
But that is that is an awesome fossil!
- [Mario] All right!
- [Rick] People come out looking for that!
If you don't find anything else today, that is worth it!
- [Coyote] All right guys, so Paleo Chris
and I have a pretty bountiful sack of prehistoric treasure.
Multiple Great White Shark teeth,
which Cris tells me are incredibly rare for this area.
Although Team Fossil does have a sloth tooth so far.
(water sloshing) (clattering)
See what we got here.
This is almost like Halloween.
You go out, you collect a bunch of candy
from your neighbors, in this instance it's a bunch of scoops
from the bottom of a river.
Oh, that's a tooth!
- That's pretty uncommon right there.
It's a peccary.
- Wow, let me see, look at that!
That's a peccary tooth right there.
Look at that, is that a piece of a tooth?
- Yes, that's a bear tooth. - A bear tooth!
- That's a bear molar right there there.
- Bear molar! - No way!
- How can you tell?
- I just found it before. - Is that a rare one?
- It's an upper rear molar.
It's probably, black bear, most likely.
- [Coyote] That's definitely new species for our list!
- [Cris] Awesome, that's kind of the goal when I go out.
When I find a fossil of any kind of carnivore,
I'm good, that's a good day.
- At this point, honestly, fossil fatigue is setting in.
Actually see really nice tree right up there
that I think I could catch a nap on.
(playful music)
(loudly yawning)
Man, fossil fatigue!
And my fatigue is not only from shoveling scoop after scoop
of settlement, but because I found so many fossils.
Why do I need to keep searching?
Might as well take a nap at this point!
Goodnight! (gentle music)
Do you find yourself falling asleep frequently
while out looking for prehistoric treasures?
Do your friends work harder than you do?
Do you have a serious lack motivation to keep trying
if you don't find a Saber tooth cat skull
in the first five minutes of searching?
If you answer yes to one or all of these questions
then you likely suffer from fossil fatigue.
Don't worry this apparent doom is not your extinction event.
FF is curable by simply watching the rest of this episode,
like the whole thing even the call to action!
So what are you waiting for? Don't become a fossil!
Fight the fatigue and keep watching!
All right guys, well, it is going on five o'clock
which means we have an hour
before the light completely disappears
so we're calling it a day.
Mario, hold up your bounty bag.
- Look at that!
- I don't know ours definitely looks more full.
What do you think, Chris?
- I think we got more stuff in there.
- Well we're going for quality, right Rick?
- I think we didn't keep a lot of the junk.
- Well, we'll see!
what we're gonna do now is actually get up
and out of the water into a controlled setting.
Lay out all of our fossils and then determine
who takes the prize.
Now, the three categories, number of species,
biggest fossil, and rarest fossil.
Let's kick it off by counting the number of species
that Rick and Mario have collected.
- Rick, take it away since you know what we've got here.
- Yeah, we've grouped them together.
So we've got mammoth, Glyptodont, giant armadillo,
a mandible here, fish, alligator, deer,
giant sloth, turtle, horse.
For sharks teeth we've got great white, sand tiger,
and bull shark and then 1, 2, 3, 4 species of shell.
- Okay, I have 17.
- 17 species!
17 species, wow, that's impressive.
Chris, with our fossils laid out go ahead,
count them out, please 18!
- Great white shark, bull shark,
hammerhead shark, lemon shark.
We have a rodent jaw, peccary teeth, a bear tooth,
gar fish scales, puffer fish mouth plates,
a piece of a mammoth tooth, coral, horse teeth,
deer antler, snake verts,
a piece of an armadillo osteoderm, alligator stuff here.
We have turtle, I think that's it.
- Wow! - Wait, a second, 17?
Cause we're not counting random bone fragments
we can't identify.
- Right, these are random.
- We just tied!
We just tied on the number of species!
Are you kidding me?
Well, when it comes to biggest fossil of the day,
I don't have to look far to realize.
- [Rick] Yeah, I'm no expert, but yeah,
big giant chunk of turtle shell.
- That's pretty big!
- That is definitely the biggest fossil
because our biggest fossil is a piece
of giant tortoise shell.
Does that make up the difference?
Giant tortoise versus-- - It's physically bigger.
- So you guys got the point on largest fossil of the day.
Now it comes down to what is the rarest fossil.
On your side what's the rarest thing you guys came across?
- [Rick] I definitely think Mario's sloth tooth is
our rarest fossil.
This is rare, it's a good fossil any day.
Pretty uncommon I think it would be tough to beat.
- Yeah I mean that that's a megafauna, right?
They got huge!
- This is a smaller tooth from one,
but these guys were huge!
They had giant claws, definitely uncommon.
- [Coyote] Is that the rarest?
- On their side it is.
- What about on our side?
- Any carnivore stuff is extremely hard to find.
So your bear tooth, I think, tops that.
- What? - I think it does!
- [Coyote] Rick, what would you say?
Bear tooth rarer than the sloth tooth?
- [Rick] I gotta go with Chris.
Because any predator, even modern day,
is definitely more uncommon than the things that--
- [Mario] Okay, you get it.
- So we got a point, you guys got a point
and we tied on species.
Which means that--
- It's a dead tie.
- This whole thing is a tie!
What are the odds of us tying
on our prehistoric treasure hunt?
Hey, not very good, but I think what that means is
we need to create another episode to break the tie
and I'd say the only way to do that is to try to go
and find some megalodon teeth.
- Oh! - All right!
- [Coyote] Do you think we have graduated
to finding megalodon teeth?
- [Rick] I think we can go search
for something megalodon teeth now.
- [Coyote] Okay, well what we're going
to do next is switch locations.
Tomorrow we're headed out into the wild to specifically look
for prehistoric shark teeth.
So I guess the competition continues.
- [Mario] It continues!
- [Coyote] Between Team Paleo and Team Fossil.
Big thanks to Paleo Cris!
Big thanks to Fossil Rick!
Make sure you check out their YouTube channels links
in the video description below.
I'm Coyote Peterson.
Be brave.
- Stay wild!
- We'll see on the next prehistoric adventure.
Guys, I'm definitely ready to go look for some shark teeth.
- I'm taking this one and this one.
- Stay tuned Coyote pack because if you thought searching
for prehistoric mammal fossils was exciting
just wait until you see how many shark teeth
we find in a single hour.
Holy fossils Batman!
Is that a megalodon tooth?
And don't forget subscribe and click
that archaic looking ding dong bell
so you get a notification when it's time to join us
on the next prehistoric adventure!
- [Mario] Whew!
(loud thudding) (wolf howling)
(birds chirping)