so today is gonna be a bit different than normal i've currently got about five miles of hiking left
until i get to a site that has produced a lot of really nice mastodon teeth
in the past including one of my favorite jaw segments look at that once we get there i'll
suit up and then we'll start working our way back and see if we can't find any other ice age animals
but most of today is going to be dedicated to this insanely long hike
we are starting to get closer to the first mastodon site but i've gotta say it can get really
eerie out here the only thing i've been hearing is the occasional plane flying overhead and you
can get kind of creeped out when you're all alone in a remote area like this but one of you guys one
of my patreon supporters kurt leitner actually sent us an emergency satellite beacon which i
didn't have in all my years doing this before so now that i have that i can go out here with
a little bit more peace of mind i know my wife appreciates that a lot so thank you so much kurt
we're gonna get to that first sight and hopefully we're gonna find some really cool ice age fossils
today and finally here we are it's time to get suited up and do some fossil hunting here we go
i can only hunt this river for a short period every year
but every time i come i find cool ice age fossils
most of these fossils are late pleistocene which means they came
right before the extinction of the megafauna
split in half that would be around 13 to 50 000 years ago these animals were living in this area
died got buried and turned into rock leaving
behind teeth and bones that get exposed after every single florida rainy season
not a bad start look at that that's a nearly perfect camelot tooth really good roots just
one little chip in the nimble right there then after that we got a sweet ice age horse tooth
that's an incredible shape it's a good start to the day and it's got me hopeful to figure out
what might be further down the river all right we're coming up on spot number two
i can't believe how crystal clear the river is today but there's a deep hole right here
i can already see there's no gators and it should be easy to check real quick hopefully
it did not take long to start finding some really unique ice age bones in this location
literally every catch
spots like this are really unique because you really don't know what's gonna be there but
you know there are fossils there it's that anticipation that really makes a spot like
this cool now unfortunately this spot did not have anything spectacular but it did have some
really unique ice age fossils and was a really cool sign that river was eroding new material
not so bad i've got a whole collection of giant armadillo scoots each of these are the bony skin
that would have protected that crazy animal wow that is cool we also got a very cool limb bone
right here most likely to a deer very well cooked like fighting this kind of stuff we're already at
the next spot most bends in this river are going to have ice age exposures so as long as we can
cover ground today we do have a high chance to find some more cool fossils but it's cold at least
the visibility is so good i'll be able to spot any gators but i got to get under here
this next spot had pea gravel which you can find a really unique micro fossils in so we
found two very tiny fossils that we normally would miss in a spot with bigger gravel
that's cool i'll have to get the camera for that what really surprised me about this spot though
was how much giant armadillo armor was in this area normally we might find three or four of these
and a fossil hunt but this one location had really high quality schools i think we found five in this
location we also found a lot of these weird eel like freshwater fish um little aquatic nope ropes
as it says okay so in terms of giant armadillo scoots i am absolutely killing it we've got four
more of those put that in the bag with the other three we've got and then check this out that
is the nicest fossilized rodent jaw i have ever found it is literally perfect that is so cool and
then we got an interesting i think that is gonna be a taper incisor not really sure on that one
and then might be camel and then another little incisor right there it's hard to see the detail
on these but cool little teeth and i've got so much more river to hunt
it's crazy to think about how many animals must have died out here for them to show up as fossils
this often and even the fossils we're finding are just a small lens these little pockets of
gravel that accumulate in the river if you took the total amount of fossils that are actually
out here it would boggle the mine we're walking over mammoths mastodons giant ground sloths
every few minutes this whole area is absolutely loaded we just gotta find little bits of gravel in
the river where these animals are being exposed and eroded i'm getting caught by cypress knees
let's hope we can find some more because it is definitely out here so i'm gonna stick the
camera in just for one look and then i am getting out of here and further down the river but that
that's a 10-foot alligator right below us
wow that's insane oh my gosh there's another look at it underwater the glare is barely hiding it i
did not see it when i was climbing up on this log but there is an alligator in there and it is not
tiny holy crap look at that tail all right we are a ways away from that crazy gator
i've got a new stretch of river right here that looks really good and i'm gonna get underwater and
start finding fossils again my adrenaline levels are back down to here so i think we'll be fine
the rest of the day seeing an alligator underwater where you're hunting always puts you a little bit
on edge but honestly these are animals you just have to respect like any other
it's pretty cold right now on this day of hunting so i knew the animal would be lethargic and their
visibility is so good that if we take it slow there's not really a chance that we're gonna run
into any in a potentially dangerous situation so we got back to fossil hunting and this last spot
of the day had a ton of different bone and teeth including this massive gator tooth really good
shape it's always fun when you have a spot like this where you can just pick up tons of different
fossils bones and teeth and super clear water it definitely beats black water and i was really
thankful that we were still finding unique fossils this next tooth is a giant ground sloth tooth
which normally just look like pieces of bone and are very rare we got some more camel teeth
as well this one was really hard to spot but once you know what you're looking for it's not too bad
and then giant tortoise you can't go into florida rivers that have ice age fossils and not find some
giant tortoise well i'm out of the water for the final time today i found some cool stuff in this
last bend but we're gonna hike back to the car once we get there i'll lay everything out from
today's hunt we are back at the honda i am no longer soaking wet i'm out of my wetsuit
i've got dry clothes on we'll take a look at what we found today three ice age horse teeth
two ice age camel teeth with that one being really nice if it wasn't for that little bit
right there that broke off that would have been such a killer tooth well as joe would say grazer
tooth we've got a perfect rodent jaw i'm not sure what species that is if you guys know let me know
in the comments below but i'll figure that one out really cool shark tooth some big gator teeth
like those would have been enormous maybe even a little bit bigger than the one we saw underwater
seven seven different giant armadillo scoots one of my best days finding these and these things
are so cool having armored skin basically to protect itself from the giant ice age predators
and getting seven of those that is pretty sweet we also got a decently rare find in this giant
ground sloth tooth they don't have any enamel so all that's left is just the dentine and cementum
and they're pretty uncommon so that's a cool little tooth right there a few other things some
isolated bones some mastodon ivory and enamel but overall those are the highlights from today
if you want to own your own piece of history and support the channel at the same time
all of these fossils will be on our online shop at diggingscience.com shop it's linked in
the description below thank you guys so much for joining me on today's adventure if you enjoyed it
like share subscribe all that good stuff and as always keep on digging science