I headed back to the North Sulfur River yesterday, trying out a new access point. I haven’t been finding ammonites at NSR, but found these yesterday. Click the photos to be able to zoom in and get a closer look.
I also found what look like mosasaur bones. The top left is a vert, the top middle looks like a transverse broken off a vert, and that looks like a rib on the left. I’m not sure what the smaller lower bones are.
I made my first trip to Post Oak Creek today. There had been rain in the forecast for yesterday, so I hoped for some newly washed out fossils, but Sherman got no rain. So, I knew things would be pretty picked over, but I decided to go anyway, and just hike a bit further down the creek than I normally might, to see if I could find a few teeth anyway.
I stayed about three hours. The knee pads I bought yesterday were definitely a good investment. These old fart eyes need to be close to the sand bars to get within reading glass distance of those small teeth. I had also made a sifter, and carried out half a bucket of sand to go through at home. I had fun. That creek is an amazing fossil place. Click the photos to be able to zoom in and get a closer look.
You really can’t appreciate just how large of an area on the banks, and creek walls in places, that are covered with fossilized shell filled rocks, until you see it. I brought home this one rock to remind myself of what the place looked like, as well as try to explain it to others.
There are truly fossil fragments everywhere on those sand bars. I was mainly looking for teeth, so I tended to ignore all the other stuff, but I couldn’t resist picking up these two small gastropods.
Up until now, I had hardly found any shark teeth, so it was fun picking up teeth today. The tooth in that last photo is a Ptychodus tooth.
I made another trip to the North Sulfur River yesterday. I spent too much time hiking and exploring, but still found some interesting things. Click the photos to be able to zoom in and get a closer look.
A really nice Egogyra Ponderosa I couldn’t resist bringing home. It’s amazing how many fragments of these there are in the river, but I don’t usually find one in this shape.
A shark tooth and some kind of fish tooth.
And these look like Hamulus worm tubes.
An ammonite segment.
As I work less and have more free time, I have added a new hobby, and I’m going to post some new things from it here. It’s fossil hunting. I have always been fascinated by rocks and fossils, but my first real fossil was found on a fishing trip at Benbrook in 2013. In the roots of a toppled and half submerged tree, I found this. Click the photos to be able to zoom in and get a closer look.
I had no idea what it was, but I was sure it was some kind of fossil. So I joined The Fossil Forum and made a post asking what it was. It is, of course, a piece of an ammonite. It was all enough to really get me interested in fossil hunting, but between work, family, and all my cycling, I really didn’t have time for a new hobby. I vowed that when I retired, fossil hunting was something I was going to consider adding as a hobby. That time has now arrived.
The trip I made to the North Sulfur River today was my third fossil hunting trip, and the first one I had finds I deemed worthy of posting here. Here is what I posted in The Fossil Forum:
I made my second trip to the North Sulfur River today. I had planned on going yesterday, but it was pretty chilly early, and today was forecast to be much warmer, plus the water was still coming down, so I settled for a 50 mile bike ride yesterday, and headed for the NSR this morning. I seem to be making the most of this time of social distancing / off work. A bike ride yesterday, NSR today, and I’ll be crappie fishing tomorrow. If this is a preview of retirement, sign me up. Once again, I just went to the Ladonia Fossil Park. I hiked downstream, the opposite of the direction I headed last time.
I’m still finding out what my physical capabilities are for this kind of trip. With all my bike riding, my legs are strong, and I’m in great aerobic shape, but at 69 years old, and after almost 50 years of heavy machine shop work, my back and shoulders are pretty cratered. I’m not sure how I’ll hold up for long hikes down treacherous river bottoms, or climbing in and out.
I probably pack my backpack lighter than most here. But after hiking a couple of miles down the river and back today, I feel fine. So, maybe I can hold up to these trips better than I thought. I’m ready to try getting in and out of the river at some other spots. I drove over to the FM2990 bridge and looked at that access. I’ll tackle it, but I’m definitely going to do it on a dry day. That rope climb back up looks tough.
I’d also like to try out the river downstream at 24. A question for those who know the area: Google satellite photos show a lot more water in that area, with hardly any sand bars showing. Is the water that much higher there, or is it just when Google took the photos? Do I need to wait for lower water to try that out? Water level today was 2.08.
I thought this ammonite segment was cool.
And here is a bacculite piece.
But the find of the day was this fish vertebrae.
Every year on my birthday, I ride my age in miles. My birthday this year isn’t actually until Sunday, but with rain forecast for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, today looked like the day for my birthday ride. So I took off on the F-5 shortly after 8:00 am, and rode to Purtis Creek, then on Farm to Market 1861, then on State Highway 19, then back, for 69 miles total. It was cool and breezy at the start, but after a few miles, I wasn’t cold at all. The wind kept blowing, but was a quartering tailwind on most of the return ride. I only do short rides all winter, so this ride is always more than I’m used to, and always wears me out. But there it is, done for another year.
I ended up with 284 total miles ridden in the month of January, and every bit of that was on the Xstream on the trainer. January was actually pretty mild this year, but I worked quite a bit, and just never managed to be able to ride on one of those mild and dry days. I had a serious cold the second week of the month, and only rode 25 miles. That’s why I ended up with less than 300 miles for the month. Still, compared to past Januarys where I did nothing but outside rides, this year’s mileage wasn’t bad.
February was a chillier, wetter month, and I only managed three outdoor rides that month. I ended up with 415 miles for the month, so not bad. March was another wet month, and I only got in five outdoor rides. I ended up with 459 miles for the month. That’s a decent March for me, and I need to keep increasing that mileage as the warmer weather comes. I’ve taken at least a month off work because of the pandemic, so getting my miles in should be easier for at least the next few weeks.
Today’s birthday route.
