15,000 Year Old Discovery of Lifetime

Donneybrook

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Jun 24, 2013
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Hey y'all! Been a while since I last posted. I know this isn't a metal detecting find, but I knew y'all history nuts would appreciate it. Recently I found this fossilized 15,000+ year old Tapirus Veroensis jawbone (Vero Tapir). By far my best find ever. Came straight out of a North Florida creek. Absolutely baller. The restoration process was a nightmare :laughing: Hope you enjoy the pictures and video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=374LL5TEfAE&t=10s
 

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Cool find. I like paleontology as well as metal detecting.

I helped out on a Mastodon excavation back in 1999. National Geographic partially funded it. A coffer dam was built by the county, and a pipe installed to to divert the water around the spot where most of the Mastodon bones were located.

The setting was some kind of ancient river bed or slough. We collected and identified a lot of fossilized bone other than the Mastodon from the spoil of the dredging that had initially exposed the Mastodon. I believe Tapier elements were included in that collection along with the bones of many other late Pleistocene fauna. Not surprisingly a lot of whitetail deer bone was found. I even found a fossilized shed antler. Initial uncalibrated radio carbon dates for the Mastodon were roughly 12,000 b.p. in age.

There is a web page that talks about it.

http://www.clt.astate.edu/jmorrow/the_king_mastodon_site.htm
 
Cool find. I like paleontology as well as metal detecting.

I helped out on a Mastodon excavation back in 1999. National Geographic partially funded it. A coffer dam was built by the county, and a pipe installed to to divert the water around the spot where most of the Mastodon bones were located.

The setting was some kind of ancient river bed or slough. We collected and identified a lot of fossilized bone other than the Mastodon from the spoil of the dredging that had initially exposed the Mastodon. I believe Tapier elements were included in that collection along with the bones of many other late Pleistocene fauna. Not surprisingly a lot of whitetail deer bone was found. I even found a fossilized shed antler. Initial uncalibrated radio carbon dates for the Mastodon were roughly 12,000 b.p. in age.

There is a web page that talks about it.

http://www.clt.astate.edu/jmorrow/the_king_mastodon_site.htm

Dude sorry for the late response. That’s awesome!! That’s a dream dig I’d kill to be on.
 
I like seeing fossil finds. It's possible to find them where I live, but it requires boating or wading. Freshly dredged ditches and streams are the places to look where I live. A semi-complete Paleo Lama was found several years ago. I know of an Elk-Moose or Stag-Moose skull from near here. There is probably a quite a lot of late Pleistocene fauna eroding out of the banks of streams around here, but very few people are out looking for them.
 
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