Returning the Artifact

The last day of da fossz's 3 day plunder had arrived. RivrDigrFest was winding down and a fossil rich Edisto awaited We hungry fossil hunters. Rivrdigr arrived a little late - he was getting his Phos-foot on and got pinched by the man. Its all good - he assured us he has a budget line item for fossil related speeding tickets. I was finally able to return the Shovel of the Digr +2, entrusted to me on our BRFC day trip to Aurora last spring. I had used its powerful magics several times to extract large serrated objects in the river, but as we all know, magical implements have minds of their own, and this one craved Peace River booty, like its rightful master. Awwwwwww yah...

When we're underwater, we don't communicate much. Its tough to keep in touch really because you can't see very far. So I didn't really see anybody else much of the rest of the day. I was picking up a lot of teeth in one area. Then the layer started running out so I moved to another spot. I was fanning the sand, and there was RivrDigr. Just then I saw the telltale snout of a whale - with a tooth sticking out. The top of the skull was gone, as was the top of the snout. This thing had been eroding out for a while. Still, It was amazing to see that first glimpse of something cool. I dug around and revealed several more teeth. I realized I had a lot of good stuff here, so I started digging deep to try to remove a block. Unfortunately, this whale sat in a thin area of soft ashley directly above an uneven, rocky base. I dug back about 6 inches and the soft clay started eroding immediately in the swift current. Then, the rocks at the base started to loosen and crumble away. Finally, the bone started flaking away like in the movies where something turns to sand and blows away. The teeth remained intact for the most part. Some lost roots, and I was able to recover a few but not all. I did manage to get the piece of jaw with the first tooth I saw underwater. All in all its a cool find, but I am shocked again how fragmented these things are sometimes. I have never found one where the bones were unbroken when I found them. Every single skull I ever find is already broken. I heard somewhere that the high number of earthquakes in Summerville inflicts tremendous damage to fragile fossils in soft deposits. I immediately took each fragile tooth one by one back to the boat. There is no way any of them could have survived in a dive bag.