Shark Tooth Hill Fossil Shark Tooth Dig : October 1, 2005

Caldigger clued me in on this trip. I quickly donned the tooth hunting gear and headed out to my private jet (which i keep at northwest airlines and let them use it, with their name on it too). I was soon out in lovely LA fighting the 2:30pm traffic jam. Just a four short hours later I had completed my 1.5 hour drive. No matter, the promise of virgin fossil bed awated me bright and early in the morning. I got up with my fossil bud Ira and we met caldigger at his place to carpool. Caldigger set us up to get there before everyone else - sweet. Met digger-daddy and listened to the jedi-tooth-master talk, trying to soak it up. He brought with him some of his amazing finds, STH Benedeni, giant seal teeth, a 3.25 inch hastalis (brought a tear to my eye), just to name a few. We got a quick overview of the technique and got to work. Caldigger was a wiley veteran and claimed and area with a hole started. I, the eager but foolish newbie to the area, had to start my own hole. I chose a spot next to caldigger and got to work. Took a while to get the hole started, but soon afterwards I was rewarded. I saw a really gorgeous color planus, and reached for it. As I did, a realized i had an incredible colored hastalis just laying on the bottom of my hole, it must have fallen off a piece of clay that I knocked loose. It was 2.5 and beautiful creamy yellow and hints of blue. With renewed vigor, i pulled a couple more nice hastalis teeth, and a large number of various colored planus teeth. Two holes down, another digger was into a seal pit, pulling 3 or 4 teeth from his hole. I had a pretty nice hall for the day. Day 2 opens up and we decide to try a new area. I unfortunately choose the one bare spot surrounded by people pulling teeth left and right. After about 2-3 hours, i can’t take that I have only found 2 small teeth and decide to try a new area. I walk around and try to use ‘the force’ to find the right spot to start. However, obi-wan is not speaking to me today. One of the area vets is and suggests a spot kinda off by itself, not far from a large sections of baleen whale jaw bone. Ironically enough, I heard ‘did you find all the teeth’ (from the whale jaw) at least 3 times while i was there. I suppose both Yes and No are correct answers to that question. Anyway...I start my hole and am getting nothing. While i expect that in my love-life, I can’t tolerate that in my toothin’ experiences. Finally, I start to pull broken stuff. A 3.25 inch seal canine, a planus,and then I see something unusual. It is a desmostylus tooth. The STH museum lists it as a ‘sea-cow’, but digger-daddy assures me that it is distant cousin of the hippor or rhino. It was busted up, but it was also the only one I saw come out over the weekend and the locals were pretty charged up about it. Digger-daddy just taunted me by showing me a complete one, about 3x the size, grrrrrrrr. As it is the only one like it in my collection, i was pleased. I dug some more and was getting nothing. Then as i was telling Ira I was going to leave, out plops a nice planus. A couple more shovels, and same deal - i say ‘i am going to move’ and out plops a planus. So, clearly realizing the trick, i quickly say ‘i am going to move’ with every shovel full and I keep pulling planus teeth from this spot. I pulled about 15-20 in 10 minutes from a small hole. then as quickly as it started, it was done :( , and so was the dig time.