My first trip to the Peace River this year

I had spoken with a good friend of mine about the possibility of taking a Saturday trip down to the Peace River for some fossil hunting. My friend, Dan, has two daughters that are science nuts and love collecting fossils. His youngest is crazy about fossils and geology in general so I knew that they would enjoy getting out. In the past I had provided all of the equipment for screening but since this could be a regular thing I gave my buddy some instructions on how to build screens for his family. Needless to say, he was all proud of his handy work so that made me excited to see what kind of a fossil screen craftsman he really was.

We agreed on a time and place to meet. From the meeting place we then made our way over to the river access. After getting out of our vehicles, Dan showed me his screens and I must say he did a superb job and we were both anxious to start putting them to good use. To get up and down the river I was equipped with a kayak and Dan had a canoe. Since the place I wanted to go wasn't very far downstream we decided to take a little boat trip first; eat lunch and then paddle back upstream to hunt. The weather was perfect and I couldn't have ordered up a better day if I tried.

After a nice lunch we paddled back upstream and found a nice gravel bar to work so we parked the boats and got to work. The stream was pretty shallow, about a foot deep, and the sediment accumulation on top of the limestone bottom in the area was about the same. After a few fruitless screens I decided to switch over to a mask and snorkel. Of course once my buddy and his daughters witnessed me do that they wanted to do the same. Unfortunately, they did not bring any masks and snorkels but I had an extra set for the kids to share time with. Dan got back to screening and I started fanning the bottom and it wasn't long before we started finding some meg pieces. It was a good spot and there were many excited calls of "meg"! I found a few whole but worn ones and a number of pieces-parts. I did find a ton of decent dugong rib pieces, a nice unidentified toe bone and a couple nice horse teeth. Dan and his girls found several meg pieces and a couple whole ones as well as a smattering of smaller teeth. After about 5 hours of hunting we called it a day and headed back to the cars. A good day was had by all and I know we both have the bug bad so I'm sure that as long as the river stays down I will be making many more trips down there this summer.

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