Post a picture you took in the last week.

[Fish Felon]

Anyone else into fossil hunting at all? Trying to find bison bones and such?

East Central MN doesn't have much for fossils. Most of it was covered in ice, then water in the form of large glacial lakes. The geology of the area isn't very conducive for fossil creation, and even if it was the area didn't have the pre-historic massive game migrations to create lots of opportunities for stuff to become fossilized. Out in the Dakotas, or even Iowa outside the area of the Des Moines lobe, finding fossils are extremely easy. All you have to do is look. There are places where I could take anyone who's never done it and we'd come back with a couple giant bison skulls. All the stuff in the ice age was Huge. Moose, beaver, cougars [cats], mastodons obviously, and bison.....the bison we have today had ancestors back then that were three times the size. When there's tens of millions of them migrating in massive herds.....whenever they crossed a river? A whole bunch of old, weak, young, and sick got stuck in the mud on the bank and then trampled by the remainder of the herd behind them. There were 65-80 million bison pre-settlement and their decimation lead to the last of the great Buffalo hunts taking place in SW ND by Hettinger during the late 1880's.

That's 65-80 million at one time....one day in history not much more than a couple hundred years ago on that day there were that many alive and roaming the prairie....now think of that many bison living thousands of years and dying....how many generations came and went.....we're talking Billions of head of bison cumulatively.

So they are exceedingly common in places like the Dakotas once you get on the rivers, which are largely the same ones today that the bison had to cross back then. There's more water from damming a lot of it but that actually helps finding fossils. That water digs away at hillsides they died on and then were covered with layers of sediment over millenia.

Anyways, I never find shit in this part of MN so I was pretty thrilled to find some stuff today being that any and every flowing waterway is low as hell and exposing layers of sediment that haven't had their time meet present day since....well, 33 years was the last time.

Pretty cool imo.....

[Quack]

Very cool. My bro found a good sized arrowhead once just walking along shore after picking up decoys.

I haven’t “looked hard” for more but I always keep my eyes open. Maybe with the low water this year I’ll finally get lucky


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[lickmyvowels]

Last year

[lickmyvowels]

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[lickmyvowels]

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[Fish Felon]

Bad Freaking Ass. Were you able to figure out what it is Gimp?

Right now my initial guess is that what I found came from a giant beaver....the long extinct prehistoric species, not a really large modern beaver.

[Fish Felon]

Very cool. My bro found a good sized arrowhead once just walking along shore after picking up decoys.

I haven’t “looked hard” for more but I always keep my eyes open. Maybe with the low water this year I’ll finally get lucky


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It's one of those deals where making your first find is the most difficult, but then it's all downhill from there. You'll get an eye for it and start seeing stuff you would've previously walked right by. Fossil hunting is kind of like morel hunting in that regard.

The biggest thing is similar to most things in success largely being location , location, location and knowing the right places to look.....which is largely determined by when to look.....which is whenever old dirt becomes freshly exposed. Small rivers and streams where banks get undercut and fall in, or when the water is really low have been where I've had luck. I'm not claiming to be an expert but the last two times I've found stuff I've told the people I was with I was going to go find some old bones or fossils. I knew the conditions were ripe and it was worth the time to look....one of the times I was duck hunting the other time yesterday I was fishing....so I guess part of it is taking a break from what your original purpose for being out there is to look.

Oh, and once you find something....keep looking nearby.....you'll find a lot more if you do. Animals don't become fossilized in pieces separate of one another. The animal died whole and was fossilized whole. It most stayed in the sediment it's in whole until being unearthed....that's when their pieces get strewn about, but usually they're not too far from each other.

[kwackkillncrew]

when i fly out to the villages for work i always go walk up and down the beaches looking for stuff. Granted most the stuff i find is not super old but i got quite a few vertebrae and what not from seals and walrus. Grabbed a few baleen from kaktovik when i was up there. Got to be sneaky with alot of the stuff that is protected by the marine mammal act. When ever there is a big storm that erodes the banks the natives are always out looking for stuff. If you lived up there its not to difficult to come across mammoth tusks/teeth/bones.

[Stute Slap]

I found an indian "mall" or sludge hammer on my property next to the Blue Earth river. I showed it to the state archeologist and he told me what it was and that it was used for breaking bones to access marrow.

I'd post pic but don't even know how anymore. lol

[Stute Slap]

FF what is that??