Erik In Panama: Amazing fossil finds

Rock crater!

Artiodactyl molar found by yours truly.

I thought I was on my game early in the week with my slightly unhealthy fossil oyster obsession, but perspective is everything and I now know that Monday was nothing. Wednesday and Thursday were my real days to shine. Both were spent just across from the oyster site, at a terrestrial section that Aaron and Nicole had described earlier. On the first day, I was sent on a scouting mission to get as far up the hill slope as I could and to surface prospect for fossils in all of the beds I found on my way up. The difficulty in doing so was that part-way up the hill there was a plateau with a drainage running through it. Remember, we've been working in the canal expansion zone so we're actually below the water level of the adjacent Panama Canal. As a consequence, water is constantly being pumped out of the lowest-lying areas and all of it is eventually funneled into a kind of river that flows over our hill and back out into the canal. Since it's the dry season, the water wasn't very deep at all, nor was it very wide, so at first I had hoped to find a potential crossing. But once I got in close I realized there would be no hope of that - after five (or so) years of construction site water flowing through the area, the river's bed and banks were made up almost entirely of an ultra-fine clay mud that I instantly sank down in to. I poked some of the wetter-looking areas with a stick and was able to sink it in about three feet with virtually no resistance (as I continued to walk around looking for a crossing, I discovered that it was exceptionally fun to throw rocks into this mud and watch them disappear entirely). I did manage to find a way over to the other side though, by walking all the way to the far side of the hill where the "river" was piped under a service road. At first in all seemed to be for naught and I had no luck at all finding even the most meager of fossils, but finally, on my way back around to report to the group, I spotted a silver dollar-sized piece of turtle shell and a molar in some debris that had shed off from a conglomeratic layer! Aaron and the others drove the truck around to the service road to meet up with me and we had a wonderful afternoon finding tooth after tooth (mostly from horses and camels) as well as scattered turtle bones and even a partial rhinoceros jaw. I wish I could take credit for that one! When it came time to leave, I actually found myself sad to go and already anxious to return the next day.

And my anticipation was not unfounded! On Thursday we returned to the same hill and I made the greatest fossil discovery of my entire life. The pictures will speak for themselves, so all I'll say is that when I first spotted it, so little was exposed that I assumed it was only a tiny fragment. I couldn't believe my eyes as I continued to expose more and more of it - it seemed endless!