This was an exciting trip.

This was the first “field trip” since launching American Fossil Hunt. Call it the very start of a slow and potentially lifelong project to document all remaining and rapidly disappearing public fossil hunting sites in the United States. I hope to visit 2-3 each year, with 2017 being the informal launch. If this is your first time here, please stop by the About Page.

American Fossil Hunt Trip Report
Peace River, near Arcadia, Florida
January 2017

It took me some time after learning about the Peace River to finally take the trip from Chicago.

I stayed for a week, with family in Cape Coral, Florida. It was not near the Peace River, actually a little over an hours drive each way. Despite this commute, I still made it to the Peace River on 3 separate occasions during the 7-day trip. Below is a breakdown of each trip to the river, and accompanying photos for each.

Day 1: Fossil Funatics Tour

There are several guides in the area, hardcore hobbyists and fossil hunters, who have made businesses of taking people out on the Peace River. A quick google search will yield several results of tour guides who take guests out for a reasonable fee ($40-110 per person, based on how many people and how far the trip). With guides providing the tools, experience, knowledge, water, and snacks, the fee is well worth it. I searched through these tours, websites, and reviews and narrowed my first outing down to 2 potential guides, Fossil Funatics and Fossil Expeditions.

Both are good options, but Fossil Funatics had a date that had room for an extra so I signed up immediately for that Friday. We met at 8am at a small diner in a small town, about 30 minutes north of Arcadia, Florida. We were not hunting the actual Peace River, but rather, one of the many tributary streams leading into it.

I will refer you to Fossil Funatics and their tour service for the actual name of this creek, I am not in the business of sharing collector’s spots, unless they are common knowledge or I found them on my own.
We launched at about 8:30am, there were 3 people on the tour, 4 including Patrick, our knowledgable guide for the day.
The creek was not very deep and was easily walkable for the distance we were going, and probably much further. The canoe helped to carry the gear and snacks provided by Patrick. It was a beautiful river, my pictures hardly do it justice.

The walk to the location where we were to start digging was about 30 minutes, with a few stops along the way.

After getting to our spot, we unloaded the needed gear: a home-made sifter, a large garden shovel, and a broken off golf club, for probing the bottom for gravel, and holding the sifter in place.

We started finding teeth almost immediately. Many types, that I learned to be hemi, tiger, lemon, and dusky shark. Other common finds were stingray teeth, and bone fragments.

At about the mid-day mark, I took a very short break from digging and sifting, and fell back on my Midwestern habits of looking for fossils weathering out of bare hills and water banks. “Do you guys ever check the banks at all?” I said. And at the end of that very sentence, this beast caught my eye. We were sitting RIGHT next to it for several hours with nobody noticing! Below is a mock in-situ shot of what it looked like. It was slightly more covered by dirt, you can almost see the difference in color where a full ~2 inches of the tip was sticking out.

I cannot understate what a find this is. Yes, we were finding some small Megaladon Tooth fragments, and considered those great finds of the day. To find a near complete one of this size is almost unheard of for the area. It was just over 3.75” and still retained much of its enamel and serrations.

I cannot say we topped that find, but still stayed out several more hours until calling it a day.
Below is an image of a majority of finds from Day 1. There is a link at the bottom of this post for the full finds report.

I highly recommend Fossil Funatics as a tour guide, and I’m thankful he had a group I could join during my trip. He is true nature-enthusiast and fossil hunter, a very like-minded collector, and honest individual that I would more than gladly collect with again. More trip reports and reviews are on Fossil Funatics Facebook.

Day 2: Peace River, Brownville Park

The next day after the Fossil Funatics trip, some members of the Fossil Forum and I were planning to do a group trip (one of them I met in the aforementioned Mazon Creek dig a few years ago). However, the weather did not work out. The temperature dropped and it rained nearly all day across most of Central Florida, so we called it off and we were unable to find another day that worked for us.

They were kind enough to share some tips, boat launches, and dig spots for me to go solo, so I went Sunday to their recommended spots. It was a cold day still, with a high of about 55 degrees, but the sun was shining and the wind was low so it was a pleasant day, especially compared to Chicago’s 10 degrees. Below is the location of the boat ramp where I launched my inflatable kayak.

The spot I was going to was about a 15 minute paddle downstream. It is a well-known gravel bed, near a tall cyprus tree. The approximate location is in the map below. Zoom out a bit and you can see the Brownville Park boat ramp.

The digging here was quite good. As I mentioned it was a chilly day, so I was the only one on the water. I did see someone fishing, they caught a nice bass a little upstream from here. Surprising for how shallow the water was. The timing for this trip was quite good, as most of the water was about as low as it gets throughout the year. Had the area been going through a rain spell, the whole trip might have been a bust.

I did not get as many photos of this dig, since I was by myself. But the one thing that is worth mentioning is that the tributary creek I was on a few days before, had fantastic colors in the teeth. On the Peace River proper, the teeth are mostly grey and black. This is because of the minerals present in the soil in different areas. Below is a shot of 2 teeth, one from the creek, and one from the river.
You can see the full spectrum here. Again, the fossils from the Peace River on the right are much darker.
This trip was just a few hours, and it took a bit longer to paddle back up stream back ot the ramp but it was not too difficult. I tried looking for other spots on the way back, but the waist-deep water, and mostly sandy bottom was less than ideal, and there were not any spots between this gravel bed and the boat ramp where I launched.

Day 3: Peace River, Canoe Outpost Gardner

The third and final trip on the Peace River brought me to Charlie Creek, an area recommended by Patrick, my guide from a few days earlier. This was just one boat ramp north of the one I had launched at prior.

The paddle to Charlie Creek was not far at all, and the creek bed was very shallow and filled with gravel, a good sign for shark teeth. I found a very nice alligator tooth here, about an inch long.

And again, the water was very shallow and collecting was very easy here. Though I did not find it as rich as the first creek I hunted, or necessarily any better than than the day before. But it was nice weather, and a very photogenic area.
Again, this was a relatively short solo trip, so I headed back to the boat ramp with plenty of sun left in the day. And I am glad I did because right at this boat launch, there is a very large and productive gravel bed. I spent about an hour there. The bottom was limestone, so the shovel and sifting was restricted to about the first foot or so of the bottom.

And my going home parting gift? On the last scoop of the day, I pulled this monster out. Within eyesight of the boat ramp.

The last find puts the trip very much in perspective. Some people say that the Peace River and certain creeks get too much fossil collecting traffic, and the area is getting very picked over, you have to travel further and further to get to the “good stuff.” And to them I can prove there are nice Megalodon Teeth right next to the boat ramp.

Trip Overview: Peace River, Florida

The trip’s success can be credited mostly to ideal water conditions. From what I am told, the water levels can vary several feet, making some of the spots I was collecting all but impossible to get to. During my trip, the first week of January, the water was nearly as low as it gets throughout the year, perfect for collecting and kayaking. Compared to midwestern rivers, the Peace is very natural, only intersecting with a few slow country roads, and the very occasional house. I can see why there are so many canoe trip and fossil guides that frequent these waters. The slow, winding river is a great trip, not just for fossil collectors, but vacationers too.

For when I return to try my hand at collecting this river again, I would definitely be connecting with Fossil Funatics, to enjoy the company and new spots that Patrick finds. I would also paddle further upstream from the Canoe Outpost Garder. I spoke with someone at the boat ramp, who was also collecting teeth, who said that 2-3 miles upstream from there (a few hours’ paddle) the fossil collecting is quite good. Unfortunately, this was the closest public boat ramp to access that area, and I did not have enough days left in my trip to make the journey.

The full haul of fossils and bones from the trip is below. And I will be posting detailed photos and information on my finds on the Fossil Forum. Links to higher quality photos of my finds are below:
http://americanfossilhunt.com/peace-river-trip-finds-january-4-11-2017/

http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/71528-first-timer-to-the-peace-river-american-fossil-hunt/

If you are traveling to the Peace River for fossil collecting, you may find some value in my field guide.

It is priced at 5.25, because I wrote the book as a first-time collector of the region. I will add pages as my travels allow. Hopefully one trip each year or every 2 years, I really had a great time and this could be my new winter escape from Chicago.