Fossils keep me from getting skunked again Options

[MontanaLon]

Being in Illinois we have gold but it is few and far between. Luckily for me we have lots of fossils. Make that tons of fossils. I have a pretty good collection of various sea creatures from the far distant past that I have picked out of my material while looking for gold. They range in size from 2" down to 1mm. To tell you the truth it almost gets downright boring finding fossils. Crinoids make up the bulk of them with corals a distant second. In a good bucket of gravel it is about normal to find 100+ crinoids if I spend the time looking. Mostly I don't spend the time and just pick out the larger ones that pop into view as I am feeding the highbanker.

Today as I was feeding it I saw something different, much larger than crinoids and not of marine origin. So I pocketed it and kept feeding the beast.

Got home and confirmed my suspicion that it is either a horse or buffalo tooth. It is unusual in that I have never found anything like it or even suspected I would. I have heard there are not so ancient fossils out there from ice age animals and I guess this is just one example. Now I need to find a mammoth tooth.



And no there is no gold filling in it.