I collect fossils as well. Mostly the NC Megalodon shark teeth but I've got mammoth, mastodon, Pleistecene horses, etc, and a hadrasaur egg, etc from all over. Even some Texas mosasaur verts!
In 2009, I sold the collection of a longtime NC collector that was accidentally killed at a phosphate mine. He and a retired friend had gone to a private quarry with permission and set up a table in an unused place. His friend would bring him buckets of matrix to screen. Apparently they set up too close to a hill and vibrations from equiptment shook the hill loose, and he was buried alive.
This incident sent ripples of fear through the quarries, and most were closed to hunting. Even the big TexasGulf mine, that has turned out tons of superb fossils, has been closed the last two years to hunting. Before that, hunters had to go through training and be a part of a monitored group within a defined area. Hunters had to wear hard hats and steel toed shoes, etc. Now no one can recover these exquisite fossils in the mine. However, the Aurora Fossil Museum has truckloads of the matrix brought in to town, where it fills the Aurora town square up to 5' deep. There, hunters can hunt and dig and sift all day long for free and in safety. A lot of smaller shark teeth are found in the piles, but I saw a boy find a nice 3" meg a year or two ago. BTW, by experiment, a 5 gallon bucket of matrix from 40' down will yield OVER 500 shark teeth!
In 2009, I sold the collection of a longtime NC collector that was accidentally killed at a phosphate mine. He and a retired friend had gone to a private quarry with permission and set up a table in an unused place. His friend would bring him buckets of matrix to screen. Apparently they set up too close to a hill and vibrations from equiptment shook the hill loose, and he was buried alive.
This incident sent ripples of fear through the quarries, and most were closed to hunting. Even the big TexasGulf mine, that has turned out tons of superb fossils, has been closed the last two years to hunting. Before that, hunters had to go through training and be a part of a monitored group within a defined area. Hunters had to wear hard hats and steel toed shoes, etc. Now no one can recover these exquisite fossils in the mine. However, the Aurora Fossil Museum has truckloads of the matrix brought in to town, where it fills the Aurora town square up to 5' deep. There, hunters can hunt and dig and sift all day long for free and in safety. A lot of smaller shark teeth are found in the piles, but I saw a boy find a nice 3" meg a year or two ago. BTW, by experiment, a 5 gallon bucket of matrix from 40' down will yield OVER 500 shark teeth!
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