watch for alligators

On vacation in Florida, I went on a fossil expedition with Mark Renz, author, guide, and amateur paleontologist. I discovered when I booked the trip that Mark had been featured on the Travel Channel's Cash and Treasures show. The trip ended up being one of the best vacation activities ever.

Before the trip I figured that we'd be in shallow water digging for dinosaur bones and I thought maybe I'd find a few interesting things. I had no idea we'd be in three to four feet of water, where a six or seven foot alligator is known to live.

It was great. MKH was asked to watch for alligators and we put on our wet suits, waded in and began to dig and sift through the silt. There didn't seem to be any alligators, snapping turtles or water moccasins around so MKH read a book and my group and I dug up fossils for nearly 5 hours.

I found 100 fossilized shark teeth from numerous extinct sharks, a tiny fossilized deer antler, and a variety of bone fragments and interesting odds and ends. I found a small piece from a giant armadillo shell. This extinct armadillo species was the size of a VW Bug and could have weighed as much as 2 tons.

The best part of the trip was that our guide, Mark Renz, easily identified everything we found. It's one thing to find some weird looking thing in the water, and quite another thing to have someone with you who can say, "Oh, that's a casting from an earthworm or reed. The native Indians used those for beads." or "That's a part of grinding plate from an extinct stingray."

I found Fossil Expeditions on the internet and for $65 Mark supplied the shovels, screens, wetsuits and guiding services. We got to keep everything we found. If I get a chance to go back to Florida on vacation I'll probably go on another fossil expedition.