A Local Find with National Scientific Significance.Look near the center of the bone in the photo to see the carving of a mammoth.
There are all kinds of treasures. Some people are focused on shipwrecks and gold coins. Other people are focused on diamonds and gems. And other people focus on things that change scientific thought.
The above carved bone was found near Vero and was recently inspected by researchers at the Smithsonian who did not find anything to suggest that the carving was not authentic. There is nothing particularly earth shattering about a carved bone, but this one dates back to around the end of the Ice Age, which was about 12,000 years ago, and suggests that there were humans living at that time right here on the Treasure Coast along with extinct animals such as the mammoth.
Before being studies by the Smithsonian, researchers from the University of Florida studied the carving and with similar results.
Here is something mentioned in Mr. Jones' TCPalm article that provides a useful hint.
"In early 2009, local fossil collector James Kennedy cleaned off an old bone he found two years earlier and noticed some lines on it — lines that turned out to be a clear etching of a walking mammoth with tusks."
I always recommend keeping finds until you have studied them thoroughly and are sure you know what they are. Mr. Kennedy had this important bone for two years before he finally cleaned it off and discovered the carving.
I've kept cobs for at least that long before cleaning them off. I wanted to make sure I knew how to approach the task before attempting it.
But if you keep objects, like Mr. Kennedy did, you will often later discover something about them that you failed to notice earlier. Sometimes you will also learn something that will make you see the object in a new light.
My advice is to keep anything that might have any mystery to it at all, occasionally take it out and inspect it using whatever new tools, techniques and knowledge that you might have access to. Sometimes it is almost like finding a new item when you discover something new about an old item.
Here is the link to the article about the Vero Man bone carving.
http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2010/oct/20/smithsonian-does-not-dispute-authenticity-of-in/
Remember there are many types of treasure that are not metallic, so keep your eyes open when you are metal detecting.
Talking about nonmetallic treasure, I recently mentioned olive jars in some recent posts, and in the past I've mentioned the K'anh Hsi pottery that is sometimes found on the sites of 1715 Fleet wrecks.
If you are interested in the ceramics of the Spanish galleons, here is a link to a digital book that will be of interest to you.
http://books.google.com/books?id=-4q8LQ4WA90C&pg=PA44&dq=spanish+shipwreck&hl=en&ei=XG3ATMEYgoLyBo65uf0G&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=spanish%20shipwreck&f=false
You can go to the table of contents and then select any section you wish to look at.
You might also want to look at the illustrations.
Pot shards are often found on the beach. It will help you to be able to identify the shards of the shipwrecks. Such shards can provide valuable clues to the informed detectorist.
A broad knowledge base will help you many ways in the hobby of metal detecting.
The SedwickCoins auction begins the second day at 10:30 this morning (Eastern).
The moon was beautiful this morning. It would have made perfectt Halloween photo.
Forecast and Conditions.
As you know the seas have been calm lately. The high tides have been unusually high. That might make for some interesting low tide browsing next week.
The seas will be increasing Saturday, reaching a height of about 4.5 feet Sunday. That is normally not enought to do much good, but this time it might be helped by north winds, which could create a few small cuts on the beach fronts if we are lucky.
Tropical storm Richard seems to be headed towards Yucutan. Two more disturbances are coming off of Africa.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
