Here is something I found on a beach. It is about an inch and a half, measuring left to right.
Do you know what it is? It's not a mushroom. I didn't know what it is, but one of my expert readers did.
I'll post what he said below.
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| Two Views of Beach Find in the Palm of My Hand |
You might have seen the recent story about the wedding ring that was found under the seat of a used car by the new owner. It just goes to show how things are lost and how they fall down in cracks and crevices where they remain hidden. Every time I vacuum my car, I check in the vacuum before I dump it out. I usually find coins there.
But another thing to take away from that story is how the person that found the ring tracked down the owner. I guess they tracked the service record of the car.
There is a lot of information kept on people these days. Don't forget that, especially when trying to locate the previous owner of lost items.
Many expensive items have serial numbers or other identifying numbers inscribed on them, sometimes microscopically. Information is sometimes laser-inscribed on expensive diamonds, for example.
Here is the link to the returned ring story.
I thought the mystery object shown above might be a fossil, but wasn't totally sure. It is unusually dense.
I contacted Fred D., who really knows fossils, to see if he could tell me what it is. Of course he could.
Here is what he said. That is a magnum from a small horse. It is part of the wrist assembly. Looks to be very early Pleistocene but my best guess would be Pliocene judging by some of the fossils you have found.
That means it could be 2500 or more years old.
I haven't posted any fossil finds for a while, but think detectorists should know about other kinds of treasures they might find while on a beach besides coins and jewelry. Sometimes different types of things will pop up in your scoop totally unexpectedly.
My first fossil find, which I recognized as something that I should keep even though I didn't know what it was at the time, appeared in my scoop after digging an object in the ocean. Years later I found out what it is.
Anyhow, you can prevent passing up different types of treasures by becoming more broadly aware. That is one thing I try to do in this blog. I try to show a variety of types of treasures besides coins and rings.
Another idea that I promote is that a find is more than a find. It is not only an object to keep, but also something that should be studied and can provide important information.
Any object you might see or might dig up can provide useful information. That is one reason I seldom use discrimination. A pull tab or any other item that you find on a beach or in the water tells you something about how items are being moved and distributed, and therefore where you will find different types of things. Finding a fossil can tell you that there is a source of old (very old) things that has been exposed somewhere not too far away.
There is just a little time left to enter your response for the poll.
Treasure Coast Beach Treasure Detecting Forecast and Conditions.
Yesterday I was very surprised to see a two to four foot cut on one beach. The beach I showed a few days ago with the mushy one foot cut, got cut some more. In front of the cut, though, was still a lot of mushy sand, and in front of that extending out into the water was even more sand. My rating for finding old shipwreck cobs is still poor, but there are still other things to be found.
I thought I was going to have a photo of the cut for you, but asked my wife to take the photo, and somehow, she totally missed the cut. I really don't know how she managed that.
The wind will be out the the south/southeast for the next few days and the seas running down around one to three feet.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
