Fossilizing

Olivia and I had so much fun fossil hunting with her Brownie troop that we brought Grant and Don back with us the very next day. The kids were into it for about 20 minutes and then spent the rest of the time playing in the water and woods. Grant in Don's cub scout scarf that he was obsessed with for a few days...Don and I couldn't get enough. It is quite addicting, especially when you have successful finds. We found lots of shark teeth and ray mouth plates. Then I found a real treasure... a dolphin tooth - intact!Of course, we didn't know what most of these things were until I took them into work and had a fossil expert i.d. them for us. The dolphin tooth is estimated to be 1.8 - 5 million years old. And as it turns out, the horse tooth that Don found (and was bummed b/c it was "just a horse tooth") may be the find of the day. My colleague believes it came from a rare 3 -toed horse (precursors to the 2-toed). They were much smaller as this tooth is compared to the more common Equus tooth found in Florida. If he is correct, it is approx. 24 million years old! I need to confirm it with the head-honcho vertebrate fossil scientist so we know for sure. I need to get a good picture of the tooth on here...