Fossil or Archeological Discovery? Mineral Find?

[Linstrum]

This afternoon I was out digging in my back yard when I hit a large circular white object down about a foot deep. On closer inspection it appeared to be bone of some kind, maybe a femur or tibia from an imperial mammoth, judging from the size of it. After carefully removing a ton or two more of rock and soil it soon became evident that it was not a large leg bone, but some kind of huge pottery artifact, perhaps what members of the ancient group of ice-age hunters called by paleoanthropologists Clovis Man had used for cooking up some imperial mammoth soup or saber tooth cat stew in. I knew that is what it was because imperial mammoth and saber tooth cat bones along with Clovis flint points have been found within three miles of here. After a few more seconds of carefully gouging out several more tons of dirt and rock with my tractor loader, the entire complexion of my discovery changed again, it had gone all the way from seeming to be an ancient fossil find to an ancient archeological find to what now seemed to be a mineral find! Some kind of huge crystals of some exotic mineral covered with a white substance is what it was for sure! It just had to be! I stopped for another half second of more careful thought and contemplation before resuming my careful diesel-powered excavation of the backyard, having arrived at the conclusion that the mineral I had found was a species that is lately becoming rarer by the day: I had found a fairly large deposit of plumballistite! Wholly leadboolits, Batman! I had just made a rather weighty find! Wheel-weighty, that is. Now that I knew what I had, I started digging in earnest to remove the last few cubic yards of dirt that had kept my treasure hidden for, well, almost twenty months.

Well, shoot, here’s what really happened. In 2005 the county zoning inspector gave me a visit to investigate a complaint about burned trees in my backyard from a big brush fire that had come through earlier and burned up the neighborhood including my place. Turned out that burned trees are not against the law to have in your backyard, but buckets of ANYTHING kept outside are. Go figure! The zoning inspector took a look at my seven 5-gallon buckets full of wheel weights and said that I couldn’t store anything like that outside. She told me I had to put it inside or get rid of it. Heck with that! Inside is where I keep my food, dishes, guns, reloading equipment, piano, clothing, furniture, TV, stamp collection, and other nice stuff, not groady old buckets of wheel weights full of moldy rainwater and spiderbugs! But I didn’t have any place to put them out of sight because my barn had just burned down. Where on earth could I put them until the inspector came back and signed off the place? Why, IN the earth, of course! After all, that is where they came from. A few days ago I ran out of prepared ingots of boolit metal and it was time to prepare more, so this Easter I didn’t do an Easter egg hunt, I did a hidden boolit metal hunt! Yup, got boolit metal, will cast!

I'm back in the workshop again.

Castin’ boolits once more,
Totin' my old forty four
Where you cast ‘n load all night
It’s the one hobby that’s right
I'm back in the workshop again.

With apologies to both Richard Boone and Gene Autry

[Junior1942]

Two points: (1) you ought to move some place where you can keep any dang thing you want in your yard, front yard included; and (2) American Indians didn't get pottery until many thousands of years after Clovis man.

[C A Plater]

First time I've heard of using a backhoe associated with bullet casting.

[NVcurmudgeon]

I made my own ancient find yesterday. The gentle Washoe Zephyr had taken out about 100' of fence last winter, (2 X 6s on 4X4 posts.) While keeping the fence post concrete wet, I wandered around picking up odd bits of newly surfaced glass, plastic, metal, and fabric. The area has been white eyes occupied for probably 150 years, and is now mostly one to 2 1/2 acre lots, with a few remaining ranches, all fiercely defended against the Octopus of the North, AKA sprawling Reno. Besides two square nails, I found a broken piece of cast iron or steel, bearing mysterious letters, "R-V-E-S." The curvature of this 4" long object furnished an important clue to its origin. With my vast experience in agricultural archaelogy, I quickly determined that I was looking at a piece of a wheel from a piece of nineteenth or twentieth century farm equipment, and that the missing letters are "I-N-T-E-R-N-A-T-I-O-N-A-L-H-A-T-E-R. The dig goes on. Please send contributions to Professor Curmudgeon, Pleasant Valley, NV. It is almost criminal how difficult it is to obtain Federal grants with the Republicans in power.

[NVcurmudgeon]

I made my own ancient find yesterday. The gentle Washoe Zephyr had taken out about 100' of fence last winter, (2 X 6s on 4X4 posts.) While keeping the fence post concrete wet, I wandered around picking up odd bits of newly surfaced glass, plastic, metal, and fabric. The area has been white eyes occupied for probably 150 years, and is now mostly one to 2 1/2 acre lots, with a few remaning ranches, all fiercely defended against the Octopus of the North, AKA sprawling Reno. Besides two square nails, I found a broken piece of cast iron or steel, bearing mysterious letters, "R-V-E-S." The curvature of this 4" long object furnished an important clue to its origin. With my vast experience in agricultural archaelogy, I quickly determined that I was looking at a piece of a wheel from a piece of nineteenth or twentieth century farm equipment, and that the missing letters are "I-N-T-E-R-N-A-T-I-O-N-A-L-H-A-R-T-E-R. The dig goes on. Please send contributions to Professor Curmudgeon, Pleasant Valley, NV. It is almost criminal how difficult it is to obtain Federal grants with the Republicans in power.

[Junior1942]

A check is in the mail. It's payable through the West Bank of the Mississippi.

[Scrounger]

First time I've heard of using a backhoe associated with bullet casting.

I'll Honcho a group buy on that one!

[Bigjohn]

Either, some of you guy's have wayyy too much time on ya hands or you have been leaning too far over ya casting pots. [smilie=1: :-D

But I will say you have managed to give me my first chuckle for the day, thank you.:-D :-D

John

[waksupi]

Paleoanthropology Division
Smithsonian Institute
207 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20078

Dear Sir:

Thank you for your latest submission to the Institute, labeled "211-D, layer seven, next to the clothesline post. Hominid skull." We have given this specimen a careful and detailed examination, and regret to inform you that we disagree with your theory that it represents "conclusive proof of the presence of Early Man in Charleston County two million years ago." Rather, it appears that what you have found is the head of a Barbie doll, of the variety one of our staff, who has small children, believes to be the "Malibu Barbie". It is evident that you have given a great deal of thought to the analysis of this specimen, and you may be quite certain that those of us who are familiar with your prior work in the field were loathe to come to contradiction with your findings. However, we do feel that there are a number of physical attributes of the specimen which might have tipped you off to it's modern origin:

# 1. The material is molded plastic. Ancient hominid remains are typically fossilized bone.

# 2. The cranial capacity of the specimen is approximately 9 cubic centimeters, well below the threshold of even the earliest identified proto-hominids.

# 3. The dentition pattern evident on the "skull" is more consistent with the common domesticated dog than it is with the "ravenous man-eating Pliocene clams" you speculate roamed the wetlands during that time. This latter finding is certainly one of the most intriguing hypotheses you have submitted in your history with this institution, but the evidence seems to weigh rather heavily against it. Without going into too much detail, let us say that:

# A. The specimen looks like the head of a Barbie doll that a dog has chewed on.

# B. Clams don't have teeth.

It is with feelings tinged with melancholy that we must deny your request to have the specimen carbon dated. This is partially due to the heavy load our lab must bear in it's normal operation, and partly due to carbon dating's notorious inaccuracy in fossils of recent geologic record. To the best of our knowledge, no Barbie dolls were produced prior to 1956 AD, and carbon dating is likely to produce wildly inaccurate results. Sadly, we must also deny your request that we approach the National Science Foundation's Phylogeny Department with the concept of assigning your specimen the scientific name "Australopithecus spiff-arino." Speaking personally, I, for one, fought tenaciously for the acceptance of your proposed taxonomy, but was ultimately voted down because the species name you selected was hyphenated, and didn't really sound like it might be Latin.

However, we gladly accept your generous donation of this fascinating specimen to the museum. While it is undoubtedly not a hominid fossil, it is, nonetheless, yet another riveting example of the great body of work you seem to accumulate here so effortlessly. You should know that our Director has reserved a special shelf in his own office for the display of the specimens you have previously submitted to the Institution, and the entire staff speculates daily on what you will happen upon next in your digs at the site you have discovered in your back yard. We eagerly anticipate your trip to our nation's capital that you proposed in your last letter, and several of us are pressing the Director to pay for it. We are particularly interested in hearing you expand on your theories surrounding the "trans-positating fillifitation of ferrous ions in a structural matrix" that makes the excellent juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex femur you recently discovered take on the deceptive appearance of a rusty 9-mm Sears Craftsman automotive crescent wrench.

Yours in Science,

Harvey Rowe
Curator, Antiquities

[Jack Stanley]

I'm just waitin' to see 'im pour a ladle full of lead with that backhoe bucket ...... into a normal sized mold of course [smilie=1:

Jack

[Lee]

Waaaayyyy too much time!!....................Lee:wink:

[SharpsShooter]

Now THAT boys..............is a dipper.

SS

[Junior1942]

. . . . The dig goes on. Please send contributions to Professor Curmudgeon, Pleasant Valley, NV. It is almost criminal how difficult it is to obtain Federal grants with the Republicans in power.Professor Curmudgeon, I suggest giving the numerous and generous contributions to the nearest college with an anthropology department and with the understanding that the dig they fund MUST be done in the summer.

One of my fondest memories is of an archaeological dig in the middle of summer and out in a cotton field far, far from the nearest shade tree. We had a funeral home canopy over the main pit for some relief, but it mainly provided shade for the water cooler, the lunch bags, and our artifact table. The crew was me and a couple of more guys plus seven or eight lithe young ladies working for college tuition money. To say they dressed scantily would be an understatement. Oh, it was a wonderful week!

[waksupi]

You know, if you would make that into ingots, you could stack it into some sort of scutpture. May even get a government grant, for doing it! I'm sure the homeowners association wouldn't complain about art.

[PatMarlin]

I've got a real dinosaur foot that grandpa found in arizona I think. Is that worth anything?

[wills]

I've got a real dinosaur foot that grandpa found in arizona I think. Is that worth anything?

Depends on what kind of shoe is on it.

[Baron von Trollwhack]

I shoot lots of flintlock. I save the flints that become worthless after being chipped of all usefulness. Those I carefully drop and smush into the lawns of any new public buildings I visit. Sort of the reverse of the above. Flints are one of the few new man made objects indistinguishable from old objects. I wonder what the lib scientists will say one day........

[PatMarlin]

Snow shoe.

[Junior1942]

I shoot lots of flintlock. I save the flints that become worthless after being chipped of all usefulness. Those I carefully drop and smush into the lawns of any new public buildings I visit. Sort of the reverse of the above. Flints are one of the few new man made objects indistinguishable from old objects. I wonder what the lib scientists will say one day........There's many conservative archaeologists. There's also many pro-gun archaeologists.

[9.3X62AL]

Dipper casting with backhoes, and forensic evidence of attack upon early man by amphibious toothed clams. The grocery store scandal sheets got nuthin' on us.

How many of us here have been abducted by aliens? I--for one--have likely abducted (well......arrested) several dozen aliens over my career. Most were of Mexican or Salvadoran ancestry, but a few were from Hollywood--and I won't venture a guess as to which nation or planet THAT species originated from.

[Ricochet]

...a few were from Hollywood--and I won't venture a guess as to which nation or planet THAT species originated from.
You've not seen Planet Hollywood?

[Scrounger]

Dipper casting with backhoes, and forensic evidence of attack upon early man by amphibious toothed clams. The grocery store scandal sheets got nuthin' on us.

How many of us here have been abducted by aliens? I--for one--have likely abducted (well......arrested) several dozen aliens over my career. Most were of Mexican or Salvadoran ancestry, but a few were from Hollywood--and I won't venture a guess as to which nation or planet THAT species originated from.

I would be greatly surprised if CarpetMan hasn't been abducted by aliens. It doesn't surprise me that they brought him back...

[9.3X62AL]

You've not seen Planet Hollywood?

Many times, sir--and its best observation angle is had in the rear-view mirror of your vehicle. SAL SI PUEDES.

[PatMarlin]

My foot's prolly worth a million dollars siting out the in the barn.

[Blackwater]

Linstrum, ain't CRS disease th' funnest disease there is? I'm waitin' for when I can fool around with th' woman I've been married to for 38years, an' feelin' guilty 'cause I think I'm foolin' around. I've done about everything else! HAR!

[PatMarlin]

:mrgreen: