Digging For Fossils at Alfred A Ring Park

On Friday our Earth Kids group went digging for fossils at Alfred A Ring Park in Gainesville. The kids of course love all the field trips we get to do, but this one was especially neat. Florida used to not be a land mass, it was under the ocean. Then millions of years ago, when whatever happened, happened, Florida rose out of the ocean to become a peninsula. All the sea creatures that had died and been buried at sea, now can be found by digging for them in several fossil digging areas in Florida. There are very strict rules for digging for fossils. The most important being if it is state owned water, you can not keep vertebrates other than shark teeth, and you can not keep human artifacts such as pottery or flints. Hogtown Creek is not state owned water, so we didn't have to worry about that. We did not find an plant fossils, at least I didn't. The kids were mostly seeking shark teeth so they might have put them back. I found lots of shells, and one big shark tooth. I found a ton of manta ray teeth or jaw bone, since they don't really have teeth. I had one jaw bone that fell apart before I got it home or got a picture of it. I found some really neat rocks as well. The two that I liked the most, was a white one with blue specks, kind of looks like Medusa Quartz if anyone is familiar with that, and the other was mostly blue with tiny white specks on it. Alfred A Park is a lovely little park, with picnic area, small playground, clean bathroom facilities and hiking trails. I believe we will be going back just to hike in the near future. I have other pics, but on the other computer. This was a most enjoyable field trip, and the weather was perfect. We have collected shells from other trips as well.  When we get enough and the time we will be doing various crafts with them, including wind chimes and jewelry.