Today we went out to the Florida State Fairgrounds for “Fossil Fest” Hosted by the Tampa Bay Fossil Club. Uncle Matt had recently sent me some geodes to crack open and a bunch of other cool rocks and gems. I have been really obsessed with fossils and rocks every since.
Today was basically a HUGE showroom with lots of vendors. The fossil club had a kids dig area. You paid 75 cents and could dig for 3 minutes in a HUGE sandbox. I really liked finding the BIG things. These are the ones that were bigger than my hands. Some took me a while to “dig” up. Mommy want hunting too but she looked for the little fossils.
This is a vertebra of either a whale, dolphin or a manatee (dugong).
This is a picture of all the smaller pieces. The collection is probably about 20+ pounds of fossils.
I was told this is possibly a part of a mammoth tooth.
This is pieces of different types of turtle shells. The brown one is from a soft shell turtle. The fragments on the right are horse teeth!
These are sections of ribs from various animals. The first one is possibly a dugong tooth (manatee).
Another bone fragment.
These are more manatee rib bones.
sea urchins.
Fragments of sting ray mouth plates.
Lots of shark teeth from either sand, tiger, lemon, bull, mako and extinct tiger sharks.
After going in the dig area about 6 times I got to do some exploring. I loved looking at all the fossils. I was especially interested in anything dinosaur. I also bought some grab bags full of miscellaneous crystals, gems, rocks and marbles. I was so excited!
I spent the entire afternoon sorting, examining and trying to rebuild animals! 🙂