Bones, Bones, or just old Rocks

No Internet, or at least not enough to blog with until now :-). Will try to catch up.
back in.....awe heck, I have trouble with time, let's just say a few weeks ago ( what month is it anyways?).




Was at the Buffalo Gap National Grassland South Dakota and came across some really cool stuff. As an OR nurse I've handle a lot of raw bone and well these rocks looked just like bone to me!
I took a piece(s) back to the RV before I realized that 1.) they were possibly fossils 2.) it was illegal to take fossils from a National Grassland. Drats! did I want to keep this beautiful fossil. It looked just like a bone but was a rock! It sounds so simple, but I'd never handled anything like it....fascinating




So the next day we trekked back to the site and put it back. That is when I realized that when I originally picked up that one weathered bone the day before ( the one you see in the photo below), there was another sitting right next to it that I never even noticed! Boy, my powers of observation were so focused on that one bone. I had never expected to see anything so fascinating, let alone another sitting pretty right next to it. Frankly, I thought I was being punked by the locals, it was just too perfect.
Below: putting back the bone. The ground still had a perfect indentation so I knew just where to put it :-). Of course, that's when I noticed the other bone




Anyways, we put everything we thought was bone back. I emailed the Forestry Department with pictures of what we saw with latitude and longitude.








Below: Lousy picture, but interesting jumble of stuff.




Below, some of the bone with petrified wood and some cool rocks. Again, the bone went back to it's home!




Below, our second trip to the "bone" site. Felt kinda weird just putting all that cool stuff back on the ground, but that is what the forestry says to do and I didn't want to start my first foray into amateur paleontology as a poacher( is that what you call em?). Hopefully they get to it before the next rain washes it away.




I know there was much more to be discovered, but I can only hunt for about an hour then it's time for a/c and rest. I can't wait to be fully recovered from my "ordeal" so much fun to be had, I could of stayed out there all day! Brian was happy as a clam, but kaela, our 16 1/2 year old dog just wanted to hang in the truck.




So this is what I had left, lots of petrified wood, cool rocks, some I think might be agates.




RV site near the Grasslands. Next we head for Minnesota to visit mom and dad, then on to Copper Harbor for some real rock hunting fun :-) and some one on one with the great Lake Superior.




Below, neat-o picture. Guess what it is?




Grains of sand... now those are cool little rocks :-)
Cheers,
Erika and Brian
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