Seeing all those big bones Monday got me curious as to whether any more of the skeleton ever washed into the creek - the last 10 feet or so of tail were buried under considerable overburden (6' - 10') and we never had gone back and tried to dig them out. It was unseasonably cool this AM, so I took off with a former student of mine just to see if we could find anything. We found three tail vertebrae; two were in the straightaway directly downstream from the site; the other had washed around the corner. Also found a jawbone from a giant prehistoric fish. A very fun morning!!!
Here is the first vertebrae in situ . . .
I found this one about 100 feet downstream from the original site . . .
And this one was about 50 feet away . . .
Here are all three vertebrae side by side. The double indentions on the bottom of each one mark them as tail vertebrae. A V-shaped bone called the "chevron" fit underneath them.
Here is a jaw section from a large Cretaceous fish, most likely Xiphactinus.
First good fossils I have found in ages!