It was another great outing near Bakersfield.  As usual, the "off-roaders" were having a blast.  In the large flat area at the base of the hills, groups arrived and spent the day partying, playing and barbequing.  There was a new creature roaming the hills this weekend (pictured below-right).  It looked like a lot of fun, and definitely closer to my style of off-roading.

On the way to Bakersfield, John and I were planning our dig.  We intended to continue a trench that had been started by Nate, one of our new friends we met last time there.  When we arrived though, we found that the spot we wanted to dig was already dug.  And I mean DUG - more like, OBLITERATED.

We thought that our best chance of finding something good was to do what the others were doing.  We needed to "gut-it-up" and do the work of removing over-burden and peeling away some fresh fossil layer to sift through.  We also sifted some material that others had dug (and found some nice small teeth - as usual).  But both of us did some heavy work too.  The picture below/left shows where I was working.  If you look close, you'll see the tip of a tooth in the fossil layer.  Just kidding - there's no way you could see it.  But click on the tools in the picture to see an enlarged picture and a series of photos, showing the process of removing the tooth.

Did you enjoy the vicarious shark tooth dig?  I hope so.  It's difficult to recreate though, the excitement of not knowing just how big that tooth might be.

The next day started with a cloud hanging over it, literally.  On the way to our digging spot, we couldn't even see the hills, through the fog.  I was able to give John (who was driving) some expert navigational instructions, which only took us about a half mile out of the way.  Just call me Mr. GPS (not).  As you can see in the picture (below-right), John eventually got us there.

The cloud hanging over our day continued, as we discovered that the hard work we had done the day before was being taken advantage of by Dane and Kim, who where in "our spot" digging.  They were great people though, and it was hard to be angry.  But we were sure disappointed.  We learned that most of the work in that area (which WE had taken advantage of the day before) had been done by them and some friends.  So I guess "turn about is fair play."  A bit frustrated, we decided to go with our "plan B."

We walked around a nearby hill, carefully carrying our equipment, while navigating about a 30 degree incline.  The picture below shows our destination.  Here too, we were taking advantage of work done by others, who had started the trench.  What we did was to simply extend the trench.  Most of the trench work was done by John.  He peeled down the overburden and separated it into piles of dirt that were likely or unlikely to have fossils in them.

I leveled off two "terraces," one for the screenbox (the lower terrace) and one for me to stand on (the upper terrace).  From the upper terrace, I was able to easily shovel from the "likely" pile into the screenbox.  The system we had going was working quite well.  We found a lot of teeth, including some nice Isurus teeth and a huge broken Meg.  The meg was in two pieces, which were likely broken long ago.  As John was peeling away the fossil layer, he found the first piece.  Later, he found the second piece.  To our great surprise, they matched up.  We never did find the third and final piece though (the tip of the tooth).  Who knows if it's anywhere near the first two?  Perhaps someone has already found it.  With the tip, the tooth would be around 5 1/2 inches.

I apologize for the poor quality of the tooth picture.  It was late, we had poor light and we were in a hurry to get home.  We laid out some of the nicer teeth for you to see, but that pile in the bottom right has several real nice teeth still in matrix.  Also, don't miss that bottom row, which has some rare Snaggletooth teeth, a cow shark tooth and a sea lion tooth (tooth crown).  In the pile is also a porpoise tooth, which we were happy to find.