I don’t know about you, but since the coronavirus pandemic has relegated me to my home, I have been going though my closets. In fact, after I was done with mine, I called my mother and asked her to go through her’s as well. She always wins when it comes to finding cool forgotten stuff tucked away in the closet!

Yesterday, she found the family fossil box. She left it out front of her house for me to pick up. It was very heavy and FOSSILS was neatly written atop. It was a timely find as I have been blogging about Lake Okeechobee’s ancient inland sea. Lake Okeechobee and beyond offer not just shelling but incredible fossil hunting as well.  

Yes, almost all of Florida was once an ancient sea, not just Lake Okeechobee…Florida in various forms has been in and out of the water many times…

Many of the fossils from my mom’s fossil closet are from Gainesville where she grew up and where my grandparents lived. My cat Okee was very interested in the fossils too! They must still smell! She was bating an ancient shark tooth around like it was a toy. She loved when I laid out the contents of the fossil closet. 

As you may have guessed, the saber-tooth cat skull above is not one from the Thurlow fossil closet! This is from the Clewiston Museum that has one of the state’s very best fossil collections containing all the fantastic megafauna that used to roam. In 2012, Ed and I went fossil hunting with the famous Mark Renz -in the area of the Peace River. So weird and incredible! Ed and I had a blast, Mark showed us some of his great finds when we were there, and Ed and I found some fossils too. Fossils are fun, and again kind of put things in, what should I say? Perspective…