The two 60,000-year-old
Pleistocene mammoth tusks look like they might be a matched set. Looking up the
frozen cliff, it’s hard to tell from here. I can see that they’ve mineralized a
vivid blue, a very sought-after color for carvers. I doubt the skull is frozen
back in the ice lens because of the angle of the tusks. Even though the tusks
are sticking out about eight feet, both the base and tip of each is close to
the surface. I’ve learned that before I do anything, it’s wise to study the
situation awhile. Mistakes can be costly here alone in the Alaska wilderness. I
may also miss other finds nearby.
Tusks are heavy, so they usually sink
below the bones. If the rest of the animal is here, it will be as much as a
hundred feet higher up the cliff. I notice a fine white line at the level of
the tusks, which is a small shell layer, the bottom of an ancient pond. Knowing
what the area was like, how the animal died, helps in finding the fossil
remains. If the mammoth died in the water, the animal should flip upside down
due to the weight of the tusks and gasses bloating the stomach. In a flood, the
pointy ends of the tusks drag on the bottom and tend to get hung up at the upstream
end and at the bottom of a log jam. I look for prehistoric log jams.
I
see shells, so I think ‘water’, and ‘flood’. I
see ancient wood, again, ‘flood’.
The root wad of a tree drags on the bottom and behind, with the pointy top end
going downstream. A majority of pointy ends facing the same direction shows me
downstream. I scan the upstream side of the log jam closer, for bones, tusks,
or remains of other animals. Whatever killed one animal may have been the cause
of death for other animals, such as bison, musk ox, horse, and ancient elk. A
predator like a Smilodon cat is possible, but a rare find. Being in the right
age layer is most important. No use even looking at other layers in the frozen
mud.
I am idling the river boat engine. The
Kantishna River is eating away at the permafrost cliff. This is interior
Alaska, backside of Mt. Denali. I stare up at house-size chunks of mud that
slide or fall from 200 feet up. In the peak of the short summer with the never-setting
arctic sun the cliff can lose 100 feet a day into the river. This is ancient
glacier silt, powdered rock. There is a smell of ‘rot’ in the air, with oil
oozing out of the primeval muck. The smell is an indicator of being in the
right area where ancient animals died. Sometimes there is hair, sinew, bone
marrow. I’m told that, not far away, across the Bering Strait, in Siberia,
there is even flesh sometimes found. I’ve been fossil hunting for almost fifty
years, but I’ve never found preserved flesh. But I’ve found hundreds, maybe
thousands, of pounds of ancient animal remains. Tusks and teeth are the most
valuable.
I have a specially built boat and
engine for my hunting. I need to be able to go 800 miles without having to buy
fuel. My boat is long and narrow with a flat bottom and low sides. Easy pushing,
like a canoe, but not particularly safe. The boat is rated for a 40-horse
outboard engine. Mine is 115 horses in harness. The back of the boat had to be
beefed up, in which I can load 2,000 pounds with an inch of freeboard. I try not
to go over 30 mph, keep it under 3,500 rpm, and burn under three gallons of
fuel an hour. Speed and fuel consumption are two of the most important aspects
of this kind of hunting. If I run out of gas it can cost my life. I can run out
of anything else and get back to civilization for more. Time is important in emergencies.
The nearest road, gas, or human, is over 300 miles away. It cost me about $500
to be here, and that is if everything goes well. I’ve had it cost thousands of
dollars and an entire summer when unexpected things go wrong.
Fossil hunting for me becomes an
entire lifestyle. I know how to live off the land. I hunt and fish for food,
build shelters for the night, and deal with bears, mosquitoes, even outlaws, as
this part of Alaska is a long way from civilization. It’s extremely important
to know how to read the water, as it’s not possible to see even an inch into
the silt river. Luckily there are few rocks in the shallow rivers where I go,
but submerged logs can be hazardous. I’ve learned how to read the water’s surface
by how the current responds to know when and where there’s an obstacle
underwater.
There’s nothing to which to tie the
boat against this mud cliff, so I idle the engine and angle into the current to
hold myself steady. I spend half an hour just studying the situation. The roar
of a cliff calving interrupts my thoughts. The cliff gave way a quarter mile
away yet sends a wave that rocks the boat. It’s not safe to remain here long.
The sun is shining on the ice. I decide that if I do nothing the tusks will
fall out of the calving cliff on their own and land in the shallow water at the
base of the cliff. There are a variety of options. I’ve shot my hunting rifle
at the ice surrounding a fossil to knock the ice away. I now carry several
hundred rounds of ammo because it once took over 100 rounds to chip two feet of
ice away from a massive tusk. If low enough on the cliff I can toss up a
grappling hook or use the fish pole and weight on the line, then pull up a
bigger line. It’s rarely possible to climb the ice and repel, partly because
the cliff face is sliding and sloughing off too fast; there’s nothing stable
enough to trust to which to tie. I tried a drone once but found it unreliable
under harsh conditions. I’ve had a variety of interesting things happen
retrieving mammoth tusks.
When hunting fossils there are legal
concerns, safety, insurance, and liability issues. I’m not a lawyer so I can’t
give advice, but it’s my understanding that, for now, in Alaska, fossils fall
under mineral laws, which state that to find minerals one must be on land — examples
are old homesteads, Indian land, mine claims. I have permission from various
landowners to look for fossils on their land, with the understanding that I do
not share the exact location, as, of course, landowners don’t want the public
showing up, digging, and altering the scenic landscape.
If you wish to find fossils yourself,
keep in mind that it matters whose land you are on. Sometimes the incidental
find for personal use is acceptable in many situations, but it’s best to
inquire.
A tip I offer on how to spot a fossil
is to look for what I call “anomalies”. Look for something that doesn’t seem
like it belongs or doesn’t fit in to the landscape. It can be a color or a
shape. I develop an eye for what should be there. Twigs, leaves, various
natural debris become a pattern. A fossil will often be shiny, or an off-color
like black, blue, or red. I prefer waterways after floods or turbulence,
followed by a drop in the water level. Gravel pits, excavation areas, roadwork
along hillsides, anywhere the land gets disturbed and gets into the right age
layer are all good places to go looking.
It takes two days of waiting for a
matched set of eight-foot tusks, weighing about eighty pounds each, to fall
into the mud at the water’s edge. Eighty-pound tusks aren’t huge. I’ve seen
tusks that weigh over 200 pounds and measure fifteen feet long. This new find
should be worth at least $100 a pound, if they’re handled right. These tusks
have been under pressure in the ice for tens of thousands of years. Upon
release, the internal pressure works on the tusk and it may want to warp and
twist. The tusks are wet and need to dry evenly from inside out. If the outside
dries too quickly the outer layer will shrink and crack around a swollen inner
layer.
Within an hour of acquiring a tusk I
put hose-clamps around it every two feet so it can’t expand and, thus, it can’t
crack. I wrap plastic around the fossils and keep them out of the sun in the
bottom of the boat. Later, when I’m home and have washed the mud off the fossils
I paint a mixture of half water and half Elmer’s glue on the whole fossil. Elmer’s
works well on wet material, and dries clear, making a seal so the tusk or bone
dries slowly.
It might be a week before I am home,
but when home I lay out all the fossils and use a garden hose to get the mud
and silt off. This is often the first time I get to look closely at my finds
and determine what kind of shape they’re in. I can do a preliminary grade and
decide what level of care each fossil needs. After the coating process, the
fossils are placed in plastic bags and they’re put in my shop, which I keep at
a temperature of fifty degrees. Every few days I turn the fossils and open the
bags to let moisture out. In about a month I cut holes in the bags to speed up
the drying, and they’re eventually removed from the bags after a few months. A
tusk or mammoth tooth should dry for a full year before calling it stable
enough to put on the market. Fossils sold too early and then not taken care of
by the buyer may later crack and fall apart.
You likely picked up this Tucson
EZ-Guide at one of the gem, mineral, fossil or jewelry shows in Tucson, so
you’re aware that many — actually around 4,000 — fossil, gem, and mineral
dealers (of which I am one) come to Tucson every year in January and February.
We sell our wares at over 40 “gem shows” that comprise the biggest citywide gem,
mineral and fossil showcase in the world.
My small business is called Miles of
Alaska. Not only do I find and sell fossils and minerals that come from my home
state of Alaska, I’m also a storyteller. My stories come from the source, I
find nearly all of the materials that I sell in Tucson, and I create the art
from the materials I find. I’ve written books and also sell them when I come to
Tucson. I hope you’ll come to see me at the Fossil & Mineral Alley Show at
Days Inn. I’m in Room 127, and the show runs from February 1-15, 2020.
There are at least two other Alaska
dealers at the Days Inn show. One is a world-class expert on ancient human-worked
fossil ivory tools, another specializes in stone tools. Interesting dealers abound
at my show: A dealer next to me specializes in just meteorites, another is a
leading expert and seller of short-face bear fangs and skulls, and another has
replica fangs, skulls and entire skeletons. There are three rooms of nothing
but shark teeth. Russian fossils take up a big tent in the parking lot,
specializing in full mammoth tusks from Siberia. There are over 100 dealers at
this one show! Most of us sell wholesale to gift shops, supply museums, and high-end
collectors, but, also, during the show, we sell retail to the public.
We all look forward to seeing you
here, a very exciting, intense two-weeks of buying and selling of the most
interesting and beautiful things that were hidden for millennia from man’s eyes!
As the folks who publish the EZ-Guide say, these are “The Greatest Shows
Unearthed”!