And There I Was, this mornn on the trail of a dust bunny on one of the book shelfs and had to move my suvineer dinosuar tooth to finish, and a flashback sparked. While working on a five mile stretch of I-40W 15 w of Flagstaff in the latter 70s, the subgrade was done, the hungryast crusher was grinding up basalt rock six miles south of the Hot Plant site 15 miles west of Flag for the two million ton of asphalt for the eleven inches of mixture required. The mix designers needed 80K ton of sand from an ADOT source a bit north of I-40 out of Winslow, a long way off for us 2 Camp Verde guys, but my work trailer was set up at Flag. So, the herky screening plant was set up in the floor of the sand source, and Carl Snyder and I were drew to start the screening until winter conditions shut us down. The 988B FEL was there for me, Carl was the screenn plant operator. The sand pit was dug down by previous Contractors and was in a large bowl persay with a benched but weather beaten 150 foot or more C shaped cliff of hard packed sand, other than what had sluffed off over the years. After Carl and I had been there a few weeks, all the easy diggin was screened and I was having to dig into the toe of the sand face and watch for a slab of that cliff face to break off too. It always did after I pulled away or was returning for another bucket load. I had a rythem in my feeding, stockpiling and clearing out the mostly old brush and woody stuff with occasional Petrified tree pieces a jillion years old from under the Grizzly bars shaker to the long screen deck over the product belt. I was about to dump a bucket into the feeder and Carl threw ,..his hands in the air to wave me off, he shut down the plant and I thought we were broke down.? He was out on the grizzly picking up and looking at something as I was inquiring WTH was goin on.? He was all inqusitive and kinda excited, he tossed me down one of the items of interest, I looked at it in wonderment also. I looked on the pile of sand for more and found one...Carl said there were Six in a row in that last bucket Id fed the plant.! There was no rocks in the sand, just woody stuff and occasinally a petrified wood chunk that disintegrated he said when they hit the grizzly bars. These things caught his eye because they were different...but by then, they were too far by. The one he tossed to me and one more survived, the others were broke up into too small of pieces to bother with. Neither of us knew WTH they were. BUT, being Mr. Charm as I was back then, knew a dolly morning waitress at the Dennys I frequented every early mornin, and it so happened she was a recent graduate of NAU and majored in Anthropology, she might auta know something about old bones.? That night, I carefully washed it all up with water at my trailer then showed it to her the nexmorning, she turned it, caressed and fondled it around, but was as dumb as Carl and I about what it might be or was, but she said it was animal.! She asked if she could take it an Archeology Professor she knew at the College who would definately know its bio.? I pondered the idea for a week or more and explained I was fraid he might keep or confiscate it from me if it was an artifact. She told him of it, and she said he said he would return it as is, with the exception of a piece for carbon dating. I finally weakened and trusted her with my package of an unknown something. Then, a work week went by, she wasnt there, near panic I asked of her whereabouts, but shed asked for some time off, and would be back tomorrow. She was, and, she had my item...she said he said, it was a tooth from a vegetarian, grass eating type of Dinosuar varmint that inhabited the rain forest, now Petrified etc. There was a piece of paper with its name and 20 million (I think) years since they wandered about Northern Arizina, written on it. Ive pampered that damn thing with all my moven around but have misplaced or completely lost that damn lil piece of paper, with the name on it. When I watched the Ice Age movies, I had a pen handy in case a grass eatin dino peeked out of the bushes, hoping the name might be mentioned. Carl watched the feed belt from every bucket load for as long as he and I were there, looking for bones, a skull part, jaw bone, more teeth or anything, but none came across. In telling the story back then, many plausible theories surfaced of why the teeth were found that deep, one I liked best, was from the Great Flood the Northern Arizona natives tell of. The critter may of been swooped into a whirl pool sand eddy right there because its the only deepast sand source in the predominately red or black cinder many many many volcanic cones in Northern AZ.? (ps, the photo is in my iphone, Im gonna try to post this anthat and hope they come out close together.?)
Posted on: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 23:01:36 +0000
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