I’d say I have the largest, most comprehensive collection of fossil shark material in the United States, maybe in the world. For example, associate sets of teeth, or teeth that come from one shark that died 10 million, 50 million, 70 million years ago are extremely rare. Because a sharks… Read More
And in the Peruvian desert, the wind blows them around. So to find a group of teeth all together in one spot from one shark is an extremely rare event. Went up to the American Museum of Natural History 15 years ago, I guess. And they didn’t have any, you’d… Read More
Would you say you have the largest collection?… Read More
Right. I go out to Tucson every year, to the big fossil mineral show out there. It’s one of the biggest in the world. And there are collectors and dealers that come there from Chile, Peru, Russia, United Kingdom, from all over China, from all over, and Morocco. I get… Read More
How do you acquire them?… Read More
And is it the same thing, people now know who you are?… Read More
(laughs) Well as long as I didn’t stink up the house, and it kept me home, that’s better than me going out at night, let’s say crossing about. But no, they tolerated it. Our son actually got interested and he helped me prepare some skulls. And these came from literally… Read More
How did the family feel about this hobby?… Read More
Where did you keep all of these?… Read More
We built a room on our house, and I displayed them best I could. Read More
Don’t have anything anymore. Read More
This is what you dispersed?… Read More
How large was it?… Read More
Well, I had 1000 species of birds. As I recall, a couple thousand, maybe 2,500 species of mammals. And reptiles, probably seven or 800, something like that. There are quite a few. Read More
So I went back seven more times collecting specimens and always took the director of the museum out with me. And we had a great time. But now the Peruvians have declared fossils, something that should be staying in their country, and won’t let you export them anymore. So I… Read More
Went down there, met him in Lima. And we drove no about nine, 10 hours south of Lima on the coastal desert to a place where there was a guy, a European actually. European descent living. He was married to an Indian, and of course there’s a lot of Indians… Read More
And I used a light spinning tackle, 12 pound test line, and the little sharks, and 20 pound on the big ones. And I fished, we fished all over the Bahamas and Sanibel Island all over South Florida for them. But I did that for nine years. And then I… Read More
25 of which were two to three inches, longer, bigger teeth. And from that, I spread out in the Carolinas in Mississippi, there was a big area there where there were fossil sharks, California Sharktooth Hill. And then I started going down to Peru. We had a friend of ours… Read More
And I catch 12, 15 pound carp on those things and fly them for a couple hours. And that was kind of sport to me. I didn’t care about eating them. But when we moved down to Miami, of course, I opened up a whole new world down there, and… Read More
And it wasn’t fun anymore, because there was too much regulation on it. So I gave them away, gave the collection away to University of Miami, University of Florida and (indistinct), and concentrated on sharks. Sharks had been… I started fishing for sharks 1967, I believe it was. An I… Read More