Austin Post inquiry

[chirp]

Does anyone have email contact info for the geologist Austin Post?

I am assuming, after googling what I could that he is in fact still alive.

I have a fossil he passed on to me as a kid and am just looking to verify its origins.

 

Thanks in advance.

[wfinley]

UAF has a huge collection of Austin Post photos here: http://www.gi.alaska.edu/cgi-bin/gdftp/imageFolio.cgi?direct=Austin_Post_Collection&x=5&y=10

 

If no one here responds try contacting him via UAF.

[chirp]

Cool, thank you Mr. Finley!

 

 

[JasonG]

John Scurlock keeps in touch with him.....

[John_Scurlock]

yes I do, send me an email at nolock at wildblue dot net. I won't be home until later tomorrow however.

[chirp]

Will do sir, TYVM!

[num1mc]

Seattle Times article

 

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001984553_post21m.html

[chirp]

Nice find #1, thanks!

[chirp]

Got the info I was looking for!

I am reprinting the body of the info with permission from Mr Post.

Good stuff!

 

Back in the 1960s I owned and lived on 48-acre “Hunter’s Gate Farm” on 1,800’ of waterfront on Juan de Fuca Strait just west of McDonald Creek which is west of Sequim, WA.

If this sounds like pure heaven that is a master understatement, the world has few places to compare. As if this wasn’t enough, among the many surprises, the ~100’ sea cliff and beach were a rich source of mammoth teeth; I know of 9 picked up on ours and our neighbor’s beaches in less than 5 years. In the cliff, composed of Late Pleistocene glacier outwash sand and gravel, was found the tusk. A former owner of my property noted a giant, unidentified skull, which I presume was either a mammoth or mastodon. One of my finds was a massive ~3 foot long humerus leg bone.

Erosion of the cliff – as much as 3 meters a year- means that after major storms, the slate is polished off, ready, at low tide, to expose new treasures. At the base of the cliff an ~20-inch peat layer was located in which giant in-situ Douglas Fir stumps were exposed. C 14 dating disclosed a climax forest grew there sometime more than 43,000+ years BP. Don Easterbrook (WWU, ret) noted similar stumps on Whidbey Island which dated 120,000 years BP. I cut one of those still-rooted stumps in ‘my’ forest with a chain saw; claiming to have set a world record for cutting down the oldest trees yet clear cut! Put the redwood loggers to shame! A former log jam sported logs cut by beavers; a UW professor got away with that treasure. Maybe 20 years ago I revisited the site but found little of the exposure still remaining. This doesn’t mean new exposures haven’t come and gone on this privately owned, rarely visited site in the meantime or won’t in the future

[JasonG]

Ah, the good old days- when middle class folks could own 1800' of waterfront. It is hard to not subscribe to the crotchety Manningism that it all went downhill as soon as they built the Space Needle. Of course the tribe I work for would push that date considerably farther back