Florida

Florida Statute 1004.57 vests title to vertebrate fossils on state-owned lands — including the beds of rivers and other sovereign submerged lands — in the State, administered by the Florida Museum of Natural History's vertebrate paleontology program. A Florida Vertebrate Fossil Permit, costing no more than $5 a year and issued by the museum, is required to collect vertebrate fossils on those lands: the Peace River, the Santa Fe, the Suwannee and the rest of the river-diving and gravel-bar circuit.

Three groups are exempt and may be collected and kept without a permit: fossil shark and ray teeth, invertebrate fossils, and fossil plants. Everything else vertebrate — mammal bones and teeth, turtle, alligator, fish bones — needs the permit, and permit holders file a report of finds each year. The museum may ask to keep scientifically important specimens; in practice it selects rarely and returns the rest, and the collector keeps title to the remainder.

The permit does not authorise collecting on private land (that is the landowner's decision), in state parks (closed), or in national parks and refuges. Sale of permit-collected vertebrate material is not what the permit is for; treat state-land vertebrates as personal collection material and shark teeth as freely tradeable. Unpermitted collection is a misdemeanour with forfeiture.

The phosphate mines of the Bone Valley are private and access is by arrangement; Venice Beach shark teeth are beach finds below the tide line and are exempt as teeth in any case.