Ye Olde Faithful Fossil Ditch

Before I moved, I took pix of all the teeth I had on my workbench so they wouldn't be lost in the shuffle. The stuff in the photo is the cumulative result of my trips to the big ditch from about a month ago to about a week before I started packing. It rained a lot in there, but its getting tougher to find anything there. First, a lot more people hunt it now than before and I'm not usually the first one there anymore. Second, over the past 10 years that I've been hunting this spot, the county has been dredging out the ditch to keep it clean since it is one of the main drainage canals for this area. Over that time, the fossil layer has been gradually scooped out and eroded and now, the ashley formation is exposed all over the place. The water seldom gets high enough to erode either the Chandler Bridge or Hawthorne formations, the origins of most of my shark tooth and pleistocene mammal fossil collection. The Ashley Formation, though fossil rich itself, is very hard and doesn't erode easily. Less erosion = fewer fossils. And with the constant dredging, the sand blasting and grinding effect of the moving debris is reduced. It happens everywhere eventually, even in the spots I dive. Speaking of diving, its almost DIVE TIME!! These tiny, killerless posts will again be a thing of the past. Grand fossil riches await in the alligator and snake infested black water depths of our South Carolina rivers. I can hardly stand the anticipation! I love this place.