1/5-6/2008 What a difference a day makes - or – its pays to have your lucky charm!!!

What a difference a day makes - or – its pays to have your lucky charm!!!

Went to the Bay this weekend to accomplish a bunch of non-fossil things and then try to squeeze in a trip or two to the beach. Saturday the tides were too early so I slept in and made it to my favorite spot a few hours after low tide. Surprisingly, I had the beach to myself for the whole time and the winds kept the water far away from the cliff base. Found a bunch of smaller stuff and a few bones but the only cool finds were what could only be appreciated by true fossil geeks and not meg-maniacs. Best teeth were a cow shark upper symphsial and an upper hemiprisits symphsial. Cool teeth but not the megs, makos and cow sharks lowers that are on everyone’s Calvert cliffs list.

Went back out to the same spot on Sunday and this time much earlier w/ Paleoscan. Now, I’ve got to give Paleoscan his props. The guy is first class, a good guy to collect with and at least for 2007 and now starting off the same in 2008, my good luck charm. Today was no exception. With me being the host to this site Paleoscan took the lead and choose the high ground - there were no footprints. After only about 10 minutes into the prime area he had a sweet colored meg. I was out in the water scanning the gravel beds and not finding much. We didn’t see any footprints but did see a couple coming down the beach from the north. There was gravel everywhere but not a lot of teeth, a decent number of bones and as prime as the area looked we were hoping for more.

We stopped and gave a friendly greeting to the couple as they passed – they had struck out so far but had stayed out of the water. Maybe something was left for me to find after all. I was about ½ through the other nice section when SWEET!! - I spotted this tooth 100% laid out in about 6” of water. It’s in great shape but I had to scrap numerous 3mm sized barnacles off of it so it must have been in the water for some time. The tip looked a little funny but I thought little of it at the time. I picked up a 1&1/2” mako a little further up from that but my day was already made.

On the way out had a guy ask Paleoscan and me if we had found a four inch meg. Well, you should have seen him when I said maybe not a four-incher but its kind of big and sweet looking. Paleoscan showed off his find too. The guy said something about kicking himself for sleeping in and went off looking for a tooth of his own. He did show a sweet, but dinged large porpoise tooth so he had already found a nice find we had missed and each wave uncovers more so I hope he did well.

Took the finds home and the tale of the tape had the tooth come in at 3& 1/16 and BONUS - the tip has two serrations, not one and a little bigger than normal gap between the two tip serrations. I’m not sure if it truly is a double tipped meg so I’ll let the BRFC brethren weigh in on that. Either way, sweet tooth and you can now barely see were the barnacles had been. The colors got even better as it dried. You can even see that the first 1/2 inch or so of the tip has been bleached so the tooth must have been sticking out of the cliff tip first for some and the sun dried it out before it spent some considerable time in the water for the barnacles to form.

The tooth is not the biggest from this site for me but it’s in the top 3 for size for a complete tooth and is in the top as well for overall quality. Probably my overall best tooth from this site. Got to love these Calvert teeth… and a good luck charm that keeps working!!!!


PS – As I was getting ready to make this post I got an extra bonus in the mail – my BRFC shirt!!! Thanks ditchweezil!!!! Can things just get any better!?!?!?!?!!