An Aurora Appetizer - Calvert Cliffs

Well it was that time of year again for the pilgrimage down to Aurora, and I really wanted to make the most of the trip by getting in as much fossiling as I could along the way. My wife was working over-night Thursday into Friday which meant I couldn’t leave any earlier than 5:45 AM, and I needed to be back Saturday night for a family event on Sunday. 42 hours of “cart blanch” fossiling! My first stop was at Calvert Cliffs to meet up with M4 and a buddy of his. I had never been to the cliffs, so it was doubly exciting to collect there with someone who really knew the area and its formations. We met at Brownies Beach at 9:15, about 1.5 hours before low tide, and walked the shoreline for about 2 hours. Other than a couple of small teeth and a beat up mako blade I didn’t score anything overly exciting, but I did get a great geology lesson from M4, who managed to come up with a slightly beat up Meg. After walking Brownies, we moved on to another location in hopes of finding some larger teeth. The new spot didn’t yield any monsters but we did find a couple of makos, and M4 and myself each picked up a nice cow shark tooth. I also managed to pick up a fossilized mammalian molar that(based on preliminary educated glances in the Aurora parking lot the next morning) may belong to a primitive deer species. At 1:30 we decided to call it a day and begin the long drive down to North Carolina for tomorrow’s day in the mine at Aurora. Only one more wake-up!!