The Fossil Frigidaire

On today, the coldest day yet of 2005 in coastal South Carolina, da f0ssZ and I went on a last minute fossil hunt to one of our favorite oligocene spots. Not a cloud in the sky, but the wind was gusting up to 30 miles per hour so the wind chill was in the 20s. nothing compared to the northeast right now, but still cold for here. the spot is primarily oligocene, to clarify. Its got a ton of pliocene and pleistocene stuff, too, but we go there for the rich, black chandler bridge. Its the only spot anywhere I've ever seen layer like this. Anyway, the fossil formations are exposed all along the edge of a big pit and we just walk the edges and find the fossils washing out of the banks. Its so big that it takes 2 people 2 hours to cover the entire edge area. It hasn't had much rain since last month when tha duDe and I ransacked it and he scored the killer giant thresher tooth. df pulled a big shamer first before we parted ways. I picked up a few here and there, but not nearly the quantities we used to find at this spot. If they ever dig and the rains come soon afterwards, we'll score some killers though. We met back up at the other side and hunted a little part side by side on the way out. I found my big shamer here. A would-be 3 inch flawless angustidens tooth, were it not for a missing root lobe and cusp. It was flawless until the backhoe nicked it. 1 inch higher, and this tooth would have been a serious drooler. But it wasn't to be, and i just lamented the loss. On the walk out, I picked up a shell, surprisingly enough. I usually don't find any complete shells. Even though we hunt a marine lag deposit, there aren't normally any shells. But, since coastal SC has experienced something like 20 oceanic ingressions over the past 2 million years, there are bound to be shells here and there. I guess the workers dug into an old beach, because there are shells all over the place in this one spot. I picked up a large nice looking one, and I actually think its kindof cool that its still complete after all this time.