June 12 2004 Fossil Diving Trip

My wife encouraged me to get out of the house again today, so I hitched up the boat and headed to the river to get a little morning dive in. The water was awesome, and I did a drift dive scooping up the teeth that littered the ashley marl at the bottom of the river. As I was swimming along the bottom toward the boat, I found one of the baddest angustidens I've ever found. Its 3 1/2 inches long and its got every single serration. The root is killer, the tip is killer, the blade is killer, and the color is killer. But my favorite feature is the giant cusps. Oh man! This tooth looks so much like an auriculatus its not funny. I showed it to Jedi Master and he explained that the layer in the river that these teeth were coming out of was actually part of the Ashley Marl (Oligocene - 30 million years old) instead of the Chandler Bridge (Oligocene - 28 million years). It makes these teeth about 2 million years older, and therefore, more auriculatus-like than the angustidens found in the Chandler Bridge up here in Summerville. Thus the larger cusps. I found a 2 1/2 incher in the same stretch of the river the other day with over sized cusps, too. Now that I've been there a few times, I realize that he's right. The layer where these awesome sharks teeth is coming from is a different consistency than the CB. There is one last test before I'm sure. Anyway, all that is techno babble to lots of people, so I'll cease and desist. The fun is finding the fossils no matter where they are coming from. And find the fossils I shall! I've got some serious diving lined up for the next few days. I'm heading down to Beaufort on Tuesday, then on Wednesday I'm going back to continue the cleaning up I've become accustomed to. FOSSIL DIVING RULES!!!