Hilton Head Vacation Trip

I just returned from a wonderful week of vacation with my family on Hilton Head Island.  We had great weather and good times,  plus my wife even let me go fossil hunting on a few occasions!  

I was told that Hilton Head was a relativly new island (geologically speaking!), but I still wanted to take a look in the mornings for teeth.  I managed to get out out twice, and you can see that the teeth were hard to come by.  I did manage a couple of nice sand tiger teeth and also found my first whole conch shell.  It was fun and worthwhile, but definitly not like the bay at home.

On Friday I had a half day Summerville trip planned.  Finally I was going to invade the same "ditches" as DW.  Being a complete newbee to digging and sifting (I mostly beach comb), I decided that going to Dorchester creek (the same one that is listed here at BRF) was the right place to start.  I made a new "fancy" sifter a month ago and was eager to give it a try.  After going to Wal Mart and buying a $3.96 shovel I was ready to invade the ditch. 

After scouting the area, and not seeing any gators or obvious snakes,  I went in.  The going was slow at first.  Finding substantial pockets of gravel within the ridges of "concrete"  (I assume this is "Ashley Marle") was difficult.  I did manage to find some areas that produced in some of the deeper sections of the stream.  I found a 2" angustidens (maybe auriculatus- I'm not sure) that was really cool.  It had a gray/blue color and a nice bourlette.  It was too bad the one side was chewed up a bit.  The other find of the trip was definitely the squalodon tooth.  2 3/8" long and looked to be in great shape and whole!  Both of these finds are firsts for me and made the hour and a half  trip from Hilton Head worth it.

Summerville was really cool.  You can tell by the few hours that I spent in a well known ditch that the teeth down here are big and plentifull.  I would love to get a little more "dialed in" with this type of hunting and come back for more than a morning...I can only imagine what one could find!  Good hunting Chris