The trophy unearthed

Another post from a few months ago: The kids and I have been hunting this pond almost daily now. It is close to being done and we don’t want to miss out on anything. So many great shark teeth have been turning up for lots of people! Today when we arrived, we immediately realized that the digging had switched areas. Instead of the area with the black teeth, digging had continued in an area with red, orange, yellow, and white teeth. It wasn’t long until our shovels revealed their first fruits. We were all finding teeth regularly. I was working my way down the vertical face, peeling back about 8 inches to a foot of layer before moving on. I found several nice angustidens within about 30 minutes before the wall turned from a flat face to giant boulders of overburden. I peeled away a thick layer of gravel on piece at a time to avoid breaking a fossil. Then, for the first time in who knows how long, light struck a big tooth. I could see immediately it was a mako – well bigger than I had found in a very long time. The blade was enormous! I anxiously scraped away the clay and pebbles from where the root lobes should be. Everything was there! I finally popped the Pliocene tooth from its Pleistocene tomb and held the monster in my hand. It was so big for a mako! I wondered the entire rest of the hunt if it was 3? I never found another complete tooth after that. I think my preoccupation hindered my mojo. No matter, I scored and I knew it. Everything else would have been gravy. I like my hunts both with and without gravy, so I went home happy.