D-Day Fossil Hunting

June 6, 1944 Allied troops carried out a well planned invasion of Hitlers "Fortress Europe".  55 years later I made plans to meet Govinn at the spoil piles in Aurora to begin a weekend fossil hunting trip.  Half the fun is finding the teeth and identifying them, the other half is trying to come up with interesting trip report titles!  Ok just kidding.  Actually until now I didnt even realize that June 6th was the day of the hunt.  Anyways...

I got up a little later then I had wanted but fortunately I was already packed and ready to go.  I was going to look for Govinn first but the thought of teeth got the better of me so I drove by one of the piles left over from the festival.  Once I saw it I had to stop and quickly ran over and did a quick look.  I couldnt have been there two minutes and barely moved when I saw a decent sized mako just sitting there fully exposed!  SUCCESS.  It was apparent that nobody had been on the pile!  There had been a lot of rain the week prior as well so I knew we were in for a good day! I ran back to the car and drove off looking for Govinn.  Once I found him we headed back and started surface collecting and covered the entire pile.  Of course the teeth were everywhere!  After we picked all the teeth offf the surface we got out some shovels and hand rakes and started digging around.  For awhile I didnt find anything.  The material was still very wet and it really does hinder my fossil finding ability and then Govinn suggested I pull out my screen.  It has 1/2 screening so the smaller stuff would fall through and with some luck I would find some decent teeth.  I couldnt do any worse so I went back to the car, grabbed the screen and loaded it with material.  Now, it was a great idea.  But I have this bad habit when sifting of loading my screen to full.  Which in a creek the water helps a bit, but standing on a spoil pile with no water in site lifting up these rediculously heavy screens and trying to shake all the dirt and pebbles out of them was quite the workout.  It took me awhile to figure out to just put less material in but what can I say, I just get carried away.  Well my first screen rewarded me with my largest complete shark vert yet and a nice little mako.  The only two fossils in the screen.  But SUCCESS!  I continued and found some more verts and broken meg pieces and decent sized hemi's and tigers and I found another tooth which after I whyped most of the dirt off I realized was a complete little chub!  Now it was barely an inch on the slant but it was in awesome condition!  I continued for awhile with nothing spectacular to find when Govinn noticed that the material I was going through was still very wet and was hard to sift which was completely different from the dry material he was going through.  He invited me to come over and sift through the pile of dry material he was going through.  Easier sifting, how could I say no.  So I set up next to him and start scooping away.  It wasnt long before I took another shovel full of material and instantly noticed a really nice mako fall out and into the material but sitting right on top.  I could tell it was complete and in great condition.  I picked it up and inspected it and couldnt be happier with the tooth!  A couple screens later I filled up my screen and once I had shook all the dirt and shells and pebbles out I caught a glimpse of a big blade from under some larger rocks.  I put the screen down and picked out my biggest chub yet!  It was beat up and had a lot of root damage but still was in decent condition!  I continued on and found a bunch more teeth including a couple more nice makos.  After awhile we decided to head over to the museum and visit with the staff and pick up some display cases.  Once we left there we wandered around another spoil pile which was covered in teeth.  When we walked up we both started walking opposite sides of the pile.  Once we were finished I walked back up to our starting point and right where we both didnt look and moved off into our opposite directions was half a decent sized meg.  Too bad it was broken.  After that our stomachs were telling us it was time to go get lunch.  After a couple awesome burgers at Lyle and Shirleys we decided to head up to Greenville and try the GMR for the afternoon.  We got there and wandered down to a spot that neither of us had tried for awhile above the Elm St bridge and I thought would be productive after all the rain.  Well, that was where my luck ran out for the day and I barely found anything and nothing worth mentioning.  I dont even think I took pictures of anything I found.  Govinn on the other hand was pulling out tooth after tooth, find after find, big meg piece after big meg piece, broken great white after broken great white.  You get the idea.  A good finish to the day for him.  Once it started getting dark we packed up and called it a day.   

Until next time, good hunting.

~MikeDOTB