A Morning at GMR

Two weeks ago I was able to carve out enough time to make a morning fossil outing. I needed to be home by twelve for a family function in the afternoon, which would have been no problem back in NJ, but now that I’m a little further away from the collecting areas I needed to go somewhere I was somewhat familiar with. I arrived at GMR at 6:00AM and proceeded across the ballfield towards the stream. The first hour was very slow, picking up (and eventually throwing back) the usual belemnites but not much else. A piece of turtle shell was the first unusual find followed by a hybodus tooth. I found a stretch of stream with larger gravel on the bottom and even though it appeared like it could have been someone else’s spoils, I loaded up the screen. The first load yielded a really stream worn, root lobe missing, giant thresher. This tooth would be a year maker if complete, but as beat up as it was I was still pretty happy since it was my first ever for the species. I continued working the larger gravel picking up a nice great white blade and the usual broken goblin shark teeth. I made one more move downstream where I found another batch of larger gravel that eventually produced 5 partial great white teeth, only one of which was near complete. Just before leaving I met up with a family who had just finished doing a little toothing themselves. The two younger boy’s had a nice handful of goblin teeth and upon departing had a Great White Blade to add to their collection - smiles all around!