Lee Creek - Oppressive in October

My much anticipated slot at Aurora came back on the 7th and with word of the large collecting area spreading like wildfire, expectations were running high. At the end of my early morning eastward trek, I made a pre-pit stop at the Aurora Fossil Museum to pick up a couple of containers of spoil material that I intend on using for fossil talks with Scout troops. Once by bins were full I headed for the parking lot where it was great seeing so many familiar faces going in on the same day as myself. I chewed the fossil-fat for a while and was even fortunate enough to see about as many shark teeth as I’ll ever see at once; about 15,000 contortus teeth in a small garbage can donated by one collector to the museum. These are being used by "Friends" and NJ Paleo club member Tom Caggiano to put together two dentations demonstrating how many teeth one shark sheds in it’s lifetime - should be a very impressive display.We boarded the bus and headed to the pit.

Directly after walking into the pit two things were very obvious; 1)The terrain is extremely "rough" and, 2) I would recognize a new definition of the word "Heat" before the day was out. Myself and a couple of collecting friends headed towards the right in the direction of last season’s area and after walking for about 15 minutes we paused at a weathered hillside. It wasn’t 5 minutes until I spied a huge black meg sticking out of the formation. Almost half the tooth was exposed and there wasn’t a break to be seen. I took out my camera to snap a ground shot and began to pray while DG walked over to share the moment of this tooth’s coming out. I carefully excavated around the tooth so I wouldn’t break it - but there was no need. With one quick flip it fell out exposing its mechanically altered self - the tooth ended up being only half of a 4 3/4" meg that probably met the business end of a dragline. Seeing as I came across that tooth so quickly I figured there had to be more in the area. I scanned the hillside for another 30 minutes and came across my next find; a nice little chubby lying under some brush. This tooth was almost completely exposed with just the very tip being concealed. Again I took a ground shot and again as I pulled it out of the ground I realized that it was not totally complete. The tooth was about 1 ½" and with the exception of the very tip, perfect. Not a bad tooth and again, the day was early.

By 12:00 I really hadn’t found anything more that was worth looking at twice. Even smaller teeth seemed to be at a premium, and back to that heat thing. I had gone through most of my 160 oz’s of gatorade and soon made the realization that I would need to start making way back towards the ramp - not towards the back of the pit where I really wanted to be. I’ve collected in heat before but this was unlike any other. I found one large low lying area of weathered Pungo and decided to do a pseudo crawl. I picked up a decent whale axis vertebra and also a decent whale caudal vert. The caudal vert was buried with just a small portion showing from under some weeds, under which some fire ants made a nice hill. I care fully pulled the vegetation away so I could avoid the ants but what I didn’t realize is that they were all over the leaves - I’ll trade a couple of ant bites for a nice whale vert any day. While slowly making my way back, I came across another half buried chubby. I took my ground shot and again hoped for wholeness; but again there was little more to the tooth than was exposed. My last find of the day was a piece of Baleen whale jaw about 14 inches long. Its nowhere near complete but it’s shear weight and massiveness made it a piece worth taking.

The day turned out to be a little bit of a disappointment collecting wise, but as always collecting at Aurora is a unique experience that can’t really be matched elsewhere. The area is huge and any decent amount of rain is going to make the following weekend’s group a happy bunch. Thanks to PCS and all the volunteers for the great opportunity!!