all or nothing

Total Man Hours: 30+

Sand/Gravel Moved: ???? easily measured in tons

The Spoils: 3 nice Otodus, a 1.75" S. macrota, 3 Pristis, and a worn native american point


This summer we needed something for those lazy/short/tired/hungover days of collecting. I had a plan for a team dig at a not very productive spot, but where I knew there are SOME teeth, namely Otodus. Toofsnob agreed to give it a shot and the first day went pretty much as I thought it might. We started moving sand and gravel at an incredible pace and the first blade and/or broken Otodus tooth showed up after about 20 minutes and we considered it a good sign. Maybe 1 or 2 more broken ones came in the next hour but nothing else besides a couple invert casts. Not a single tooth even a small sand tiger, but this was to be expected... for this definitely was an all or nothing spot. The tedium of such a dig was immediately apparent but we came up with the No-todus song to pass the time. Then all of a sudden toofsnob, after glancing at the contents of a screen, froze up and looked at me funny. And there it was, just what we were looking for, a beautiful condition 2.25" Otodus, yes it was missing one cusp, but still a pretty damn good find for NJ. We dug for an hour or two more, but only got a couple more fragmen-otodus. The second day went just about the same way, but this time the one keeper tooth was a little bigger and came after 2-3 hours of digging and had both cusps, a beautiful tooth with glauconite crystals still clinging to the root. I managed to capture a photo before we got our grubby prune-like hands all over it. It was a happy day, for this poor lonely tooth had finally found a home with toofsnob. We continued this 3 more lazy days with the help of theschmutzking and SK along the way until our stretch of gravel ran dry and we were working the scoops in chest deep water. It took until the last trip to get another keeper, an almost perfect 2" Otodus which came home with me. Both of the Otodus I ended up with needed some major TLC to get the plaque off, but once cleaned up were pretty sweet. So you ask what else we found in the many cubic yards of sand and gravel that we moved????? Basically nothing. A handful of broken and mostly blade-only Otodus, 3 Pristis rostral teeth, one pristine 1.75" S. macrota, one worn native american point, and some inverts.