My Sign to Start Posting

I got up bright and early (with my neighbor and my brother) Thursday morning to make my last pilgrimage to an Eocene locale in Monmouth County before heading back to school in Virginia.  I’ve been to the site maybe 6 times this summer, and every time the site produces an incredible amount of teeth and always a good amount of great quality.  Its going away present, though, was something I was not expecting in the least.

The original plan was to scout out an area of the creek where we only spent a couple hours prospecting in on the last trip and had shown some decent potential.  However, out of laziness, we decided to head down to our usual spot and work the gravel beds and stream bottom.   Once again the number of teeth did not disappoint as we were pulling 15+ teeth out of each screen.  Finally, the creek show a flash of its brilliance in quality when around 1 pm it landed an almost 3” Isurus praecursor mako tooth in my screen.  I have never heard or seen an I. praecursor tooth reach 2” but 3” is unbelievable, and for a New Jersey tooth…wow!  I couldn’t believe it and I’m still in a state of disbelief! Unfortunately, the crown and root were split when I saw it in the screen but that’s nothing a little PaleoBond couldn’t fix.

When all was said and done I alone found over 700 teeth in the 7 hours we spent there, along with a few pieces of shark coprolite, a shark and fish vert (the first I’ve found at this site), many pieces of gastropods, and few pieces of isolated bone.  I’m really going to miss this site over the next school year but hopefully the winter erosional processes will do their job and plenty more teeth will accumulate until next summer.