Fossiling in a Winter Wonderland

I was finally able get out fossiling today, but of course the forecast was calling for 14 to 20 inches of snow. Figuring that this may be the last chance to get out before the spring thaw and knowing I would have a couple of hours in the morning before the snow began, I decided to brave the cold and go anyway. I arrived at 9:00 with the flurries just starting to come down and headed straight for my reliable spot. The first hour was fairly slow in terms of items found, but I did manage to come up with a nice posterior Cretolamna tooth and a nice crow shark (pristodontus) tooth - not terribly exciting but at least they made the trip worthwhile. Sometime after finding those, I noticed a large crab claw in one of my screens. I picked it up out of the screen thinking it was kind of large for a crab claw but didn’t really give it a close look as I continued to scan the remaining gravel. After scanning all the gravel in the screen I turned my attention back to the claw and realized that it wasn’t actually a crab claw, but a mosasaur tooth! It was about 3/4" and had a great curve to it. The enamel wasn’t in great condition, but other than a small chip off the bottom, the tooth was complete, tip and all. In the remaining time I didn’t find anything else overly exciting - a half way decent goblin shark lateral and a piece from a mosasaur tooth that was probably in the 1.5" range whole. By the time 2 hours had gone by, there was probably about .5 to 1 inch of snow on the ground and it was coming down harder by the minute. Time to call it quits and hope for an early spring.