Cold Feet

It’s been almost a month since the last productive trip to my favorite Eocene/Miocene site and expectations were high for today’s return visit. The temperature was 42 deg F on the car themometer as I pulled in to park at 7:00 AM and being that I had left my waders at home, I was hoping the water would be a little warmer - it wasn't. I spent the first hour working to pry my shovel between the large chunks of impression filled rock that mark the fossil rich reworked layer, scoring a nice anterior mako and partial auriculatus. I worked the area a while longer but eventually the lack of gravel and abundance of large rocks made filling my screen a project in futility. I decided to find an area where I could process material a little more efficiently, choosing to head about 30 ft downstream from where I had been searching. The stream at this point has the look and feel of dark clay, but as I probed the bottom with my shovel I could feel crunch of the coarse Eocene sand in most places. On my first screen I scored what I initially thought was a partial ric but later determined to be a partial Otodus. I spent the remainder of the morning in this area coming up with a Abdounia sp. tooth, a small but nice posterior mako tooth and a bunch of decent sand tiger teeth.