Make the best of bad weather

This morning I got up early, packed up the kayak, and headed to the bay for what was going to be a full day of hunting. As I made my way closer to the hunting grounds I realized that the wind, which can help or hurt the conditions, was going to be too strong and not allow any type of productive hunting on the bay.

I decided to head over to the Potomac river in Charles county, Maryland.  I could still get a hunt in. This is not to be confused with the Potomac on the Virgina side.  You wont get arrested on the Maryland side for fossil hunting, but you also will not find any megs or big makos on this part of the river either.

Sand tigers, various types of mackerel shark teeth, the occasional crocodile tooth, and if your lucky an otodus tooth might show up.  The shores are lined with dime to golf ball sized gravel and rocks and the half dozen times I have been here the going was relatively tough.  This is one of the reasons this is only the second fossil trip report from this part of the river!!

I was doing the usual low and slow beach combing, uncovering teeth that I usually find, when right in the middle of two fallen trees was my first mostly whole otodus tooth!  I have only found a few badly worn and broken parts before this so it was exciting.  It is 1 7/8", and if the tip had been whole it would have surely been over 2", which from what I understand, is a pretty big otodus tooth for this part of the world!! I also found a mid section to some type of Indian knife or point.  It is about an inch long section of worked flint, another cool find.

Its funny how one tooth can make what was a very slow trip into one that I will remember.  Good hunting Chris

An identification update:  After DiTchweEzel brought up some good points about the serations on my "otodus"(I thought it might have been one of those transitional teeth that are known to come from this part of the world), we can both agree that it must be an auriculatus.  I was  further south on this trip to the river, I must have been on the borders of Eocene/Paleocene and Nanjemoy/Aquia formations.  Either way its still a new variety of tooth for my collection.