Mostly Greens Mill Run

It has been a long, snowy winter, and I’ve been itching to make a trip down to North Carolina for some fossiling. After reading the post ‘King of Fossils vs. MakoBoy,’ I contacted MikeDOTB to see if he would mind having me tag-along with him for a few days. He graciously agreed, so I left southwestern Virginia early Wednesday morning. It was only 13 degrees, we had gotten an additional 6” of snow during the night, and it was still falling, big time. Thankfully, as I got further south, the snow began to disappear, and by the time I hit Winston the ground was practically clear.

Day 1 – Wednesday
Arrived at the Onslow Quarry parking lot at around 12:15, and ate a bite of lunch. Met Mike around 1:30, we signed in, and drove over to the pit. He showed me where he had done some excavation the day before, and pointed out the fossil layer. I just couldn’t get into the digging/feeling for teeth, so I surface collected. I found no perfect teeth, but did find several large, worn pieces of Meg and Mako teeth, and one small tooth with awesome red coloring.
As we are leaving for the day, they tell us that they will be blasting on Friday morning, but that we can get back in at around 11:30AM.

Day 2 – Thursday
We arrive at Elm St Park a bit before 8:00AM. The display on the truck says it is 29 degrees. Mike and I gear up, and he takes me to one of his favorite GMR collecting areas. The creek is up a bit, and I am glad I brought my insulated chest-waders!
He quickly gets into a good gravel layer and starts finding large pieces of teeth. I spend the first hour, or so, struggling to find anything more than either sand or bedrock. I think Mike recognizes that I am having some trouble, so he takes a short walk downstream and tells me that there is a promising area maybe about 40 yards from where I have been searching.
I head towards it, but about halfway there I feel a bit of gravel under my feet. It is near where a couple of large rocks are sitting in convergence, so I decided to screen a couple of shovels full before I go on downstream.
The first screen yielded 6 belemnites and a broken Mako, so I figure I’ll try a bit more digging before I go any further. I believe the second screen was a blank, but when I start working the next one I note a large belemnite in the left corner that is starting to fall through. I grab it before I even look at the rest of the material, and then I see it sitting, fully exposed, in the right hand side of the screen: an absolutely KILLER spear point!!
I pretty much black-out as to what happens next, but Mike says that I begin laughing hysterically and make some comment like, “Oh, my God! Guess what I just found? WhooooHoooooo!!!!”
I was blown away by its near-perfect condition, especially considering that I shoveled it up, dumped it into a screen of gravel, and shook it around. The coloration was also awesome, with the white inclusion that runs through it!
A “trip-maker” without a doubt!!
(It measures 3 7/8” L x 1 ¼” W, and I can find nothing like it for this region in the old book I have, or in checking online. The closest examples I see are referred to as “dovetails.”)
The next couple of hours are pretty uneventful for me, but Mike continued to work a single, productive area near the bank. (He is dedicated, and a tough guy, cause he just peels the skin off his blisters and keeps on going!)
Around noon we decide to go back to the truck to grab a bite of lunch before heading on to another area, upstream.
When we get there, Mike puts me in the “money spot” where the creek runs like a funnel between the bank and a large slab of rock on the bottom. It was definitely a good spot, and my best finds of the trip (other than the point!) came from here: a 2” GW lower that is missing just a bit of root lobe, and which I nearly missed! ; a sweet and almost pristine 1” x 1” Crow shark; and, a 1 ¾” Enchodus (Cretaceous barracuda) tooth and jaw fragment. (I saw it in my screen and picked up because it looked so different. I was just about to discount it as being anything important, and toss it, when I noted some enamel at the tip. I showed it to Mike and he told me what it was.)
I found a total of 6 GW’s, couple of Crow sharks, and several dinger Mako’s.
I believe that Mike found 3 mosasaur teeth for the day, and gave me one 1 ¼” long for my collection. He also found several GW’s, but none with the roots intact.
We put in a good, full day, going for a bit more than 10 hours!

Day 3 – Friday
Met his sister, Jess, who is up from GA and will be hunting with Mike the next few days. We headed out early to hit Belgrade this morning. Although we covered a lot of ground, we didn’t find much, and only stayed until 11:00AM.
The wind was crazy, and I was notably colder than in GMR the day before. Even though I had my hands in the water, there, I didn’t even notice the cold while we were hunting… of course, I was also finding a lot more! ;)
My ‘best’ tooth was a dark black, shiny Mako missing the root. Jess found a pretty Meg, missing a chunk of root lobe. Mike found a large Ric with the tip missing (likely from feeding) and in pretty rough condition. It still measures in at 3 ½” long! I’ll let him do the telling of this story in his own Report, but he actually gave me this tooth before I left to come home, so I’ll photograph it here.
We head back over to Onslow for the rest of the day. Today I did a lot more digging/feeling for teeth, but had no luck. Definitely wishing that I could do better at mimicking Govinn, lol !
I do believe that with some heavy rains this location could be a great place to find some really cool stuff. I was much more impressed with it than with Belgrade…

Day 4 – Saturday
I will make a separate Trip Report for this day, as we went to hunt the spoil piles at the Aurora Fossil Museum…