The best one of my collection so far.

I was very surprised when I cleaned the dirt off the edge of this tooth and saw minute ripples that resemble serrations. They appear on both edges and they begin near the root, only to disappear about halfway to the tip. It is identical in appearance to many of the Chilean escheri teeth I have seen.

Hi Everyone, The fall 2007 collecting season in Lee Creek is upon us and my chance was today. I read that the area was big, but my concept of big did not match the reality of the size of the collecting spot generously granted by PCS. When I walked down the ramp, the area seemed limitless. The opening gun went off and the other collectors all seemed to know exactly where to go. Some people started looking almost immediately after the ramp. Some headed towards l...

A new premier piece in my collection. I found this tooth lying on a pedestal after the shower, labial side up (just like looking into the shark's mouth without the threat of being consumed). This specimen is robust and the enamel is razor sharp on the edges and tip.

It was once again time for the bi-annual road trip to hunt at the PCS phosphate mine in Aurora NC. Or is it semi-annual?? Hmmmmmmmm.

Hit my favorite beach this morning, and I got there real late with the great beltway traffic.  To my surprise I was going to be the first one down the shore.

The conditions looked great, and I had a nice trip (was hoping to grab a meg...but not today).  I did find a real nice 1.5" hemi, an angel shark tooth and a real nice vert, but the interesting find is what looks to be a fossil bird skull.  I could be wrong, a...

There was a cold northwest wind a first light. I was the crazy boy in his waders piled with layers of clothing and just as happy as could be. The first thing came from the swwet meg staring me in the face laying on some clay pebbles about two feet from where the normal surf line would be.....WOULD BE.....but today the wind had dragged the tide out about 50 feet. The beach was plentiful with tons of lil teeth I found over 300 teeth in total 30-40 tigers and contortus. The super nice thin...

With all the success I had during my Aurora trip this weekend, I didn't find a complete Yorktown megalodon until I was walking back to the bus at the end of the day. I was at the top of a mound of Yorktown and Pungo mix, and this tooth was just to the right of a knee high ridge of material. There were some weeds growing near it that hid it from view of the other side of the ridge. Some other collector had walked the other side of the ridge, but didn't hit this side. The person walked wi...

This is the sweetest of all the makos I found at Lee Creek today and I found a lot of makos today, probably more than any other type of tooth even tiger shark teeth! Lots of other people had a lot of nice makos, too. I spent a lot of time in the Yorktown, but I crossed a lot of Pungo, too.

The hill of Yorktown I found this on had three rows of footprints when I arrived, but this was about 3 feet away from one of the trails that the person before me left.

Today, I decided to go do a dive at the Edisto. The sun was shinning and it was a beautiful day. The weather here had just dropped down to 40 degrees over night. I thought the river would have warmed up during the day with the sun being out. Man was I wrong. I wasn’t wearing a wetsuit...

Just the other day I tried a new spot a little further down the cliffs than I usually look for fossils. At first I thought I had wasted my time only 5 small teeth after almost a mile of walking then I came to a area of cliffs with the water splashing up against them. I pushed on wading in waist deep water. After a hundred yards there was a small stretch of beach with huge blocks that had fallen from the cliffs. I kept looking in the surf and still had found very little. Then I glanced u...

I called up DW earlier in the week to see if he wanted to do some collecting. I arrived at his pad on time today! The first place we checked out was void of fossils. Then we headed back to an old trusty spot that we both knew had potential. This is probably my favorite spot to dig because when it comes to finding teeth with a combination of about a hundred different colors. This is the spot that never fails to produce them. It’s not ...

t$ called me a week ago to see if I wanted to go do some fossil hunting and we made plans to check out a new spot and if it wasn't good, to revisit an old spot. Not wanting to be publically thrashed for collecting tardiness, he showed up exactly on time and we were off to the new spot.

New spots are always tricky. You never know if there will be digging, and if there is, whether it will be deep enough, and finally whether there is any good layer. The new spot failed...

Here some finds from an extended lucnch break.  Every week I have one day that takes me close enough to hit the fossil beaches, and on this day a variety of neat items were found.

A porpoise tooth, ray scute, a couple of half way decent makos and snagletooth teeth are the highlights along with half of what would have been a nice 3" meg.&n...

My wife was in NY two weeks ago leaving me and the kids to fend for ourselves through the weekend. My son who just turned five generally doesn’t last long on fossil hunts so its been a while since I’ve brought him along. While at the neighborhood pool on Saturday I asked what they wanted to do on Sunday and (with absolutely no coaxing) my son blurts out, " les go fosslin!". Not wanting to stunt his youthful ambition I felt obligated to oblige.

Like clockwork, the dry season has ended and the rainy season has started. The lowcountry of SC gets all kinds of rain this time of year, and even though it kills diving, it makes land collecting great. This hunt is from the beginning of the month, after the first really big rainfall.

I dropped the weezling off at school and he reluctantly got out of the truck because he knew where I was going. I loaded up on the bug spray because the mosquitos are the wors...

t$ has been an animal about the fossil hunting lately - I like that. He wants to go all the time, just like me. We have the bug. Diving has been so good that we can't stop. This particular day we went looking for new spots in a new direction. The first one we found was just in front of a bend where a creek joined the river. There was a lot of gravel, but it was really picked over, and we maybe found 2 or 3 teeth each. We headed around the bend, past two incoming streams, and onto a mass...

I decided to post a restored shark tooth for a few reasons. First, the blade on this Meg is great. Second, the classic Lee Creek coloration makes for an aesthetic tooth. With only some root damage, I thought this one was a good candidate for restoration.

A nice serrated angy with the tip and both cusps from the river.

   If you've read any of my posts you've probably guessed that I do work for a major museum. One of the things I do is organize fossil collecting trips out west. I have permits for 45 square miles of White River Badlands in South Dakota. Another permit covers 20 square miles of Hell Creek formation in Northern South Dakota. My teams were selected months ago and I'm schedules to leave from Charleston on 14 September. This morning I found out that ...

Paleoscan, I and our better halves got together for the Labor Day weekend for three days of fun along the Calvert Cliffs.  The wives spent lots of their free time with our jet ski and we used it when they weren't for quick trips to exposures.  Since it was a Holiday weekend and the beaches would be crawling with people we decided to go to spots that you could only get to by water.  On Sunday we headed south to Chopt...

A cool position.

A molar and incisor from an Oligocene whale.

One of the best things about diving in the same general area is that I have gotten to know a pretty big stretch of the river pretty well. Today, I went to a spot that we haven't touched in several years. We killed there way back then, and I thought it was time to hit it again.

The first thing I remembered about this spot was how ripping the current was. The reason is because a small side creek empties into the river here, and the result is current that can easily rip...