This was a cool day. I met up with RivRdigR and ScUbaPaUL to do some diving in the Cooper River. While we were gearing up RivRdigR caught me off guard and snapped a quick photo of me holding my pink flippers before I put them on. You may see the picture in a future post to come. ScUbaPaUL racked in the whole megs! RivRdigR had a lot of quantity and found a large shamer angy with tip, but with no cusps and beat up root. I ended up fin...

I love diving and this time of year, there isn't a better way to beat the heat and the fossil jones. I hit the river today with t$. We decided to go to a spot that we haven't hunted in a few years. When we arrived, we found a pile of trees in place of the pile of teeth we were expecting.

Instead we moved back upriver to a more familiar area. I decided to move sand since we had already surface collected the area many times before. I fanned away one section ju...

A nice, whole ric found in a washout gully. The neat aspect of this tooth is the opalized enamel.

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 ...

A few years ago when I first started going to the quarry I would find a whole auriculatus every trip, which was about three years ago. Yeah, I know it’s a long time to go without finding a descent whole auriculatus. This time my luck would change.

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The Fosslin' Floridian himself, rivrdigr, is living the dream fossil hunting in South Carolina non-stop for the next two weeks while he vacations. There will be diving galore, but today, the official first day of the fest was Lafarge day.

I ran into my fossil hunting friends pretty early in the day. I saw da fossz, rivrdigr and his new dive buddy, the phat boys (who racked!), and many other friends who I only see when their eyes are on the...

My largest tooth by far. This tooth is just over 4 inches on the slant and would probably be close to 4.5 inches if it had a tip. Its the first tooth partial or otherwise I ever found while diving.

I have learned a lot about "toothin" this year. I think one of the more valuable lessons learned is the winter and early spring rule.  The water is colder, and you need to wear waders, but the water is also much clearer and you don't have to battle all the people looking for that big one. 

Here are the results of two small trips.  The first was a quick "lunch" to a new are...

This is a dive from the past week. I’ve just been real slack with the updates. This was a great day because I found my first 4 inch angy and it’s a beast. It may not be a super hero, but angys over 4 inches are just so hard to find!

Summer in South Carolina is hot and the humidity makes it stifling. Digging for fossils under a blistering sun is not fun, but I must still hunt because the need is in my blood like some kind of dire-werewolf pathogen from beyond the K-T boundary. The river is the cure! Its a warm 80 degrees with virtually no effort required to recover shark teeth, artifacts, and other prehistoric knick-knacks to decorate the coolest room in my house.

A really nice angy from the river.

A true arrowhead with the base clipped off. This one is made of coral or flint most likely due to its translucent property.

A nice spear tip made of Low country chert. The base is rather robust.

I did not take much time off for the July 4^th holiday, so I thought to myself a lazy day in the Edisto looking for fossils would be good. I called up my hunting pal DW and he was in. T$ joined in as well to make it a BRFC tri-fecta. We met up at the river and geared up quickly. I hit the same gravel bed as before, and was a little slow to start (I guess from my previous racking). DW, T$ decided to mozy back down river to fan and they both did well. T$ e...

I was going to go back and dig in the chandler at the ditch, but I got a call from DW to go diving instead. DW was telling me over the phone about this new wetsuit he just bought and that he couldn’t wait to show it to me. He said it would help him rack in the teeth. It was the most girliest suit I’ve seen in my life! See picture below .

I was looking over the lack of high quality angys in my collection. I only have a small handful of really nice ones and I figured it’s time to try to expand the collection. The only place near by where I know I could have a good chance at finding a high quality angy was the ditch near my house. I hit up the chandler and after digging for some time I began to see a root, cusps, and enamel exposed. I was thinking score! Nope, it can’t ...

These finds are from our last trip to the yellow ditch.

A really nice sharp angustidens. Great tip!

I seldom get the opportunity to go out fossiling for an entire day, but with my kid’s sports seasons over and my family away in NJ, it was nice to get out and not worry about what time it was. I headed out to GMR Saturday morning picking up from where I left off the previous week in my search for a nice great white. I’ve hunted GMR about 10 or 12 times now - enough to know that there’s a ton of worn, busted, partial (and any other negative connotation you could apply) fossils...

I hit my favorite beach the other day only to find that I was probably the third person to go down it.  Luckly for me the tide was still going out and the conditions seemed to be getting better by the minute.

This beach is my favorite because if you really look close and take your time you can find a great variety of treasures, even being "third up to bat".

The water wa...

Yesterday, the weezling and I decided to make the most of a lazy summer Saturday afternoon in a squalid, overgrown, mosquito infested, snake ridden gold mine. We haven't hunted the ditch in over a year because honestly, its usually not worth the drive. There is a 100 foot section of an old ditch that cuts through some primo chander bridge and ashley formation. We've had some heavy rains lately, and we thought our chances might be good there.

We walked down into the d...

This was a few weeks ago when I found all this.  I stopped after work with a few hours of daylight left.  I was in search of ammonites and when your looking for something its hard to find.  The first place I checked.  I went back to the top of the hill to check some spots.  When I started down the first trail not 30 feet down was a huge Eopachydiscus ammonite.  Its about 18 inches across, but one side has some damage.  Still...

My wife asked me what I wanted to do this fathers day, so I took full advantage of this opportunity.  I called my dad up and we both headed out to the bay to just relax.

Fishing, exploring, testing out his new homemade potato launcher (this thing is REALLY cool), and fossil hunting were all in the plans. 

I timed it so my father would drop me off at a totally new cliff ...

Earlier this week, da fossz called me with bad news - the weather had been really nasty for him with long, heavy showers. Rain near him spells higher river levels and faster current. Luckily, I was able to make it to the river on the day it crested. I strapped on an additional 10 pounds of lead to bring my wetsuit-less total to over 40 pounds. I cratered when I hit the bottom, but once I was there I was in the zone. I worked a pattern on the hunt for more of the dugong, and I w...

After the awesome finds from my last trip to the river, I had to go back. I lay awake at night, thinking to myself that there were more whale teeth under the sand just waiting to be excavated. There had to be more dugong out there! I hit the same area of the river with my fanning gloves on. I started making finds almost immediately. 10 minutes into the hunt, I got a fantastic squalodon molar. Then, another one. Then a couple more. I was on fire underwater!

The finds...

1-3/4 Inch C. Angustiden

4" C. Angustiden

These are some large seal flipper bones. I don't know if they are fingers or toes. Seal bones are not common fossils to find. It seems the more tasty the animals were the less that was left over after dinner to become fossils. These are river finds and are probably from the Yorktown formation.

I have not had a chance to dive my favorite river since last October and had no idea what happened to the fossil bed and my dive buddies needed to know the water temperature (you'd think a MI guy wouldn't really care as long as the water didn't have any ice...  I can understand the FL perspective a little more but it's not like he listened anyway; wanting to dive w/o a hood).

I made it to the river on Tuesday, did some...

I just returned from a wonderful week of vacation with my family on Hilton Head Island.  We had great weather and good times,  plus my wife even let me go fossil hunting on a few occasions!  

I was told that Hilton Head was a relativly new island (geologically speaking!), but I still wanted to take a look in the mornings for teeth.  I managed to get out out twice, and...

Here is a group of Notorhynchus teeth I collected in the Lee Creek mine near Aurora, North Carolina. Most of these I found myself, in the Pliocene Yorktown Formation and they were collected over a number of years. This frame has the best lower Notorhynchus teeth, from Lee Creek, that I have in my collection. I took the picture just as the sun was setting and it didn't turn out as well as I would have liked.

Here are two nice exampes of ecphoras from Calvert Cliffs, MD.  I think the one on the right is the Ecphora quadricostata, but the one on the left I'm not sure about.  Ecphoras aren't that common along the cliffs, usually find only pieces of them.  The one on the left is only one of two like it with the smooth ridges.  Anyone know what type it is?

than...