Now that this semester is finally over I have a little more time to go hunting. I’m in the process of getting recertified for diving just to be on the safe side because the last time I took a dive was about four years ago. I’ll be diving in the rivers this summer real soon.

For this post I went to two different places in the past week. The first spot I went to...

You can't find a whole meg every trip, but you can sure try!  This fossil adventure is more about what could have been, then what did happen.  It still was a good trip.  I found a couple of half way decent ecphora, a nice sand tiger, a small but nice mako, a large portion of a skate mouth plate, and a real nice ear bone.  The beach provided just en...

The third day of our weekend trip started with a vigorous shake from DW as I slumbered deeply. Remember…better life through chemistry!! After a belly-fillin’ fromage-chicken-egg biscuit we raced to the moving bacteria waters of GMR. In a strange twist to this story I had received multiple cuts from a cerveza bottle that I could not open with RivrDigr’s rental car key. At least I did not use my Finding Nemo toothbrush; that would have been a disaster if I had broke it. Why&...

2 decent finds from the Balden Co. pit.

Great Pungo ground shot avec Mako.

A complete specimen with a slight pathology. The blade is crinkled where it meets the root.

A fabulous example of a Pungo Meg Shark tooth. This one was tough to spot but fun to dig up. The bourlette is complete, sharp tip and sturdy root. What a superhero!!

After a relaxing night's rest without A/C units crashing on mr. fancy-college boy, we headed to the PCS parking lot. Thanks again to PCS for allowing us to collect and thanks to the trip leaders and guides. We arrived at the pit and noticed the area reduced in size from reclamation. With the great Pungo and Yorktown material, there was still hope for a nice find. If nothing else, there were lots of shells. RivrDigr struck first with a really nice Pungo mako. Ironically, this ...

I did not come prepared this trip, but I still managed to find a nice lower great white. Next time I’ll bring waders and not my girly boots  refer to DW’s trip for a photo. This has been a great weekend of fossil hunting. I can’t wait to go back in the fall!

The largest hemi in my collection to date. It has a little root wear to one corner, but it's still nice.

A flawless tooth.

This was another great weekend of fossil hunting to look forward too. The day started off with a trip to da fossz’s crib and it felt like home. So many awesome fossils! It was the first time I got to see his collection in person and on the way out he happily patted me down to make sure I wasn’t walking out with any fossils

Yesterday during our drive up to Aurora NC to hunt Lee Creek, we the vigilant shark tooth hunters of Black River Fossils braved the rain and gleefully anticipated the bounty the pit would produce if it were also hit with the thunderstorms. Alas, the rain barrier that has shielded the favored collecting ground of so many again proved to be an effective anti-erosion measure. The collecting area, ever shrinking because of the reclamation, was dotted with the footprints of last weekend’s hu...

I normally wouldn't post a broken tooth, but its my first hybodus. They are usually found broken.

Its beginning to be that time of the year for Black River Fossils to shine its blackest. Spring is here and the diving season is just around the corner. The spring collecting season is in full effect and 6 of us made the journey to Aurora to scour the famous Lee Creek mine for shark teeth. Its a long drive, though, and we do our best to hit as many other locations as possible to maximize collecting and take advantage of the new scenery.

Our first stop was a ...

A whole tooth with feeding wear on the tip, and some cracking in the root. Probably an incisor.

The second ‘07 hunt at LaFarge was set for this Saturday and boy was I primed. We had two good rains a few days before the dig so I envisioned my fossil bag laden with rics. I actually arrived on-time for the first time in about 5 years and the news was we could park near the active mining area. I shimmied out of my truck and hit the open pit to find nice overburden spread-out in a small area. All the collectors ransacked ...

I went out after some rains last saturday to see if some old spots had been washed.  I have one spot that usally produces some Ptychodus teeth so i decided to check it out.  First thing i find was an awesome Cretolamna appendiculata just sitting on the top of a small pile.  That made my day.  I did end up finding 13 Ptychodus, most small and beat up.  One P. Whipplei was still in the matrix and in perfect condition.

I got up early Saturday morning to hunt Lafarge for teeth of the Eocene Giant White Shark Carcharocles auriculatus. Many other collectors had the same idea on what turned out to be a gorgeous SC spring day - sunny and 70 degrees. Fellow brfc'ers da fossz, t$, rivrdigr, and bigredmeg also made the trip to the limestone quarry to try their shovels. 

A heavy rain had just fallen two days prior, so the normally footprint dotted landscape was pristine for the pl...

I found a new spot that was only open for 3 days. The crew was peeling off some clay and replacing it with sand to improve drainage in preparation to build a new building. They had to dig a little deeper on one side and they hit the layer. That was Thursday, and the kids and I showed up with only an hour of daylight. Friday, we were a bit more prepared and we arrived to find a large trench with layer exposed the whole way. We dug until dark with the intent to dig all weekend if necessar...

This is a rare early tooth that is almost but not quite a C. auriculatis. Notice how the serrations fade toward the tip. I was surprised to find one of these in N.C.

Another trade tooth. These are hard to find.

This is a very unusual tooth. It's the first Otodus I have found in N. Carolina, and it's pretty big too. Not a perfect tooth but still impressive.

I used to think using more than water and a toothbrush would spoil a fossil tooth. I was the one spoiled, by teeth that were wonderfully preserved and without mineral deposits. Now I know better and don't feel bad at all about freeing a tooth from mineral encrustations.

This came from an excavation for a new subway terminal just inside the Washington, D.C. border.

what a nice megalodon with some limestone-like matrix still attached

This tooth is from a land site in Prince George County, Maryland. It is from the lower Calvert formation. this section of the Calvert formation is a little older than most of the Calvert along the Chesapeake Bay. There was a lower Eocene deposit directly under the Calvert here which made it a surprise when I pulled a Cretaceous Squalicorax tooth out of the same layer as the Squalodon tooth.

I went, I saw, I picked up some coral. This was the absolute worst Lee Creek trip I have has so far, and I started going in the mine in the late 1980"s. It was very dry in the quarry and I was told there hadn't been much rain for several weeks. There were footprints everywhere and even the Pungo was sparce. I got several dozen small Pungo teeth including a pair of Alopias, and two Yorktown teeth, one Carcharhinus and one Galeocerdo cuvier. Today it's monsoon season in Au...

For the area and the material they're made from, these points are fairly nice. White quartz points are usually very crudely made. I wish I lived in an area that had better point material.

I found this point on a dirt path on the grounds of a community college in Alexandria, Virginia in the late 1980"s. I eventually found several more, but this was the best one I found.

I found this along the Potomac River in Charles County, Maryland. As you can see it is not at all symmetrical. This is typical of a well used knife. Artifacts made of pink quartzite are fairly uncommon to find.

Scrapers with this shape are often called thumbnail scrapers due to their shape and typically small size. I found this along a river while trying find stone funnel shaped structures that were supposed to be Indian fish traps.

Here is a section of the oyster midden that stretches across parts of the cliffs at Popes Creek in Maryland. At one time parts of the midden were over 15 feet thick. The midden was so large that in the early 1800's the oysters were mined commercially for lime to use in plaster, fertilizer, etc.

I found this point in the same creek, and on the same day, as the chipped axe. The creek was a wonderful place to find artifacts. Two years after I realised what a super artifact hunting area this was they flooded the entire valley and made a lake. Not fair!!!

This piece is very thin for the material. Most quartzite points and blades are almost round in cross-section due to the difficulty in working this material. It's quite a bit larger than most I have found.

Because of the size and shape of this item I believe it is a perforator. It fits perfectly between your finger and thumb and would have been comfortable to use while punching holes in animal hides to make clothing etc.

Here's a fairly large drill  that going by the patina and amount of overall wear, is an old one.