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Click the thumbnails for more information.
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Fossil Hemi Shark Tooth
Berkeley County, South Carolina, USA - Hemipristis serra |
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This one has a nice mix of color.... |
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Discovering a new spot with future potential
Berkeley County, South Carolina, USA |
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This is a trip from about a week ago. The whole weekend I spent some time driving around looking for new spots. The first day I found a new area, but the layer sucked and was only about three inches thick. The next day I came across another new developing area with finished ponds. It had just rained recently and I arrived a few hours before it would start to get dark. The area was surprisingly absent of foot prints. At this place it seems like every tooth above two inches was either mangled or d... |
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The Disabled List
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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I am in pure animal mode. I cannot resist the pull of the earth. Every so often while digging in the freshly exposed fossil deposits, I turn my arm the wrong way and I wince in pain. I should not have been there. I should have been home resting. But I know that each day that passes will see a reduced hunting area. I must hunt each day as if it were the last. Still, my productivity is down. I am moving less than half the earth I normally move but it is enough. I find a particularly rich vein. Roc... |
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Giant Angustidens
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA - Carcharocles angustidens |
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My new king of the angustidens! Its from the reformulated layer so its got a few chips, but for the most part, this tooth is intact. The tip is sharp, the blade is serrated, the cusps are there, and so is most of the bourlette. When I took this tooth to Lafarge a couple of weeks ago to show some friends, I jokingly referred to it as megastidens ditchweezilensis . The biggest angustidens that I am aware of is at the charleston museum and if I am correct, it is a little over 5 inches long. I keep... |
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Hard life.
Peace River, Florida, USA |
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As we collect fossils we sometimes forget that they are the remains of animals that probably survived a lot of hard times before they finally died. We sometimes get a glimpse into what they had to endure, in the way of predators and environment, through examining the damage to their bones. The most obvious signs of predation is by the marks, and punctures, left behind by teeth. Another sign is of healed injuries. Not all attacks by predators are lethal. And not all broken bones are from pre... |
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Juvenile Angustidens Tooth
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA - Carcharocles angustidens |
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A pristine little angustidens with absolutely no damage. The hawthorne layer laid directly on the chandler bridge in the pond where I found this tooth. While I was scooping gravel, I skimmed the chandler bridge and flipped this tooth out.... |
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Injured Reserve
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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Another post from a few weeks ago - I took it easy Sunday because of the shoulder injury but when Monday rolled around, I knew that the crew did more work on the pond during the day. As soon as quitting time rolled around, the kids piled into the truck and we headed off to go hunting. We only had an hour to dig, but we made the most of it. It was a good thing we went because the day's work cut into some great new layer. I had to watch every shovel full so I could avoid further injury so I was on... |
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Pinch me
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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This is another undescribed decapod from the Tupelo Bay Formation. I've found over a dozen of them over the years ranging from an inch across to over 5 inches. I rarely find individual pieces. They're almost always complete. Another interesting fact about this species is that all of the ones I've found have been male. ... |
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Watch your step.
Berkeley County, South Carolina, USA |
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A few years back I was out at one of the local quarries with a few friends from Florida. We had been there a few hours when one of the guys let out a scream. We rushed over to where he was sitting on the side of a hill with something in his lap. He cleaned it off with a brush and we were stunned. It was the mandible from a walrus. I had found broken tusks there before from the Pliocene formation. But this was the largest walrus fossil I had heard of from this area. It was sent to the Smithsonian... |
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NC Cretaceous
Bladen County, North Carolina, USA |
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Two weeks ago I made another trip hoping to expand my fledgling collection of North Carolina Cretaceous material. The forecast was calling for sunny and 65 deg which meant I could bring my daughter along without worrying about cold complaints. We arrived at the site early and gave it a scan since there had been a little bit of rain in the past week. There wasn’t much laying out in the open, the best find was a blond, slightly beat up croc tooth. While walking the site we were also introduced to ... |
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Rotator Cuffed!
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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A couple of weeks ago I got the scoop on when to dig from the jobsite foreman. The kids and I showed up when he said and we had the newly dug area of the pond to ourselves for a few hours. There was some really rich layer there. It was loaded with teeth. After a while a few more people showed up to dig. Then a few more showed up. I dug with a new intensity because with this much competition it would be tough to score a tooth without some investment of effort. I rammed the spade end of my shovel ... |
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Meglo self-destructo!
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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This is a trip from a few weeks ago at the pond. I didn’t have much time to dig today and it was already getting dark when I arrived. There was a whole new side dug out and a guy was already digging it and he scored a delicious white colored meg tooth. I think it was probably close to 5 inches with fully intact root and tip. One side I was digging the layer was super hard and then I started to notice a shape of a root being exposed. It was a meg! I was getting ready to take out my camera to take... |
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Striatolamia Tooth
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA - Striatolamia macrota |
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I found this little gem while I was doing a crawl over the limestone.... |
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A gentle touch.
Berkeley County, South Carolina, USA |
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One of the more common fossils from the Ashley and Chandler Bridge Formations is Billfish. I've collected hundreds of vertebrates over the years. Another common Billfish fossil is their rostrum. They tend to fossilize well because of their density. I've collected a few partial, articulated skeletons that will be published soon as new species. One specimen is unique in that it had the atlas vertebra. It actually has a ball on one end that fit's into the skull like a reptile. In 2001 I uncovered a... |
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Archaeocete Tooth
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA - Zygorhiza kochii |
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A fantastic find from the Eocene Green Cap formation near Harleyville SC. The detail on the enamel is fantastic with ridges and valleys that spider across the surface. There is a cool white mark on one side. Some of the root is missing, but I am very fortunate to find this tooth in this good of shape. The Green Cap is not known for preserving these teeth well and the teeth themselves are exceedingly rare.... |
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Auriculatus Tooth
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA - Carcharocles auriculatus |
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I found this tooth 3/4 exposed but I didn't snap a picture because I didn't want to lose my balance and plummet to my death on the limestone below. It was a good compromise. I got the tooth and I'm not dead. Besides for a few missing serrations, this tooth is a gem. What a bourlette!... |
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2-1/2 Inch Auriculatus
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA - Carcharocles auriculatus |
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Another fantastic C. auriculatus specimen from SC. This one has it all, crisp blade, full bourlette, intact root and fully serrated cusps.... |
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1-1/8 Inch Auriculatus
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA - Carcharocles auriculatus |
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A lightly colored gem ric. Found this one in between two large greencap boulders.... |
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Hidden beauty.
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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The day started off with an early morning awakening like usual before going into the pit. On the way walking to the collecting area a deer charges out of no where five feet in front of me. I was going to knock him in the head with the shovel and make him my breakfast, but he was lucky and did not get close enough. I noticed a lot of the green cap was already walked over and I decided to go try a different end where there was hardly any people because the guys did say we could go anywhere in the ... |
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Hidden beauty.
Berkeley County, South Carolina, USA |
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A few years back a close friend gave me a trilobite. He had received a shipment of fossils from Morroco and had a large box of trilobites in various states of disrepair. They had been roughly chiseled out of the matrix enough for you to see that they were large trilobites. A large, enrolled one, caught my eye and he graciously gave it to me for free. It sat on a bench in my garage until recently when I ran out of projects to work on. I took it off of the shelf and used an air scribe to clean all... |
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Hidden beauty.
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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I awoke earlier than I expected Saturday morning and I was ready far before it was time to go hunting at Lafarge. I was one of the first ones at the designated spot to wait for entry into the pit, and even though it was only about 30 minutes until sunrise, it seemed like much longer. The first thing I noticed upon arrival was that the road in was very muddy. Many cars slipped and slided on the way in, but the good news was that we could go anywhere we wanted in the whole pit. No Restrictions. I ... |
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Pickin Up Good Fossil Vibrations
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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Another BRFC group hunt was on as RivrDigr, his trusty sidekick Chuck, T$, DW and myself met at Lafarge to unearth fossils from their resting place. I arrived (late) at LaFarge around 7:20 to find the quarry fully open to collectors. There were quite a few more groups hunting today than usual. Thanks again to LaFarge for allowing public hunts. Well, I strapped on my backpack, hit the pit and noticed nice layer in the spoil piles. The lowcountry had some decent rain the last week so my hopes were... |
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Fossil Hemi Tooth
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA - Hemipristis serra |
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I love the colors on this hemi it's definitely a new favorite in my collection when it comes to different color variations. This one is just amazing.... |
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Fossil Mako Shark Tooth
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA - Isurus hastalis |
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A flawless lower tooth with great color.... |
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Collect everything!
Berkeley County, South Carolina, USA |
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When I first started collecting for the local museum I asked the curator what he would like me to concentrate on. He replied "Everything". He explained that the museum wasn't there to just collect one of everything. He said that only through collecting multiple samples of the same thing could you start to find out about the variations within a species. He showed me examples of fossils that had been collected over a period of a hundred years. They were from the same species but there were var... |
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Two days straight at the pond
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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The first photo of teeth is from a trip about a week ago. I took a friend out to go hunt some teeth. He didn’t find anything because he’s still a newbie. I almost found a killer benedini, but the tip was already lost millions of years ago when the shark was feeding. I didn’t find any whole megs today, but I did get to see one that ditchweezil found that day before I left. All I could do was drool as I was leaving the pond. It seems like he finds a whole meg every time he goes and it makes me si... |
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The color of success
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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With our success yesterday, it was a foredrawn conclusion that we would hunt again. We arrived onsite and just to be safe we asked the supervisor if it was ok. He was down and we jumped in the hole. Like yesterday, the crew had dug a new section revealing untouched fossil layer. The finds were very sparse. In fact, I only found one tooth the whole day but it was a nice one. Unbelievable color, serrations, tip. Its a gem! tha boy was amazed at my good fortune and he had to get away from me. He mu... |
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Colorful Megalodon Tooth
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA - Carcharocles megalodon |
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This tooth is a great example of why hunting sharks teeth never gets old for me. The color! I never found anything that was blue and orange with lightning marks on the root before. Its completely serrated from root to tip and its probably better than any megalodon I found all last year. The ground shot is nice!... |
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Fossil Megalodon
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA - Carcharocles megalodon |
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A really nicely colored megalodon from a Summerville land site. You can see where my shovel blessed it on the right root lobe. I didn't take a ground shot because it was getting dark when I found it and I was in a digging frenzy.... |
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Megalodon Tooth
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA - Carcharocles megalodon |
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I knew this little serrated megalodon was complete as soon as I saw it because it was laying flat side up. Normally when I find them curved side up they have peel. I think this is because the curved side erodes more quickly when exposed.... |
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Let the racking begin
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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Tha boy got off the bus from school and the weezling and I were yelling at him from down the street to hurry because we were going fossil hunting. With 30 pounds of books in his back he started running full speed towards the truck. We had to hurry because it gets dark about 5:45 so we only have about an hour to hunt. We pulled up at the site and we were elated to see the new digging. The finds started happening immediately. 5 minutes after I started digging, I had a pretty little megalodon. The ... |
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Almost a fair trade.
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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This post is about one of the local fossils that didn't make it into our museum. A local collector contacted me about a whale he had found in a local canal. It was under about 18 inches of water and he wasn't sure how to remove it. I met him at the locality a few days later and after careful probing I determined it was a mysticete skull. It was barely exposed in the top of the Ashley Formation. I found additional bones surrounding it just under the surface. A quick measurement showed that the s... |
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Fossil Hemi Tooth
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA - Hemipristis serra |
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I love the color on this tooth. Its almost a reddish-purple color. Plus its got a cool variation on the blade. There is a little indentation on the edge of the blade that looks like feeding damage but magnifaction reveals there is no break, but the enamel is smooth and is just indented. On another species I would call this a pathology but I've seen it before on other hemis. Perhaps it has something to do with the way the teeth fit together in the jaw? There is another variation in some teeth in ... |
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Angustidens Shark Tooth
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA - Carcharocles angustidens |
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Here's a litte beauty of a tooth with pretty much every feature - serrations, tip, bourlette, root, and nice reddish-orange color. I wish I had my camera because it looked cool on the ground.... |
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A fresh dig site
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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One afternoon, tha weEzlinG and I got the bug and we went out scoping a spot to dig. We knew where an old spot was abandoned so we went there first and luckily for us, they just started digging again that day. The pond was drained and a huge unfinished area was exposed to dig. As an added bonus, the crew split early because of rain so we were the first to hunt the new dig after a rain. There weren't a lot of teeth to be found, but we did get a few nice ones. I found a really nice angustidens com... |
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9/16" Crow Shark Tooth
Bladen County, North Carolina, USA - Squalicorax Pristodontus |
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A nice little anterior Crow shark tooth.... |
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1 1/16" Crow Shark Tooth
Bladen County, North Carolina, USA - Squalicorax Pristodontus |
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This was the best find using the screen.... |
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1 3/4" Goblin Shark Tooth
Bladen County, North Carolina, USA - Scapanorhynchus texanus |
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This goblin tooth is a couple of chips away from being one of the nicest I've ever found. Other than the tip it's perfect and the root has a little pathology to boot.... |
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Cretaceous Crawl
Bladen County, North Carolina, USA |
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Since I moved down from NJ, I’ve been itching to get out and explore some of the great fossil locales North Carolina has to offer, other than Greensmill Run. My early December trip to a Cretaceous land site was promising but having my four year old son with me didn’t allow for much time collecting. Between Christmas and New Years, the opportunity presented itself to make a return visit, this time without the young’uns. Not being very familiar with the area, I spent most of the first hour walking... |
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The ritual
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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While I wait to go collecting today, I decided to put up a collection of posts from the ditch near my house. Nothing I found in any of the trips here was awesome, but I photo everything for this site. Its a ritual that ends with a clean fossil table.... |
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Summerville Land Megalodon
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA - Carcharocles megalodon |
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This tooth has seen some better days but its still a complete tooth in my opinion. Its got great color and the photo I took of it on the ground before I picked it up is great!... |
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Another Land Meg
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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A couple of weeks ago my wife went out of town and I went crazy. I hunted fossils all day. I went to a good pond that I was hunting and even though it was already finished and full of water, some piles were bulldozed recently and all the rain had been eroding out teeth sporadically. A lot of people knew where the pond was and they were hunting it too, but for some reason I guess I just thought it was worth a visit. 4 days prior we had a heavy rain, so there would undoubtedly be some scraps for m... |
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Fossil Mako Shark Tooth
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA - Isurus desori |
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I haven’t found a desori this nice since the forbidden pond dried up.... |
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Fossil Mako Shark Tooth
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA - Isurus desori |
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I haven't found a desori this nice since the forbidden pond dried up.... |
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Hunting teeth straight after school.
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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I’ve wanted to go back and check out this spot for awhile and decided to go right after class. I recently transferred colleges and now I’m attending the College of Charleston (the same college that the Jedi Master had attended). I was quickly shown around after mentioning the Jedi Master’s name. I got to see some awesome fossils that the Jedi Master had donated to the school, one of the megs looked to be about 5 inches and in super hero quality condition. Well, back to the hunting the post. I ju... |
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Fossil Mako
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA - Isurus hastalis |
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One of my best land Makos from Summerville. The colors are wicked, the blade is razor sharp and the root intact.... |
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Angustiden Deuce
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA - Carcharocles angustidens |
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A pair of Summerville angys. The smaller one is a gem, the larger has a dinged cusp, but the patho blade makes it a keeper.... |
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Megalodon Tooth
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA - Carcharocles megalodon |
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A nice little Summerville megalodon with pretty colors. I'm glad I remembered to bring my camera so I could snap the ground photo!... |
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Reliving the Glory Days
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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The last few weeks have been busy; you know; Christmas, College Bowl games, New Years, and even work. I really could not take it any more; I needed to get my fossil fix. Even the yung-uns were begging to fossil hunt. Luckily some rains hit this week and even some late Friday night. This meant hitting creeks and possibly walking unfinished ponds. We arrived at a newer creek that we have been collecting at for about a year and were the first to hunt it. Myself and the boys picked up teeth and othe... |
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Reliving the Glory Days
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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Da f0ssZ called me last week and said he was bringing the kids down for some fossil fun and I told him I was in. He came down early and hit a ditch while I slept in preparation for the day ahead. As soon as I hopped out of bed, I got into tooth hunting garb and the weezling and I were gone. We went to check out a spot in hopes that the rains the night before had washed out something nice. We arrived to something even better. An unfinished pond that had been previously filled with water had been ... |
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A Horse Tale
Peace River, Florida, USA |
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My buddy Chuck called me up the other day and said he had found a new spot on the river, it was a large area with tons of gravel that looked almost untouched. I haven't had a day off during the week to go fossilin since my trip to C.A. , so I was ready to move some serious gravel with Chuck, he's quite the digging machine.In fact I think that will be his new nickname "dign machine". Since he already had his canoe loaded up from the previous day, I headed over to his house in the morning and we h... |
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It was almost worth it.
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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I decided to take my nephew out to go hunt some shark teeth. We hit up a old ditch that was overgrown and covered with hitch hikers.. those things are really annoying. Than I went to work and started clearing the overburden and than I had to dig another three feet down to finally hit the layer. When I was about ready to quit digging I see a tip of a large meg exposed. I got too excited and it turned out to not be whole :( maybe next time. ... |
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Angustidens tooth
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA - Carcharocles angustidens |
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Great color on this little tooth. I almost missed it, but I saw it out of the corner of my eye on the edge of the ditch on the way back to my truck.... |
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Researching the past.
Florence County, South Carolina, USA |
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In preparation for a book on South Carolina dinosaurs I visited some of the original Cretaceous sites cited in old documents. One was a site on the Great Pee Dee River in Florence County. The site was documented over a hundred years ago and reported belemnites from a newly named Pee Dee Formation. I took some pictures and recorded the type location with a GPS reading that will be in the book. I also took a few belemnoids from the exposed layer for the museum. ... |
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Pay Attention!
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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I walked my favorite ditch after a heavy rain and I got all the way to the end without finding the awesome tooth that had to have been exposed by the deluge. I started on my way back to the truck, but I never give up. I always look down even on the way home. About halfway through the ditch I spied a shine on the edge. A small but gorgeous angustidens was fully exposed on the bank. I easily could have missed this little gem!... |
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Ouch!
Berkeley County, South Carolina, USA |
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I was attacked! It came out of nowhere and without warning drew blood. It should be put into a museum somewhere and locked up for life. As I cleaned a cup of Early Eocene material I reached in to break up the smaller clumps. I received a sharp pain in one of my fingers and instinctively pulled my hand out of the water. Stuck to my middle finger was a tiny shark tooth. It had waited millions of years to get it's last (I hope) meal. When I looked at it under the magnifier I was amazed that it had ... |
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One of those days that makes it worthwhile
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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I have been hunting at this one ditch for a while now, but I have never found anything good there. But I'm persistent! The fossil layer is under the bottom so I can only hunt it when its dry. Every time I go I throw the layer up on the edge that I dig out so tha weezling has a chance to find some teeth without having to dig for them. They are always small teeth, but he doesn't mind because he is finding more than me and all I am doing is digging a hole straight down. We talk about how far down w... |
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Hemipristis Tooth
Berkeley County, South Carolina, USA - Hemipristis serra |
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The colors are so awesome on this hemi!... |
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WARNING - Shark tooth hunting story
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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The shark tooth hunting has been pretty sweet with all the rain we had this fall. One particularly heavy downpour washed out some great stuff at my favorite ditch. This was one of those trips there are teeth everywhere and I thoroughly enjoyed picking them up by 2 or 3 every time I bent down. There are all kinds of differently colored teeth - yellow, white, orange, blue, grey, green, and sometimes all mixed together. The best finds of the day were definitely hemipristis. I found two big ones. Th... |
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Late Christmas
Florence County, South Carolina, USA |
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Mrs. Bum decided to take the day off from work. That meant that for part of the afternoon she would lay back in the over stuffed Lazy Boy chair I bought for her last Christmas and take a long nap in my den. It also meant that I would have to be very quiet for a few hours. So I decided to go out into my lab and finish up a few projects. I had just finished screening the last of my Early Eocene material. I didn't want to start on another casting project just yet. So I went to my cabinet where I st... |
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Put on the coffee.
Berkeley County, South Carolina, USA |
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It rained almost two inches last week so I thought it would be worth while checking out one of the local quarries. It's a limestone quarry that has exposed the Santee Limestone formation. There was a lot of new area exposed so I figured I could find some whale or turtle bones. I did find a shattered turtle scapula. But I found something even better than whale material. I found a block of limestone filled with fish skeletons. I've recovered some very nice articulated fish skeletons from the lo... |
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Lots of rain = few fossils?
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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After a heavy rain I went and walked a previously productive field. Not this time. As is common with fields, most of the teeth I found were broken. No one can rack everytime.... |
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Neighborly love.
Berkeley County, South Carolina, USA |
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I like to collect fossil whales. Especially when there's a good chance that I'll find a new species. I've discovered six Middle Eocene, one Late Eocene, five Early Oligocene, and one Early Oligocene paratype whales. It's exciting to see an extinct animal that no person has ever seen before. I've discovered over 40 new species of animals to date. But the whales are by far the most interesting. This posting is about a whale that I found back in 1998. I had heard rumors that there was a deep dr... |
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The Forgotten Loot
Berkeley County, South Carolina, USA |
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The other day I was walking around my back porch looking for tools and on one of the shelves there was a bucket full of uncleaned fossils. From the looks of it they came from about four different locations and I found them about two years ago. They must have got misplaced and I just forgot about them because I usually always clean up the best finds from my trips as soon as I get home and I don’t clean the others until later.... |
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Giant Thresher Shark Tooth
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA - Alopias grandis |
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Its got a tip ding but the rest of the tooth is awesome.... |
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Megalodon Shark Tooth
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA - Carcharocles megalodon |
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A nice little meg from a clump of concreted fossil formation. Its enamel is almost pure white.... |
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Some would call it drudgery
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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There is this ditch at a new land site that is loaded with shark teeth, plain and simple. There is simply not one reason not to go there. There are TWO reasons not to hunt there. First, the layer is like concrete. We have to beat on it with the devastator until giant chuncks of it bust loose. Then we have to smack the chunks with a rock hammer to find the teeth. Most things get destroyed during that process. The second reason not to hunt there is the poor preservation of the teeth. Even if they ... |
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Fossil Giant White Shark Tooth
Berkeley County, South Carolina, USA - Carcharocles angustidens |
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a little gem of an angustidens from the creek near my house.... |
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The Lucky Phone Call
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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One morning near the beginning of the school year I was in the ditch at the crack of dawn after I dropped the weezling off at school. We had a flooding rain the night before so I was excited about what treasures the ditch might hold. I was walking near a pretty good section of ditch and my cell phone rang. It was da f0ssZ and he was just calling to see what I was doing. There was a ripple in the force or something and he knew exactly what I was doing. He called to take part in some small way. Fo... |
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Bike ride turned fossil hunt
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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One afternoon the weezling and I were at home on a Saturday afternoon with nothing to do so we decided to try something new. We went bike riding. He just learned to ride two wheels so we decided to go down to the local bike trail. It runs right next to a massive canal in Summerville. A few miles down the trail, our curiousity got the best of us and we stashed our bikes in the woods and we went down in the ditch to scout around for fossils. There wasn't a whole lot just laying out, but back in th... |
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phoSsil pHaTcatZ
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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After the last Lafarge dig (which I didn't get to attend), I called da f0ssZ and he and the boys from phatfossils came to pay me a visit so we could go do some hunting at the spot I scoped out in yesterday's post. Like most other people who come here to hunt, they were after angustidens. Seems like that species is rare everywhere but in South Carolina. One of the phatboyZ told me that a meteor destroyed the oligocene sediments up in Maryland. If you're gonna wipe out the fossil record for an ent... |
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Checking out a new fossil hunting spot
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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I was driving past a field one day and I noticed a ditch running down through the middle of it. Luckily we had our fossil hunting gear in the truck! The weezling and I hopped out and walked the ditch. We found a few beat down shark teeth but nothing awesome. Its nice to check out a new place that has fossils. Perhaps we'll make it up that way again to do some more hunting.... |
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Bucket "o" Mud
Bladen County, North Carolina, USA |
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Two weeks ago while my wife and daughter were up in NJ I took my son to a Cretaceous land site here in NC. The morning temperatures were in the low 30s and the ground was a little muddy so collecting with my son for any period of time was out. I decided instead to go and bring some material home to search through in the comfort of indoors. I picked up about 10 gallons of what I hoped was the right formation and spent the past two weeks searching it a little at a time. I’m still trying to get a h... |
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Would you like to buy a bridge?
Berkeley County, South Carolina, USA |
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It's almost Christmas and I bet you're still rushing around trying to find that perfect gift for the fossil collector that has everything. But a word of caution. If you're thinking of purchasing a fossil for your favorite collector you should make sure that it's not a fake. During the last few years there has been a dramatic increase in fake fossils on the market. The Moroccan fossils are probably the first thing that comes to your mind. But the Chinese are catching up. Exciting new Chinese foss... |
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Megalodon Tooth
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA - Carcharocles megalodon |
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This pretty little megalodon tooth was almost completely buried when I found it. Just half of the right root lobe was exposed as I spotted the flat side of the tooth. I wish I had my digital camera, but I learned my lesson earlier this year. I will never take my camera out in the rain again.... |
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The Window Game
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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The dark clouds started rolling in one afternoon and the weezling and I stood side by side and smiled as the rain started to fall. Soon visibility was less than 100 feet out the window and we high 5'd and went to change our clothes to go out collecting. There was layer all over the place out at the pond from yesterday's post. As soon as we were ready and it was safe to drive, we rolled. We parked and jumped out of the truck like it was on fire. We speed walked to get to the good area because the... |
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Pack rats.
Berkeley County, South Carolina, USA |
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Is it just me? Or has anyone else out there noticed the lack of postings at this site recently. The truth is, winter months are hell on fossil collectors. Most of the good sites are covered with snow or the ground is frozen. The creeks are too cold for screening and it's next to impossible to hit the chisel with muffins on. And for the seventh year in a row Santa has refused to bring me the Ground Penetrating Radar kit I keep asking for. So collecting pails and shovels are put away until the spr... |
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The blistermaker
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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An old spot was suddenly drained and we got first digs at the newly exposed layer. The spot was dug right to the fossil layer, so we only had to remove a couple inches of thick clay-mud to get to the teeth. Nearly every piece of overburden stuck to our shovels and we had to peel it off with sticks, our boots, or each other's shovels, fingers, whatever. The layer was extra hard, too, so we had to push extra hard to get into the rocks. Our hands were decorated with blisters before too long. To boo... |
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Moldy fossils.
Berkeley County, South Carolina, USA |
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It's invertebrate time again. I've spent a lot of time in the Santee Limestone. It's a Middle Eocene marine formation with a lot of macrofossils. Most of the time I'm looking for protocetids. But I can't pass up a good invertebrate when I see it. It takes a lot of work to clean them up. But sometimes the results are impressive. The original shell material rarely survives. What I usually find is casts. But occasionally I find the molds. When I come across a complete mold of a gastropod I sometime... |
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Not the treadmill
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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A new land spot opened up a few weeks ago and I found it the day they broke ground on it. The layer was pretty sad and all the teeth were pretty much trashed, but I dug for the fluke megalodon. I didn't find a whole tooth, but I broke a sweat outside on a beautiful day and that was enough to make it worthwhile.... |
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Where are all the teeth?
Berkeley County, South Carolina, USA |
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For a couple of days before Thanksgiving, the rains poured and my hopes for large serrated objects were greatly enhanced. Armed with clear buckets, the kids and I scoured the still flowing big ditch on the morning of Thanksgiving. We didn't see a soul and there were no footprints either. At the end of the hunt, our tooth pockets were all much lighter than they should have been. We we knew how much rain fell, so we were all a little bummed. With the passage of time and many excavators, the big di... |
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Ray Plate
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA - Unidentified - Ray |
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I had stopped to take a ground shot of a broken Angy sticking out of some fallen formation. When I turned around to put my camera back into my bag, I found myself face-to-face with one of the finds of the day. ... |
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3/4" Double Root Squalodon Tooth
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA - Squalodon atlanticus |
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My first double root Squalodon tooth. It's not big but its killer!... |
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South Carolina Road Trip
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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I had been in a major collecting lull since my trip out to Aurora back in October, so to make up for the lost quantity of collecting I decided to make a road-trip to the Lowcountry to hopefully gain some quality. I had planned to leave my house at 3 AM so I would be down there at first light, but an emergency at work had me out of the house from 11 PM until 1AM. I left the house at 5 AM and arrived at my first collecting site 4 hours later. After not finding anything in the first 20 or so screen... |
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Then there were three.
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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A few years back I had taken a small group of experienced collectors into a local limestone quarry. The formation was Late Eocene and represented a shallow marine environment. It was a popular spot for collectors because of the frequently found archeocete material. I had personally found numerous bones and teeth over a period of several years hunting at this quarry. I had also found a few articulated skeletons. Most of the collectors that frequent the local quarries all talk about the Basilosaur... |
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Try it! You'll like it!
Berkeley County, South Carolina, USA |
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In several of my postings I've mentioned donating your valuable fossils to museums. I've also mentioned that museums can provide casts as replacements. The truth is that most museums and scientific institutions don't have the facilities for casting. As skilled personnel retire they are rarely replaced due to tightening budgets. So most casting is farmed out to a very few facilities. In return for casting items for other museums these facilities retain the molds, and the rights, to sell other c... |
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They went that-a- way!
Berkeley County, South Carolina, USA |
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In my posting on 3 December I mentioned "Trace Fossils". Trace fossils are imprints or markings left behind by living organisms. They can be footprints, trails, burrowings or any type of mark. The trace fossils most collectors are familiar with are the footprints left by dinosaurs. Many trackways have been discovered that give us a picture into the living world of the dinosaurs. Measurements can be used to give us information on their locomotion. Walking, and running, speeds have been worked out... |
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Special Treat
Fannin County, Texas, USA |
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I got an email from someone who was a long time Texas hunter but is now relocated and he shared the following picture with me. As I just found my first Ptychodus mortoni ever recently I was very pleased to see what he had. They are the most massive Ptychodus shark teeth I have ever seen and I have seen a fair number of them. I do believe I've seen one larger but it wasn't much larger than these.
Enjoy!... |
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Fossil Megalodon Tooth
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA - Carcharocles megalodon |
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Its got a little root rot, but the colors on the enamel are great. I have a soft spot for lighthing marks in the enamel. Plus, it has pretty decent serrations and the tip.... |
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False Mako (Parotodus Benedeni) Tooth
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA - Parotodus benedeni |
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Its great to find an oligocene benedeni. Some how, finding it while walking around makes it a little sweeter.... |
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One more for old time sake
Dorchester County, South Carolina, USA |
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This summer, the kids and I were lucky enough to get the opportunity to hunt at a land site with a decent fossil bearing layer. We hunted there a lot, and I stocked up the posts while the hunting was good and this is the last post from that spot. In the summer, I tend to linger around the window when the sky gets dark. On this day, we had to turn on the lights at 3 in the afternoon. There was a thunderstorm of Neptunian proportions and at the same time, there was a fresh land site. The combinati... |
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Index fossils
Berkeley County, South Carolina, USA |
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One of the things I have to continuously learn about is Index fossils. Index fossils are species of plants, invertebrates, vertebrates, etc., that show up in specific geological formations. They are usually the most abundant fossil in that formation. Index fossils are invaluable when collecting in areas where fossils from several overlying formations have become mixed together. This occurs often where rivers, or streams, have washed out the banks and deposited several ... |
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