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Is this a mako tooth? From the Calvert formation.

Finally getting around to posting about my recent trip to Stratford Cliffs in Virginia with the Maryland Natural History Society. It was a lot of fun, found some cool stuff, and met some nice people. Here are pictures of some of the finds I took home!

Turtle humerus found in a fallen block. From the Pope's Creek Sands of Virginia.

I found this small tooth or bone fragment at Bayfront Park on Tuesday. Any help with the ID would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Here are some of the fossil shells I collected near Aquasco, Md in 2001-2002. Most found in the material brought home. Part 1 Almach

I found these bony fish ear bones on various trip to Brownies Beach, this one with four are I believe Sciaenops sp. The one with three are Micromesistius cognatus, and the last one with six are Pogonias sp.

Hi Folks, I rediscovered this jaw fragment in my Collection recently and I thought You all on the forum may be able to ID this robust specimen. It measures in at 3.40” and is quite wide at about an inch. I found it at Brownies beach a few years ago as float material down here Calvert County MD. Regards Cliff Dweller

Hi guys, I am trying to get more information concerning this once in a lifetime find that a good friend recently gave to me. I believe that this specimen is eagle ray material that my life long friend found back in the 1970s. The two pieces of this specimen were found on the same beach about a YEAR apart. Anyway I thought of know better place to show this once in a lifetime find and get more information on this truly rare specimen. Regards ,Cliff Dweller

Here are a few Maryland horse teeth and other critters from mostly Brownies beach.

Good morning folks, My name is Cliff dweller and I am new to the forum but not to fossils. This will be my 49th year collecting mostly Maryland Miocene fossils. I have followed the forum for sometime now and I am amazed by the topic range and knowledge found on the fossil forum. From time to time I find a specimen that I could definitely use help identifying. Yesterday I found this jaw that is 4 3/4"long 2" wide with 11 teeth. The specimen was fresh out of matrix from what I believe to be the Calvert formation zone 10. Enclosed are a couple of pics and would welcome any help from the forum. Thanks

I'm a little late in posting this but, I'm finally getting around to it. Last weekend, Mrs.SA2 and I took the dogs for another walk with our good buddy Mel (of Phatfossils.com), since much of the ice has melted or moved on. It was a great day for some exercise with the forecast showing sunny, high around 55-60F, an offshore breeze and lower than normal water levels. As an added plus, we had very clear water meaning we could walk in water between our knees and waist and still see the bottom pretty well. That is, if you like 32-35F water on your lower body. Some may remember from last post about walking in cold/icy water that Mrs.SA2's feet got cold (numb was the word she used.) Being the wonderful hubby that I am, I went online to my favorite "major supplier of all things ever needed", and ordered her a couple pair of 1mm neoprene socks that have fleece inner layers. She tried them out on last Saturday's trip. More on her opinion and comments later. As we started our walk on the waxing tide, (not preferred, but it is VA in late January & we certainly aren't greedy enough to complain about any day we get on a river fossil hunting this time of year), we were all amazed at how clear, calm and low the water was. If you had the opportunity to pick all of the variables for a day of fossil hunting in VA in January, this day shaped up to be everything we would have requested. Wasn't long before we found a few small to medium size teeth. Not long after that, Mel started finding whale vertebrae in thigh - waist deep water. We kept finding whale verts ALL day long. I think we ended up finding over 35 with about 25 of them being in nice shape and the other 10 being so-so with various amounts cleaved off along the long axis. Mrs.SA2 was walking in knee deep water, trying out her new neoprene socks and was the first to spy a tooth bigger than 1", scoring a nice, reddish hastalis. Not to be outdone, Mel had to go big with another hastalis. It's a little worn but it's a big 'un. All this time, i'm walking along the tide line picking up small - medium teeth listening to the Mrs. and Mel talk about how much they both can "feel" the megs calling them. I'm pretty sure I heard a few comments about how small my teeth were compared to theirs at this point, but I'm not sure. About that time, Mrs.SA2 decides she wants to find the 1st meg of the day and pops this up out of the water. A little on the small side, but its cute and "a megs a meg." And of course, Mel has to answer right back with this b-e-a-u-t-y of a hastalis! I'm pretty sure he could still have shaved his arm hair with those edges. Here are both of his monsters side by side. A little further down the beach (and a few more comments about my small teeth later), Mrs.SA2 spots a double. Notice how close the dog came to stepping on it and burying it in the sand. This now makes her 2nd meg in 1 day, albeit this one is on the smaller side too, but again, "a megs a meg." She looked at me, smiled and said "I'm not done yet." I just put my head down and kept walking, as it appears at this point that I've become the dog walker and the chauffeur for the day. And, I swear, I heard Mel giggling in the background. I knew better than to ask her how she went from collecting in thigh - knee deep water to collecting on the beach, directly in front of me. Nothing good was going to come from any response I made. As we kept going along, true to her previous statement about not being done yet, Mrs.SA2 found another meg, again on the smaller side, but it was her 3rd meg of the day and 5th in 1 week. Now, I'm positive I heard snickers and giggles coming from Mel's direction this time. By then, it was getting embarrassing for me cause Mel had the 2 monster hastalis and had picked up 2 megs and another decent sized hastais to go with them. Talk about a handful! So, Mel too now has a multiple meg day, meaning everyone but me has megs (plural). By now its well past lunch time and I'm getting hungry so i sat down on a log and ate my chicken salad sandwich. Mel, the Mrs. and the dogs kept walking a bit further. After my sandwich, I felt better and was done sulking and I wandered around where I had been sitting. Lucky for me, I found a few decent teeth. I was hoping for a meg, even a small one, but that didn't happen, but at least I got a few nice specimens. (Sorry Ray, @aerogrower the Mrs. had the scale cube with her.) I'll finish up with the rest in the next post.

First time i was ever able to dig out the whole shells. Top and bottom on both. Very exciting. Sorry for the "non-technical" terms. I can't seem so upload any more pictures. Just this one. Im new and clueless. Thanks

Yesterday I took my first trip to brownies (which is free this time of year). It was about two o’clock so the tide was rising, so I didn’t take a walk to far south (also I didn’t have any water footwear, so I was bare foot in the murky water that people were pulling horse shoe crabs out of so I wasn’t to keen on stepping on one of their spines). It was pretty good for a first trip with the confines I kept to. The biggest tooth was a half inch hypotodus, and I like this one honey colored lemon. Most were lemons. I found one hemi and a fish tooth (or I think that’s what it is). I also took a few Ray teeth and Ecphora pieces ( saw a 1/4 complete one but It was in the cliff and I’d rather not become a fossil myself) as well as some turritella. Few chunkosauruses as well. A peccary tooth was the last find, I don’t have a picture right now but I’ll get one. The first picture (if it comes out in the order I want it to) is my first Miocene sharks tooth (found by me). Will definitely be back there soon. Jim (AKA the shark tooth guy) sells fossils he finds on route 4, so I stopped by for my second time to buy some fossils and have a conversation (which is very rewarding, I’ve learned a lot in the combined hour I’ve spoke with him). I had a choice between a small but very nice and reasonably priced chub and another fossil. I had to choose the other fossil because it was so cool: A whale vertabra with a shark bite in it! I bought that from him, as well a lightly colored (and orange near the root on the back) posterior meg that has the tip broken off and a stress fracture, must’ve bitten off more than it could chew so to speak (P.S. sharks do not chew). He gifted me three more fossils as well, a (caudal?) cetacean vert and a worm tube. At one point in the conversation I mentioned @eannis6s super small baby meg, and he pulled a super tiny meg out his pocket and said “I found this earlier, add this to your collection”. I off course thanked him profusely, for the fossils and the information. I hope I’ll be seeing Jim again soon as well. So, over all a nice trip! Here’s the pictures, may take a bit to get them all in.

I got a surprise at the end of August when I received notice from the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History regarding them returning one of my fossils. Part of my surprise was that I have been dealing almost exclusively with the Calvert Marine Museum (the CMM) in Maryland for several years. Occasionally some of my specimens are sent to the Smithsonian from the CMM, but they are returned back to the CMM. The surprise was compounded when the accompanying letter stated it was an item I had sent in for identification. It was a section of bone that I found in the vicinity of Brownie’s Beach in Calvert County, Maryland. Most of the fossil material found there comes out of “Zone 10” of the Calvert Formation. The Calvert Formation is Lower Middle Miocene in age. The piece of bone was identified as part of a land mammal ischium. In Florida, with its wealth of terrestrial fossils, this would hardly be worth mentioning. In the Maryland Miocene deposits, terrestrial material is very rare. I can attest that it is a fossil that I found, but I do not remember sending it in for identification. I was starting to wonder if my memory was developing gaps in the paleontology section. The mystery was solved when I saw the acceptance date for the fossil. The Smithsonian received the specimen on April 14th, 1991 and it was returned to me on October 7th, 2017. I do not claim to be a mathematician, but I am quite proficient at basic math. The reason I did not remember submitting this particular specimen to the Smithsonian is that it was sent twenty six and a half years ago. I will be donating it to the Calvert Marine Museum on my next visit. The Specimen

I received this coprolite from a forum member a while back. It was partially coated in powdery iron oxide and didn't look too significant, so I didn't get to it right away. A soak and a scrub with a soft toothbrush revealed what looks to me like the remnants of a ray tooth plate. Now I'm trying to figure out who I got it from. Does anyone remember sending me a coprolite from New Kent County, VA? Just goes to show...you can't judge a coprolite by it's coating

I'm a first time poster, short term lurker I've done my best to read the guidelines, apologies if my first try isn't the best. I've also gone through information on fossils in the formation I found these in as well as psuedofossils and I'm stumped. I was hunting mostly mollusk fossils in the Calvert formation (Miocene) in a very steep ravine in Prince George's County Maryland. About 30 feet in elevation down the ravine from where the shells started to appear I found a number of things that look like bones, at least to the untrained eye. In the picture of the site below, looking upstream, the rock outcrop is the bottom of the rock formation with shells. These samples were all found loose in the stream just below the outcrop. There were a few more sticking out of the reddish and grey clays on the stream side that I left (didn't want to mess them up). Characteristics: All are heavy. Most are very solid as opposed to the fragile shells in the formation above them. Many of them are made of sediment that includes very small shell fossils. Some have a reddish layer on the outside that has deteriorated. All had clay on them, most were covered in some of the grey clay I'm used to seeing in the Calvert formation around fossils, a few had reddish clay. I have a lot more samples and photos, I just uploaded the max file size allowed to begin with. Ruler is in inches. Site: Sample 1 Sample 2 Sample 3 Thank you for any help you can give! I have several more finds and can take more pictures if desired.

April Fools Day I took my wife, our buddy and his son @Daleksec and 2 local Paleontologists on the boat along the Pamunkey River for a little fossil hunting and stratigraphy lesson. Unfortunately, we had heavy rains the day before which drove up the water level a few feet and kept us from exploring the site where Daleksec found his February VFOM . Here are 2 photos of Daleksec's and his dad's finds, all collected in about an hour. This was a new spot for me that I had never collected before but the Paleontologist who is the stratigraphy expert put us right on the spot. LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION!!! The first 3 teeth found were pre-megs in less than 5 mins. This area we collected is Lower Calvert Formation (Miocene) sitting on Old Church Formation from the upper Oligocene. We also hit another spot that has a nice Piney Point exposure from the middle Eocene with Old Church and Calvert above. @Daleksec collected some of the oysters from the Piney Point and found this in the matrix when he cleaned everything up. Pretty impressive. He also found a sand dollar but destroyed (and I do mean DESTROYED) trying to remove it from the matrix. Remember @Daleksec, patience my young apprentice, patience. :-) Perhaps @sixgill pete or someone else can help identify it. All in all, not a bad day on the water. If I'm honest, any day I get to spend fossil hunting with my wife is a great day. I'm very fortunate that she has the same passion, though i do remember a time when I had a 10 handicap in golf. Obviously, we will be exploring the new spot some more in the near future. Don't worry @MarcoSr, I will definitely show you the new spot, after I blindfold you of course. :-) If @sixgill pete ever makes it up this way I would show him too, with the blindfold of course. Cheers, SA2

This past weekend in Central VA it was low 70s on Saturday and low 80s on Sunday with an extremely low tide both days, mid-morning. My wife and I, our buddy and 17 y/o son (TFF member Daleksec) and another friend of ours took the boat out on the Pamunkey River Saturday morning for a little fossil hunting / collecting. Since the tide was so low, we decided to start out with some surface hunting at a little beach with a nice Calvert Formation exposure. We immediately hit the jack pot and found some nice sharks teeth and random bone pieces. After finding everything on the surface we all started screening. (This is what my wife and I found Saturday.) The 3 buddies had this much or more in their bags for the day. If anyone knows what this 1" piece of bone that looks like a jaw is, please chime in. After a few hours of collecting and the tide coming in fast, Daleksec noticed an exposed vertebrae on the beach about 6 inches from where I had just picked up a tooth. After some quick exploration this is what we saw. My hand for quick scale. (Yes, I realize everyone's hands are different sized.) We were racing the incoming tide at this point. We didn't know how much of the skeleton was there since we didn't get to explore in either direction. I was pretty sure I saw a humerus and counted 12 vertebrae exposed before we covered it. The tide came in and covered it all about 5 mins after we finished burying the exposed bones in matrix to protect. The bones are literally sitting in the base of the Calvert Formation and right on top of the Old Church Formation. This Old Church exposure is the ONLY Oligocene exposure in VA. Obviously, our fossil plans for Sunday just changed and then we spent the rest of Saturday teasing Daleksec about the raccoons, opossums and deer coming to get "his" skeleton or at least running off with "his" skull. :-) Everyone but he enjoyed the witty banter about "his" disappearing skeleton. With the rising tide we decided to head farther up river to an Eocene / Oligocene contact exposure I know. Checked out the first small area and only 1 small tooth was found. My buddy wanted me to move him around a bunch of overhanging trees and snags. As I dropped him off on the bank (beach all covered by tide at this point), he walks over and picks up THIS!! He gets my attention and said, "I found something. I don't know what it is, but I'm not throwing it away." This is the very 1st Squalodon tooth I've seen found at this Oligocene exposure in 7 years of collecting here. To say I was jealous was an understatement, but I'm glad if someone had to find it and it couldn't be my wife or me, it was him. This pretty much finished up our day and WOW, what a day it was. Sunday in the next post.

I found this piece several years ago in the Calvert Formation, MD. It has a hole that appears to be drilled through it. Is this a trace fossil, natural occurrence in bone or man made? Regards, Rich