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Hi everyone, I went to Flag Ponds in Calvert County yesterday & found this interesting needle-like tooth. It is 2.5 cm long. It has a channel up one side that is just barely wide enough to get the edge of my fingernail into. Any idea what it is? I do love finding the oddball fossils! Thanks. Update, I uploaded a different photo. You would never know that this is sitting directly under a 60 watt bulb. Imagine a "crying emoji" sitting at the end of this sentence!!

Hello, new to the forum. Live in CT but not much fossil hunting here. Will visit Big Brook in NJ and find some nice belemnites, shells and some small shark teeth. Just got back from Florida where I made my first visit to the Peace River. Nothing big but a lot of nice quality. Met some very nice people out on the river as well. Looking forward to getting out into other areas.

So... Okay, I just started getting into hunting for fossils. I've always loved fossils and gems and the lot. I went gem mining for the first time when I was about 10 or 11 in McKinley, VA, and since then - I've loved it! My family went on a trip to Cherokee and the Smoky Mtns when I was younger, and we found all kinds of unearthed fossilized things and gem mines. Saturday, we went to Westmoreland State Park up in Montross for the first time, and even though it was chilly and rainy, we found five or six decent shark teeth. I've done a little research, but I'd prefer what other people - and not articles - have to say. Where's the best places to find fossils in VA?

Got in a few hours of digging today and popped a few keepers out. One day I'm going to find a nice complete Meg that size.

My second question tonight. I found a few shark tooth shapes that seemed interesting enough to not toss back in the Big Brook this weekend. I was hoping for some advice. One seems to me to be a fractured tooth with mostly the root remaining (the larger black one). It feels dense and hard like a stone. I couldn't tell at the site with my bad eyes but there are some groves in part of the "tooth" that help make it look like something of the tooth variety. It certainly appears to be something significant, if only a piece of it. The smallest black item is hard like a rock as well yet seems like it would have been a tooth. There are no clear signs though. Do some fossils lose their definition like this? And lastly, I found something that looks like the shape of a tooth but it may be embedded in some other substrate. Can I scratch away at it with a pick, or tap at it with a small rock hammer or the like to see if anything comes off? Thanks for your patience. Andy

Hi, I may have met some of you in the New Member area tonight. If not, Hello from NJ!! I went to Big Brook Saturday and actually found some teeth (who would have thought!?). I felt like a bit of a scientist out there all by myself with my camping shovel and gravel screener. There aren't many sharks to choose from in that area (at least not as far as Fossil Guy's website shows). I would be happy to have some ID opinions. Here are the 3 that looked like teeth to me. They all seem to be from different shark types based on color and shape/style. But beyond that, I would be guessing. One of them is a whiter color than the others and has one cusplet still attached. I would guess Mackerel Shark. The other tooth with a more common looking root attached is also more triangular, with no cusplets, at least not any remaining on the root. Maybe a Mackerel Shark as well but missing the cusplets? The other tooth appears similar to a Sand Tiger or Goblin, less the full root. But it doesn't look broken or worn down at the root, so maybe it is a fish tooth?? That one tooth looks like it came from an Acorn Shark These were all in the silt bottom or in the gravel. I'll leave it at that for now. I have some others to show you guys but I'll try not to wear out my welcome yet. Thanks for any ideas or information. Andy

Had a good bit of success visiting a river I've been to in the past. I had "cleaned" this area out last year but I tried an experiment & piled all the rock/limestone that I worked through last year up in the center of the river expecting that it would trap sediment & moving fossils upstream of the rocks during the rainy season. Like most of my plans it didn't work as I expected, it seems that the sediment didn't deposit behind the rocks but the flow tumbled the rocks and sediment deposited downstream of the rocks. I spent about 4 hours digging out about 120 square feet of deposits 6-10" deep and screening. Pretty much about the easiest hunting scenario you could hope for in a river. I picked up everything that I recognized as a shark tooth (one bison tooth 2 bits of stingray & about 2 back packs worth of dugong bone bits). I wanted to point out a few things, 1) almost all teeth are river black, there are less than 5 teeth that had other coloration (bone valley like), 2) a high percentage are broken but not necessarily "river worn". So that evening I went to a social party & took the nice Meg to show some friends, of course one of the guest is totally enamored and tells me I've got to take them along next time so they can get some like that too! If only it was that easy....everyone would be doing it!

Im looking for dinosaur eggs or partial eggs or egg shell collection. I have to trade shark teeth from Aurora NC, New Jersey, Maryland. Also bone and vertebrae from Aurora NC. I also have unprepared trilobites from Oklahoma. Let me know if interested

Its pretty small-thought it was a bull or dusky or something similar, but I found lots of bull etc teeth today and it doesn't look like any of them. The angles aren't as steep as the bulls or whatever. The tip is missing but it appears to only be missing the tip and some root. Thanks for your help everyone!

Found a great new beach along the St Johns this past weekend and when night came I knew I was leaving teeth there and had to go back asap. Unfortunately I am not a morning person and the tides this week were early morning or at night. I chose to a night search not knowing how hard it is to surface collect teeth with just a headlamp. Nevertheless in my few hours combing the beach I found over 60 mostly very little teeth, but found this awesome GW to my surprise. The root was sticking out of the sand and I did not think it was a tooth, but had to investigate and I am very glad I did. For sure my best quality tooth so far (IF ONLY THE TIP WERE STILL THERE!!! but they gotta eat too I suppose).

Hey all, im posting this in hopes some of you shark folks may be able to help me out. I have a shark tooth in a concretion from the west coast. I have decided im going to prep this one myself and leave a backing of matrix on the ventral side of the tooth. So my question is, is it possible to tell the ventral/dorsal from what little is exposed already. This is probably a carcharodon sp. tooth but i really wont be sure until i am able to prep it. I have compared this tooth to some megs and white shark teeth i have in my collection and im kind of leaning in one direction already but i really don't know that much about shark teeth so i would be interested to hear other opinions. I took some photos and added A and B as to distinguish the sides. Any ideas or advice is much appreciated. Nick

Hey everyone! I know they technically aren't fossils, I have a drawer of modern shark teeth, of which many are starting to exhibit hairline cracks along the center of the teeth, which weren't there when I purchased them previously. Does anyone know why this is happening, and if so, how do I prevent this from happening further?

Hello Guys.I live in Greece I really really want to hunt for fossils and shark teeth,but the problem is there arent any knowns spots.Have you found any teethin Greece?If So Where?And anyone that knows any spots in greece please tell me

Recent teeth and this looks like a part of jawbone/human teeth maybe and some type of handle.

Detail of the show logistics can be found in the following topic Dealers are slowly getting into town and its a madhouse looking at the dealers setting up. The show officially starts Thursday but some are already open in the Ramada and Tucson Hotel that I visited today. Here are some pictures. Tucson Hotel City Center -

Had a great day with my son yesterday. Started the morning at Lake Ray Roberts for a nature hike with a group looking for animal signs with the local ranger. It was a beautiful morning and finally 70 degrees. Saw tons of great animal signs and of course the kids loved looking for skat. Saw a group of deer which is rare. After the walk I told my son we were going to swing by Post Oak Creek to resupply my matrix bucket. To my surprise, he wanted to stay and look for teeth, and man is he good at spotting them. In between his playing with the other kids he found 31 teeth.(I know because he kept count of every tooth) we helped a few other people find teeth. We met a couple from Tulsa and helped them and donated a few good finds to their collection including a flawless Cretolamna and a Squalicorax in coprolite that was amazing. Wish I had snapped a picture. We found a few good teeth and headed out. My son actually said he was looking forward to going again. Best part of my day. I am attaching some pictures from the trip including my best of the day, a nice P. mortoni and the spoiler, a 1 1/2 inch broken Cretodus that would have easily broken the 2+ inch mark. When I saw he root sticking up I thought it was going to be the trip maker. Thanks for looking.

Hello guys and gals, I greatly appreciate this forum and thanks for welcoming me. I have a set of 4 teeth that I only know that are from Florida. I’m thinking Carcharias but I’m a noob so I’m not confident. As far as the crinoids, I got them as a “gift” after purchasing a tooth from a dealer. All he knew is they were crinoids from Dakhla, Morocco. I’m guessing Pennsylvanian? Any information would be awesome. Thanks guys/gals

Hello everyone! I recently took my fourth fossil hunting trip to the Calvert cliffs. It was not too cold, but there was ice actually washing up on the beach! I had waiders on and dressed warmly. I went with my friend and his sister. We searched all day, but the tide was just too high to fully search well. We had not found much at this point except a few very small teeth and some bone of some sort. As we walked back to the truck, I saw a small tooth sticking out of the cliff by my foot so I pulled it out. Next to it was the largest tooth I’ve ever found, embedded in cliff next to the other. I bent down and carefully got it out, and it was the largest tooth that I’ve ever found! It is a lower anterior mako! My friends sister then found a c hastalis. It was a great trip. Here are a couple of the finds! Thanks for reading!

But the water was still pretty cold lol, not too shabby. Got the day off, doing something career-wise in the morning; so why not dig in the afternoon.. Saw a few dead tilapia probably from the recent freeze; one was franticly swimming about where water met land, no idear why. Anyways, started out not getting much gravel at all (but finding just enough to stay persistent), by the end kicking myself in the behind for not finding the gravel motherload sooner. Oh well, leaves some for the rest I suppose (for now..). Not too much luck w/ the small snaggles I was after again, would think they'd be super abundant for how common the big-ens are but they ain't lol, again just pesky small grey shark teeth seem to be. The few small hemi lowers I do have are looking better every moment, no idea why they are not more common & I have a good eye for it.. Some I kept only to donate to the upcoming fossil fest (but some of the smaller complete ones I'm keeping to expand the collection). Know I won't be lugging the 1/4" mesh PVC sifter to the 1/27 group hunt, but nice to use it every once in a while for more variety. Couple horse teeth, few nice little 'cuda teeth. One big stingray barb frag, must have been pretty long when whole. One very cool complete hemi, think it's a lower. Oh & a bone that really caught my attention ended up being a dugong skullcap! Think the longest one (top, middle) might be whale rib(?) No idea what the big spiral one (on the right) is but my gut says invert Also been wondering what these are. Usually find smaller ones, seem like some kind of molar & no idea what this bone is, please & thanks

G'day all! After three years since my last visit to the UK, i finally returned in December 2017 for another massive collecting trip across England. This was my most ambitious tour of the UK's Mesozoic and Cenozoic vertebrate deposits thus far, with 20 days of collecting across ten different locations. These were (in chronological order from first visit): Abbey Wood in East London Beltinge in Kent Bouldnor on the Isle of Wight Compton Bay to Grange Chine on the Isle of Wight Lyme Regis to Charmouth in Dorset Aust Cliff in Gloucestershire Saltwick Bay in Yorkshire Kings dyke in Cambridgeshire Minster in Kent Tankerton in Kent. If you went collecting at any of these places in the last month, there's probably a 25.6975% chance you saw me looking very intimidating hunched over in my hooded rain jacket and muddy pants 14 of those collecting days were back-to-back, a new record for me, though it was very tiring! Having just come from the hot Australian summer, winter collecting in England was certainly a challenge at times and my fingers and toes froze to the point i could barely feel them on multiple occasions. Temperatures for many of the days reached 0 degrees celcius or below, with ice on the ground around me and even snow falling while i was trying to collect! I also went out during the middle of the night to collect using a head torch on some occasions (mainly at Bouldnor) due to the tidal conditions and bad weather which prevented collecting during the day. All in all i am certainly pleased with how the trip went, i was successful at all locations with the exception of Tankerton. For some of the locations (Aust Cliff, Kings dyke, Saltwick Bay) it was also my first and only visit, so i'm glad i still managed to do well with no prior experience at these sites and with such limited time at each. I have tried to write this trip report not only as a means of showing you guys my finds but also to provide an informative overview of some of the better locations for Mesozoic and Cenozoic vertebrates across England for others who might be planning similar trips. Anyway, here are the results! Pictures will be spread across the next 12 posts due to file size restrictions. Abbey Wood - East London (6/12/17, 30/12/17 and 31/12/17) Formation: Blackheath ('Lesnes Shell Bed') Deposit Age: 54.5 million years (Eocene) Fossil Diversity: Sharks, bony fish, chimaeroids, bivalves, gastropods, rare mammals, turtles and crocodiles This was one of only two inland locations i visited (the other being Kings dyke). As i have found, the majority of the UK's easily accessible fossil collecting locations are coastal! Abbey Wood is an excellent location just 45 minutes on the tube from central London. It is situated in a park called the Lesnes Abbey Woods and there is a small collecting area that is open to the public for shallow digging (see my first two pictures below). You definitely need a sifter, shovel and basin of water at this location to have any real success. Be warned though that once you combine the fine Blackheath sediments with water during sifting you get some pretty gnarly mud so expect to come away from this site looking like you've just been rolling around in the dirt. I'm sure i got some interesting looks from people on the tube going back to London it was all worth it though, as every single sift load produced at least one shark tooth across the three days i visited. Very impressive considering the number of obvious holes dotted around the ground from years worth of other collectors visiting. It should be noted though that the mammalian material from this location is of high scientific importance, and collecting here is allowed on the condition that any mammalian finds be brought to the attention of and handed in to specialists like Dr Jerry hooker at the Natural History Museum in London. I didn't find any such material on my trips unfortunately. Here is the designated collecting area. The statue at the front is of Coryphodon, one of the rare Eocene mammals that has been found at the site. The full haul of shark teeth from three days of sifting in the collecting area. Most are from Striatolamia and Sylvestrilamia. I gave up trying to count them once i got past 100 Some of the other fishy bits that often turn up during sifting, including guitar fish teeth on the far left and two dermal denticles (Hypolophodon sylvestris), one gar pike fish tooth in the middle (Lepisosteus suessionensis), one shark vertebra down the bottom and unidentified bony fish vertebrae on the right. I don't typically collect shells, but i picked these up for the sake of adding a bit more diversity to my Abbey Wood collection. These are bivalves and gastropods of various species. The molluscan diversity from this one location is actually quite impressive. Beltinge - Kent (7/12/17 and 29/12/17) Formation: Upnor ('Beltinge Fish Bed') Deposit Age: 56.5 million years old (Paleocene) Fossil Diversity: Sharks, chimaeroids, bony fish, rays, turtles, crocodiles, bivalves, wood This is my favourite shark tooth collecting location in the UK and probably my favourite that i have visited anywhere so far. The shoreline directly opposite the access point at the end of Reculver Drive in Beltinge is loaded with teeth and dare i say it's impossible to come here and walk away empty handed. The shore however is very flat so there is generally only about a two hour window of time that collecting can be carried out here, one hour either side of low tide. Conditions can also vary depending on how sanded over the shore is, whether the Beltinge Fish Bed itself is exposed and how low the tide drops. However even on a poor day you will still find teeth here, just not as many! I experienced this first hand as the first day i visited on December 7th the conditions were excellent. The tide dropped quite low, there wasn't too much sand covering the clay and the Beltinge Fish Bed was exposed. This allowed direct in-situ collecting of teeth from this rich layer and i ended up with something like 240 teeth from just a couple of hours of looking. The second visit i made on December 29 of the same month was almost the exact opposite. It's amazing how quickly these coastal locations can change! The shore was largely sanded over, the fish bed was covered and the tide didn't drop anywhere near as much. I was out about the same amount of time as the first but only managed 69 teeth (only ). Keep these things in mind if you are planning a visit. Luckily though i didn't just find shark teeth, i also managed to locate some of the other less common finds as you will see below! Here is the area of shoreline that produces teeth, photographed on December 7th. It was quite cold and rainy! Three teeth sitting next to each other as found. More as-found shark teeth. This one made me quite excited when i saw it. It's a large piece of chimaeroid fish jaw and mouthplate coming straight from the Beltinge Fish Bed itself (the darker, dull-green sandy clay in this picture). Beltinge is continued in the next post.

Added three new teeth in recent times to my collection of exotic meg teeth, I'd like to share since there,s not to many images from these localities out there, the photos maybe in shabby quality because I pulled them directly from my Instagram page to save time. 1) This partial tip of a meg was found in the Chiba prefecture of Japan! Acquiring this, even just a fragment was a real pain in the butt as megs from Japan are extremely scare. 2) Even though its not a Meg of course but still being the closest ancestor, this 3.1inch chubutensis tooth was found at a land site in Lecce, Italy with gorgeous color! 3) This tooth measuring 4.1 inches came from new site in Bangkalan City, Java, Indonesia. A majority of the megs here were found with absolutely terrible preservation so this one is one of the best out of the bunch! A few more pics of these teeth can be found on their posts on my page at https://www.instagram.com/nyislandfossils/ if its ok to post this here.

Hit the creek for a while. It has been hit pretty hard since the rains a week ago and the holiday traffic. Found the usual potpourri of pieces and parts and found four very worn Ptychodus right off the bat. Luck changes as I work my way up the gravel bar. Found several nice P. whipplei including the largest I have ever found just over an inch wide. Found a beautiful small P. mortoni and a sweet complete S. raphiodon. I also found what at first looked like a Ptychodus shard but when I got home and cleaned it up, I believe it is a small piece of coprolite. Weather couldn’t have been better. 60 degrees but creek was still frozen solid in shady areas. Had the place to myself the entire time. Still looking to add a couple new species to the collection. So far five down.

Today, my package arrived. A pile of 1000 shark teeth have arrived and there are some Megalodon teeth and some Makos and Angustiden and some tiger shark teeth. But I have a few I am not sure about. Is this a Megalodon tooth? I have no information about where these are found but could this be a Angustiden or even a chubutensis?

My name is Aaron. I have been collecting fossils for over 20 years. My father was in the military but we have lived in SC and NC most of my life. We spent many years in Summerville, SC. I am always looking for new spots to look for shark teeth/ fossils in SC and NC. If any one is willing to take me or point me in the right direction I would be most appreciative. When I have a chance I will share some of the pictures of the teeth I have found over the years.