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Hey TFF! First post! Not making my appearance with a bang, but had a decent quick trip to the Potomac, about an hour and 15 minutes. Nice handful of sea glass, decent amounts of ray plates and turritella. A few solid sand tigers. And what I believe to be a small, busted otodus in the palm of my hand. I usually always come away with at least one small complete otodus, so when I don’t, it makes a great day fossil hunting turn into merely a very good day 🤷🏻‍♂️. Let me know what you think!

Hello there! Do you think it is a tooth of Megalodon? It came from Calvert Cliffs. Thank you!

Piggybacking off of the fantastic trip report @Jared C wrote about our Eocene excursion, I thought I'd go ahead and publish an account of the solo expedition I embarked on several days prior. Some of you who are familiar with my past endeavors in the fossil rich creeks and constructions of North Texas may know that dinosaur material has been a huge goal of mine for a while now. The Woodbine offers a shot at fulfilling such a dream, though dinosaurs are still very difficult to come by. Luckily, the uniqueness of its environment means that a day without a dino is by no means an unsuccessful one as a plethora of other strange and wonderful things can be found in their stead. After an early start, I set out with a sizeable list of new sites in the Upper Woodbine. There were some mild successes to start, but to keep things concise I will only speak of the final and most productive spot. By now it was midafternoon and the winds were howling at full force. After floating about, examining various chunks of oyster hash, I at last reached a stopping point. Before me was a massive boulder, the size of a car, with a fantastically complex arrangement of debris cemented to one face. From afar it was just a greyish mess, but up close I could pick apart the various oyster shells, driftwood, Thalassanoides, etc. This mixture of debris and later considerations led me to believe that I was gazing upon an ancient storm deposit. Oyster shell hash Up until this point, I had been unsuccessful in finding any sign of vertebrates. I laid myself upon the slanted body of the boulder and got my face as close as possible to its heavily ornamented surface. Like a visual puzzle of sorts, it was very inviting to look at. Intuition told me that there had to have been something of worth hidden within the noise. Phosphate and carbonized wood It took a bit of time, but sure enough I eventually found a tiny pebble of phosphate lost in between the fissure to some branching burrow. The familiar sheen immediately reminded me of the jet black teeth I had once pulled out of the basal Atco conglomerate. With a little more wind in my sails, I continued perusing until I was met with something much more substantial. First phosphatic Cretodus semiplicatus of the day I had found a beautiful Cretodus semiplicatus. To those whom the Woodbine is foreign, such a find may seem pretty lucky as Cretodus is usually a rarity in most places. However, the marginal marine deposition of the group means that coastal predators are represented in very high numbers, so much so that C. semiplicatus is often the most common taxon of large shark to be found. Contrast this with the deeper waters of the slightly younger Bouldin Flags Fm in Central TX, where the same species occurs in much smaller numbers (though admittedly the individual sizes of the teeth are often considerably bigger). Anyways, I got to busting it out which proved difficult. The high density of durable oyster shells halted my progress greatly. Somehow I managed to extract the tooth as a clean chip without it poofing away into a million fine particles. From there, I began finding a large quantity of phosphatic bone material. Most were reptilian in nature and either obviously belonged to turtle or likely belonged to a croc. Sadly, the resilient nature of the matrix and fragility of the bones made a clean extraction more or less impossible... for me at least. Croc vert likely Terminonaris cf. robusta T Turtle elements Random ammonite fragment As my walking continued I began finding some occurrences of sandier depositions that were much easier to dig through and even richer with phosphate. What surprised me most, however, was their appearance. C. semiplicatus in situ In my eyes, those pictures above look as though they could have been taken along the shores of any sandy beach saturated with seashells. The soft sand was so loosely packed, the slightest pressure could disturb the granules and send them drifting away. As I scanned, I couldn't help but imagine the tropical storm or hurricane that must have taken place here 96 million years ago in order to create this flash-frozen formation. The wind suddenly felt of an ocean breeze, and the cloudy backdrop like a Mesozoic sky in recovery from absolute chaos; Alone, I wandered the shore. A couple of croc teeth. Likely Terminonaris cf. robusta To round off the day, I found some beautiful, though damaged, croc teeth. Like the critters asleep in this dune, it seemed I had lost track of time, so I made my way home. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I have a bit of micro matrix to go through, but as of now, these are the species of vertebrates found: Cretodus semiplicatus Cenocarcharias tenuiplicatus Meristodonoides rajkovichi Pseudohypolophus mcnultyi Some nice pycnodont teeth were found Mostly Haimirichia amonensis, but I will take a closer look later Terminonaris cf. robusta I really thought I saw a dino tooth sticking out of the sand when I first spotted this. Actually it is an inarticulate brachiopod ( @Tidgy's Dad enjoy!) called Lingula subspatula. Thanks for reading!

Hey guys, I've been off the radar for awhile .. work you know .. been working on Siggraph for those of you who are familiar with software development. Just wanted to start a new topic here .. This one is right at 3.00" - 7.62cm C. carcharias Bahia Inglesa Formation South of Caldera Provincia Copiapo III Regio de Atacama Chile

Edit* Title changed to say shark skeletal elements ( previously said bones). This is an interesting topic that was brought up by my mentor and vertebrate paleontology professor during a lecture about a year ago. He mentioned that for some reason there seems to be a higher occurrence of shark bones and relative scarcity of teeth in the Astoria formation. That is the verbage he used. I am willing to bet this is some kind of collection bias where people just aren't recognizing the teeth as often as skeletal elements for some reason. I haven't been able to find information on Google scholar or really anywhere else that has provided information on depositional environments that would favor the preservation of shark skeletal elements over teeth, especially where there are plentiful well preserved invertebrate shells. Most of the fossils are locked in concretions or embedded in concrete-hard sandstone. There is intermittent softer sandstone and siltstone, but seems like most of the vertebrate and invertebrate fossils occur in the harder layers. This is something that has interested me as a research topic, but I haven't been able to make it out in awhile to do any collecting of my own. It would be interesting to set up a transect say from Newport to Lincoln City, take a group out and just collect fossils over a period of time across the transect to get an idea of fossil type, frequency, etc. And see if there really is something lending itself to a higher frequency of shark skeletal elements. On a side note it does seem like there is an usually high occurrence of young vertebrates such as pinnipeds and whales in the sections of the formation I've collected. It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on the matter as well as any additional insights you may be able to provide. What do you think?

Got this shark tooth from a rock show a couple of years ago (when I was not into fossil collecting) and seller said it was from morocco, that is all I know as far as this tooth goes. (I am not a shark tooth expert by any means, but I can tell that the root is composite and not original) Thank you for your time!

Hello everyone, I was recently looking at one of our local beaches. I didn’t have a lot of time so went where most people go. Sometimes even though it is picked over you might still find something special. I often think, there could be just a few mm of sand covering up something special! I saw this sitting there waiting for me and thought. That’s cool. Level of excitement maybe a 6 out of 10? I hadn’t seen associated verts like this at this site and was thinking “shark or fish” (p.s. photos are at home after finding it in better light. But pretty much what saw on the beach) I was leaning towards shark and then flipped it over. Excitement went to 9/10!! I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. This looked like preserved shark “skin” or at least in situ dermal denticles. A first for me at this site. If you’d like to join me down a wormhole on learning about shark dermal denticles. Read on! This is a normal journey I take as I learn as much as I can about each fossil. Every fossil has something to teach. About the environment the animal lived in or the creature itself. I’ve learnt a lot about biology/ecology this way. if you zoom in under the scope, there are 2 layers of denticles. The top one most visible in the above photo seems to be looking at the base of the denticles from underneath, like a skin has folded on itself these look like the “roots” of the denticles. In the photo below. Each one about 1-2mm across In the photo below is the underside of the top of some denticles A tricuspid type. A few mm across. So zoomed in more than the above photos. these look like the “drag reduction” type tricuspid denticles top left in the figure below. This figure shows that sharks will have different types of denticles on different parts of the body. The proportions and types differ depending on ecology. Pelagic (requiring drag reduction) vs bottom feeding (demersal) requiring protection from abrasion. I searched around the specimen and found a few examples looking at the top of the denticles. Below. Unedited Photo above with red sketch to highlight features below. denticle is a couple of mm across. You can see the crests typical of the drag reduction type. below: looking side on at an individual denticle. The “root” at the bottom and tricuspid denticle on top. so how to move forward? The matrix isn’t acid soluble. But I’d like to be able to clearly see some complete denticles. Gentle air abrasion? I’m not sure if an ID to family will be possible. I have shown a shark tooth/denticle expert (from Japan) and he thought we could narrow it down to Triakidae (hound sharks) or Pentanchidae (deep water cat sharks). The age range is Miocene- Pliocene for the coast in this area. I think Late Pliocene for this based on lithology. So now…..where is the rest of the shark? Thanks for following along!

I recently bought this tooth from an online auction site. It is listed as being 100% natural. I am a beginner to collection fossils, but especially the back looks a bit patched up. Hope some of you more knowledgable collectors can help me on this. This last picture I was sent by the seller, when it was still in it's matrix.