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I had the fantastic luck to find a 2" Otodus obliquus both of my last two trips out, one of which with a neat little pathology. The 2" striatolamia was another outsatnding find, I can still count on my fingers the number of teeth this size I've found in the Aquia Formation. Thanks for looking and happy hunting! .

Hi all, I have a ton of teeth gathered from Purse state park and I’m not sure how to ID. Can anyone please help with these few? Hoping to learn how to do it myself eventually

Thought the lines were interesting.

I’m currently going through sand from Douglas Point, MD. Found this little guy. Scale is mm.

I haven't posted in quite some time, but I thought I'd share my last few trips to the Potomac river. I've made three trips in the last few weeks, with pretty good success. The second trip I found my 4th Otodus obliquus that exceeds 2" on the slant height, and the largest I've found at Purse state park, sadly it has major feeding damage... On the last trip I found a monster Striatolamia striata (?) (These larger teeth are typically considered macrota, but I'm not sure if that species is present in the Aquia Formation.) I'm also including a few pictures of a large shark vertebral centrum I found at the end of September on a trip I didn't take pictures for. Lastly, I thought I'd include the 4 2"+ Otodus teeth I mentioned earlier, since finding one was my main objective for a long time. The largest is 2.75" slant height. Thanks for looking, and good luck to everyone on their next trips!

Hello everyone, this is my first attempt at writing up a fossil hunting trip. I meant to write this shortly after my trip to the river (which was about three weeks ago), but as I'm sure you know all too well, life often gets in the way. I had been itching to get back to fossiling since my last trip out in October, and, having visited Purse State Park on many occasions before, I figured that it would be a great place for the first fossil hunt of the new year. After seeing the yields from some other recent trips to the Aquia, I had high hopes that I might score my first Otodus. Following a long drive and some unexpected setbacks, I managed to reach the beach with about an hour and a half of daylight left to hunt. Due to arriving later than I had anticipated the tide was higher than I had hoped, but I still managed to score some decent finds and enjoy the sound of the waves lapping at the shore. Throughout the hunt there was a flock of birds floating on the river with calls that sounded uncannily human (it took me a while before I realized that there weren't any boats in the river), and by the time I packed my gear to leave, the cliffs were a beautiful sight lit by the last rays of the setting sun. Unfortunately, I had not found the stunning Otodus of my dreams, but perhaps that will come to pass later this year. Below are photos of the finds and some very tentative IDs based mainly on the Aquia page of Elasmo.com. I apologize in advance if some of the photos aren't incredibly clear or if the ruler is a bit hard to read - unfortunately I couldn't locate a lighter colored one that was in centimeters. The entire haul for the day. As I suspect is the case for most my focus was not invertebrate material, but I couldn't resist collecting a couple of specimens. I could not find much available information regarding invertebrates of the Aquia formation but an article on Wikipedia (I know this isn't the most reputable source but I haven't had a chance to search for any research papers on the subject) has led me to tentatively ID the leftmost specimen as a possible Panopea elongata and the rightmost specimen as Ostrea compressirostra. I would be surprised if my IDs are accurate and if someone does know what these may be, please do let me know. Some Myliobatis sp. ray dental plates. The specimen at the upper right was undoubtedly the best dental plate of the trip. The specimen at the top right corner and the one directly to the left of it appear to be heavily weathered so I couldn't get a confident ID, but I believe that they are Myliobatis dental plates. Some examples of Striatolamia striata. However, I am not sure this is the correct ID for the rightmost specimen as I cannot make striations as obvious as those of the other teeth. Another Striatolamia striata? I tentatively ID this tooth as S. striata as it resembled a couple of the positions in the tooth set. ... perhaps some more S. striata? The teeth seemed to match best with S. striata to my novice eye. However, I am doubtful about the leftmost tooth which does resemble the other teeth but which may very well be a completely different shark. I was initially going to assign this to S. striata due to the abundance of this tooth at Purse, but I didn't notice any of the trademark striations. I believe it may be Hypotodus verticalis, but there were several others that also seemed to be relatively good matches. I believe this tooth to either be a small Otodus obliquus or a Cretalamna appendiculata. A few miscellaneous tooth fragments. Not sure if any of these can be assigned confident IDs. I thought this piece looked interesting while sifting. My best guess is that it is a fish rib or another fish element. A few examples of Skolithos linearis that must have washed down the Potomac before ending up at Purse State Park. From other posts that I have seen I believe these to be Cambrian in age. Is there any information as to where these may have washed down from or to what formation they belong to? I am glad to have finally had the opportunity to compose a trip report and I am looking forward to finding out if any of my IDs were correct and, if not, how they can be differentiated from teeth similar in appearance. I am planning on taking more trips out to Purse this year (and I hope to post some more trip reports on TFF), but due to the rather long drive, I am considering visiting a few other sites that I have learned about. The Henson Creek site and some of the creeks in PG County that might expose the Cretaceous Severn Formation are considerably closer than Purse. I have heard mixed opinions about the safety of hunting in the former, and I was hoping that some with experience might be able to chime in on whether it would be safe to hunt in any of these locations. Thanks in advance to everyone who reads through the report and comments on IDs.

Hey all, This weekend I was going to go on a trip with folks from my fossil club, but they cancelled last minute and I've already paid for a hotel room in the area. Therefore, weather be darned, I'm going fossil hunting anyway. Is anyone else going out on Saturday that might want company? I'm a pretty relaxed human who typically matches the energy in the room, as I like to be inoffensive and approachable. I just figured that it would be awesome to hunt with another forum member or two instead of going it alone.

Thought this might be a tiny piece of a fish mouth plate.

Ok I think I’m gonna be posting fairly regularly on this site from now on. So I’m a DC native, which means that the amount of fossils in dc are mostly sparse. However, neighboring PG county is a hotbed for all types of stuff! In the future, I’ll post my dinosaur stuff from here (still on my bucket list to find a tooth). In the mean time, I’ve just recently came back from southern PG county and I came away with some pretty cool stuff. The shells that come out of this creek are to die for. They’re some of the most intresting I’ve ever seen! But what I’m really excited about are the shark teeth! I couldn’t believe that just 10 minutes from the border of DC, you could find shark teeth here! I’m gonna go back here on Saturday hopefully to go find more teeth. I’m most interested in gathering the silt from this site and searching for micros because my micro collection is lacking. Anyways, here’s all the finds from this place. Oh, and I’m getting the smallest of my teeth from that fine clay down there, believe me my camera cannot capture how small these teeth are they’re like 1 mm big!

Hey everyone, realizing right now that I haven't posted any fossils of my own in quite a while on the forum. Anyway, I found this tooth back in 2016 on my trip to the potomac river in maryland. It was found at purse state park which has exposures of the paleocene Aquia formation. When I first took a closer look at this tooth I was surprised to see that it had a shape which I had associated with Tiger sharks. I did some research online and found that Pachygaleus would be a match as they are present in that strata. It has been a while since that initial discovery but I wanted to confirm my idea on the forum. It's about .6 cm wide at the root and about .4 cm long. Thanks, PN

I would consider 2016 to be the year that my fossil hunting career really took off, I had spent trips prior to this grooming and developing my skills and it began to show in this period. My school vacations have always been the time where I've been able to get out into the field and go fossil hunting, this particular opportunity was afforded to me by my class trip to Washington D.C. which then lead into my April vacation. Having devised a plan to go fossil hunting before leaving, my dad picked me up at the end of the DC visit before the rest of the group took the grueling bus ride back to NH. From there we went south to Charles county, MD with the intention of going to Purse State Park in hopes of finding some Paleocene shark teeth. And find them we did! After parking, we walked down a trail which led down to the waterfront and a long strip of gravely beach. I soon found out just how bountiful this area could be when looking in the right places. At the end of the day we had found plenty of Shark's teeth and ray dental plates. The majority of the teeth came from various species of sand tiger sharks which patrolled the waters of the greater D.C. area 59 million years ago when it was covered by a warm shallow sea. Here's the haul we had after a few hours collecting.