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Had a phenomenal trip down at Calvert Cliffs on Wednesday with my three month old daughter strapped to my chest. This trip makes up for my failed attempts in March where the sandbars where at an all time high and made it difficult to find anything. The sandbars pushed up from the storms a few months back even helped me to get to some hard to reach locations. Here's some finds and a scouting report for May of the cliffs. Also recovered a nearly perfect decently sized Ecphora gardenae that is still undergoing some preparation work. I'll take a picture of that and post it later along with some very large clams with Ecphora burrow holes. The blood red Mako as found in the sand. I rarely sift as the waves and storms (from the weekend) are constantly exposing the fossil record. Some of the nicer specimens of the day. Two makos on the left, snaggletooth bottom right and top middle. Cow shark with eight blades top right, and a decent sized tiger shark top middle. Recovered more Chesapecten nefrens that I could carry out. This is just a fragment of the shells recovered and layed out neatly in the trunk of my car. Some of the C. nefrens where about 5-6 inches in diameter and impressive to find intact as there were so many large shell fragments. These should make for some beautiful display pieces and gifts once they are cleaned up. Notice the right fins of the C. nefrens are larger than the left fins. This is a noticeable characteristic of this fossil scallop. Approaching the cliffs. The tides where up much higher this time but the waves where very gentle. This photo was taken around 7:00 am. The vegetation overgrowth should help to keep the cliffs from falling. Another shot of the blood red mako. I'll take a closeup of the other Mako later as it's a green-yellow cream color. Somebody found this stranded snapper turtle and carried him 3 miles back up to a freshwater pond. What a nice guy and what a cool looking turtle. A bunch of teeth, turritella, shark vertebrae, ray plates, makos, sand tiger, tiger, requiem, ecphora gardenae, crab claw tip, Megalodon root, and snaggletooth teeth collected by a local collector and myself combined from this trip and a recent trip. Matoaka cabins beach shore. The winds here were very strong and kicked up a lot of dust with some impressive waves. I had to protect my newborn in my chest as I braved the winds. Image 8: Female blue crab that appears to have deposited her eggs and passed away to be washed up on the shore. This is a good sign that the bay is recovering from over-crabbing. Crabs are vital to the bay's overall health as they are scavengers and eat decaying fish and other decomposing critters on the bottom of the bay. Male blue crab. You can tell it's a male by the "state capitol" on the underside. Perhaps his mate was the female that just layed her eggs.

This might prove very easy for more advanced fossil collectors to answer. In 2004, the floodwaters from Hurricane Gaston swept away a large amount of soil and clay from an existing stream near the backyard of our suburban house near Mechanicsville, Virginia, exposing a clay bed littered with numerous fossils. The turritella you see in the picture occurs the most frequently of all our finds, and the small clam fossils are a close second. We've recently started to find more of the kind of scallop fossil in the image, which we guessed was a chesapecten jeffersonius, Virginia's state fossil. I found one moonsnail fossil in the same clay, but it's the only fossil of that kind that we've found. Anyway, I'm not much of a geologist, so I haven't been able to precisely date these, or identify them with a specific epoch. I have what I think is a reasonable guess, but I'd like to get a specific date on just how many years worth of soil Gaston scrubbed away from our backyard. Thanks!

Hello! Has anyone collected from the Windmill Point Member of the St. Marys Formation in Maryland or Virginia? I've collected the Chesapecten scallops for years and would LOVE to find a Chesapecten santamaria and finally fill that major gap in my collection. C. santamaria is common in these exposures but I don't know of any on public property - are there? Has anyone collected on private property - if so would you mind sharing contact info of the person/organization involved? Thanks so much!