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Between the long days of classwork, I've been making time to check out some new and old places in and around South Texas. No real homeruns this month necessarily, but each venture has been a success in one way or another. Along with my fossiling, I've picked up my aquarium hobby again which pairs pretty well. Here and there I've collected various souvenirs to decorate my tank with. Expect my aquatic garden to be the backdrop in a lot of fossil photos from now on. A little over a month ago I decided to check out some river localities around Uvalde in hopes of discovering Eagle Ford. In all of my walking I came away with only a single tooth from what I am pretty sure is Kef. I don't think it is identifiable to a species sadly, but it was still cool to get something concrete out of the day. The geology in the area is super interesting as the land is speckled with the remains of ancient volcanoes. There is actually a huge quarry along the Frio River digging up basalt from one of said volcanoes. Despite the lack of fossils, I came home with a bag full of basalt rocks for the aquarium. Kef shark tooth and basalt rocks Several weeks back I explored some developments cutting through the Anacacho Limestone (Campanian). It took visiting a few duds before I finally found my first productive Anacacho honey hole where I was met with a handful of new echinoid species, mostly Mecaster texanus. I was pretty excited when I finally turned over the unusual, but locally common Petalobrissus cubensis. The prize find of the day, however, was a rare regular urchin named Lanieria uvaldana. Petalobrissus cubensis and Lanieria uvaldana The week after I took a lowkey trip to an old site a ways up north in the Ozan. Somehow it'd already been nearly a year since I had last hunted the spot, and with my maturation as a hunter I came in bearing a fresh perspective on things. I scored a neat pair of associated shark verts. Sadly there was no associated dentition with it. Things went really well in the invertebrate department. Usually, I refrain from extracting the ammonites there as they are completely shale and often impossible to extract in one piece. This time I got lucky in finding a robust one and got it mostly complete. I believe it is either Menabites danei or Submortoniceras sp. I would say the biggest prize came at the end with the best example of Gauthieria sp. I have found so far. These guys are extremely rare up in the NSR, but at my spot their fragments are uncommon. The real challenge is finding one complete. Menabites danei?; Two views of Gauthieria sp. a rare Ozan echinoid. While in the area, I collected some of the creek wildlife to fill out a jar of microfauna for my growing aquarium. I lucked out with some wild Ludwigia and Hornwort which I had no idea were native to Texas. The Ludwigia looksespecially stunning in the fish tank, growing most of its foliage emersed above a bed of Crystalwort. Ludwigia from a creek in Central TX The next trip was in the Canyon Lake area for some lower Glen Rose hunting, a new region for me. Even though I had some really promising locations lined up, it turned out to be somewhat of a disappointment. The fossils were a lot sparser than I assumed they'd be, but I did come away with some interesting things. I managed to snag a couple Hyposalenia phillipsae which are a first for me. I also picked up a small Coenholectypus, but I think it is too damaged to tell the species (planatus vs. ovatus). Besides these I gathered several unremarkable crustacean bits and a pycnodont tooth. Hyposalenia phillipsae and Coenholectypus sp. Fast forward to today and I made a brief foray into my Corsicana spot. I haven't found any new mosasaur material since my initial expedition, but I think that's to be expected given the rarity of such things. Regardless I made some cool finds including my best shark tooth yet for the place: a complete Cretalamna maroccana! Several smaller Serratolamna serrata teeth were found as well. I also happened upon a rarer echinoid known as Cardiaster leonensis. It's not cleaned up yet so I do not have it pictured at the moment. Cretalamna maroccana I've been in South TX for 2 months already and yet I've hardly made a dent in the list of fossil spots I want to explore. Keep an eye out for future reports!

About 3 weeks ago I wrapped up my half year of North TX adventures with one final Kamp Ranch hunt and a beautiful pliosaur tooth to boot. Since then I've made my move five hours south to San Antonio and have endured the first two weeks of dental school. It's been an adjustment, but so far things have gone smoothly I'm happy to say. Although I hadn't done any hunting in that time span, I've been putting in some time towards researching sites in this new section of the state. I guess the symptoms of fossil withdrawal were starting to hit hard yesterday, so I picked a few promising spots from my list and headed out to investigate. Some of the decoration in my new apartment There's a lot of formations I want to explore, but my highest priority was locating the Corsicana in order to find some invertebrate rarities like Codiopsis stephensoni or Dakoticancer australis. The bcfas reports made by @Uncle Siphuncle were a big inspiration and also really useful for figuring out what index fossils to look for. I was working with limited information, so the first spot I visited was chosen more or less because it had a promising look to it. I had already made the short-sighted mistake of sleeping in before the expedition, so the Texas sun was out on full blast with the temps exceeding 100F. At the first exposure, I was introduced to hundreds of Exogyra costata littering the ground which was a good sign. This is a species common in the Maastrichtian, but at the time I wasn't sure if it was necessarily indicative of the Corsicana Fm. Interspersed between these massive shells were much smaller bivalves such as the delicate Plicatula mullicaensis. A lot of the invertebrates I was finding were familiar species, but this new flavor of preservation made every discovery very exciting. Eventually, I stumbled upon a huge rudist! I had never found one so complete. Rudist After stowing that and various other bivalves away, I continued creeping along the exposure when I did a double take at a shiny piece of something. Prior to my move, I had come to terms that I may never find marine reptile material here in South TX, yet sitting right in front of me was the glint of enamel... and not just any enamel. As I knelt closer it became clearer and clearer that this was indeed reptilian! I was so happy but also confused as to how such a thing could be possible. I hadn't even snagged my first shark tooth yet and now this! The cutting edge of a mosasaur tooth Labial and mesial views Lingual and distal views Occlusal view As I fished it from the ground I was in awe by its morphology. The tooth has a strong labiolingual compression that had me thinking "dinosaur" for a split second. On the flattened distal carina are very subtle, but visible serrations. The enamel is extremely thin. On the labial side near to the mesial carina, there is a third well-defined carina that reaches a good ways up the tooth. The crown has a very slight labiolingual curvature reserved to the top of the tooth. Around the circumference are some "concave grooves" running longitudinally. I know mosasaurs were extremely diverse in the Maastrichtian, so there are a ton of possibilities. I did a little bit of searching and think it could maybe be Thalassotian atrox? Hopefully an expert or two can chime in here @pachy-pleuro-whatnot-odon @Praefectus @Jared C @PaleoPastels. (Also mosasaur peeps: keep scrolling down for more mosasaur stuff.) Feel free to tag anyone I missed. By now I had finished this outcrop and already downed 1 of my 2 water bottles. There was another larger exposure in the same site that I wanted to visit while my final bottle could last. As I made my way up, I found similar tumbled bivalves as before. Top L to R: Exogyra costata and Plicatula mullicaensis; Bot L to R: Gyrodes sp. and Trigonia castrovillensis? After some closer searching, I found little speckled pebbles that turned out to finally be some irregular echinoids. I guess the other outcrop didn't expose the layer they were coming from. These little guys were just about everywhere and in super good condition. I thought I had collected a ton of species, but looking at them after cleaning I think I only found the two most common. Still super neat to have Maastrichtian age urchins nonetheless. Top: Hemiaster bexari; Bot: Proraster dalli H. bexari with amazing detail Further up, I found the unmistakable texture of crustacean. It was undeniably Dakoticancer australis, but it had definitely seen better days. The elements split the carapace in half, so I tried my best to wrap it carefully. At some point I'll get to gluing it together and cleaning off the extra matrix. Dakoticancer australis carapace Throughout this entire second part of the hunt, I began to wonder more and more about that mosasaur tooth. Was it a fluke? Did some previous hunter drop a Moroccan specimen? I just had never heard of a mosasaur tooth reported from the Corsicana. As I jumped over a gully, a faint shimmer caught my eye and I began to feel deja vu. I squatted down and tried to rediscover whatever it was before I almost fell on my back. There it was, the biggest mosasaur crown I had ever found! HUGE Mosasaur washed out in the gully! Occlusal and basal views Labial and lingual views Distal view I didn't see any detectable serrations but they could be worn off. The cross-section to this robust tooth is circular with many concave grooves running longitudinally. There is a labiolingual curvature. The tip is missing, but I think it is from feeding damage. I would describe the enamel as moderate in thickness. I think it is "faceted", but I am having trouble telling facets and prism faces apart. Honestly, I don't even have a guess for this tooth . I'm not sure of what mosasaurs are even known to occur in the WIS during this time period. I was waiting for my alarm to wake me up at any second. TWO mosasaur teeth and I had yet to even find a shark tooth. Well, that streak came to an end soon after when I spotted a little Squalicorax lindstromi, Carcharias sp., and aff. Cretalamna sp. cusp in quick succession. Squalicorax lindstromi, Carcharias sp., and aff. Cretalamna sp. Finally, my bottle ran dry. I made a quick and early exit, saving the rest of the place for a future hunt. Hopefully the other formations go this smoothly! Thanks for reading

I don’t know if it’s a tooth, but the shape is very familiar. Found in San Antonio TX, in what I think is the Corsicana formation. In an excavation close to 10 ft in heavy clay. Measures 1cmX1cm. Thickness is approximately 5mm.