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The past couple trips to Ramanessin for shark teeth have been quite productive for the month of July, likely because of all the rain we've been getting. Note: these photos are not in any particular order. I started off grouping teeth by shared characteristics but quickly realized that 1) I do not know nearly enough to accurately identify these teeth 2) holy cow, there are so MANY of them and 3) it started raining outside while I was taking pics. I tried to include a couple close ups. Please let me know if you'd like a closer look at any specific tooth. Constructive criticism and commentary is very much welcomed and appreciated! Here we go, RAMANESSIN BROOK The same teeth are shown below in better quality but without the ruler for scale: Close ups of some teeth: Pile of teeth because I got frustrated and rained on while sorting And last but not least, ALL of my smaller tooth findings:

Hi All, Had some time off from work this past Friday, and decided to take a drive out to Big Brook to do some hunting. Had a pretty successful outing, finding some of the biggest shark teeth (Goblin) I've found in my handful of visits to the Brook. Would have been very happy to leave with just those few pieces. The best find of the day was a piece of a Mastodon tooth. I'm still learning, and at first didn't realize what I had, thinking it may be part of a turtle scute (still new to all of this). Thanks to a couple members of the "Fossils and Native American Artifacts (NJ and surrounding areas)" Facebook group, they were able to pin an ID. Compared it to some photos of other examples and it definitley looks like Mastodon. Totally blown away by this find!! Had a few other nice pieces photgraphed below. Last piece of the day was what appears to be a rib bone. Could very well be modern White Tail Deer, as the brook is rich an iron, and can stain the bone pretty quickly. I found the Goblin Shark teeth in the same deposit, but also found a partial of a more modern deer jaw. Jaw was partially white and brown (didn't save as I could tell it was modern). In any case, not sure if it's anything but a modern deer rib. Feedback good or bad is appreciated. Thanks! Calm day @ the Brook. Couple sifts in, and pulled this tooth. Good start!

This tooth was found in Montgomery County, Alabama, and is about 70 million years old. Looking for an ID on the species. I'm pretty sure its a lateral from a goblin shark but I'm not certain.

Hi all, me again, I wanted to share a closeup of the bone fragments that I found in Ramanessin to see if I could get them ID'd further since I know how the brook tends to make fake fossil bones i want to check that the ones I found are real fossil bone 1) the big one, i think it might be a cretaceous turtle shell, it passed the burn, and the lick test. 1A) I believe these are also enchodus jaw fragments. 2) 2A)

Stick around, this one's a read but I'll try to make it fun. So, I have been to big brook last year, and While I enjoyed it, since I went in early feb, the ground was frozen which prevented me from finding much, as the brook was stingy that day. Nonetheless I decided to try my luck with Ramanessin as i heard good things about it. Because none of my family or friends could be bothered, I decided to take a day off work and drive 4 hours to the area and spend the night so I could get the most out of the location. what follows is the result of 2 days straight of fossil hunting. which I will try to tell the story of in order. Day 1 the scoop I arrive at the site a little past 12, choosing to waste no time, I make my way down to the brook and start to sift the gravel. as opposed to when I went to big brook in winter, Ramanessin was generous with her gifts. I found 4 teeth in the first scoop. I took this time to make my way up the stream cutting back and forth sifting every gravel pile I could find. my personal method is to put no more than 5 scoops into the sifter. that was the way to guarantee I got at least something out of it. it was during one of these sifts that I found the curious reptile tooth here. I will be doing a separate fossil id post later of the teeth and bones. but this was one that i knew was something special. I also found this really nice cross section of ammonite. the sutures were beginning to separate, any longer and they would have come undone. It was also this trip that I found these chunks of bone, now I know the brooks have this nasty habit of producing concretions and discoloring modern bones to Look like fossils, but i am 80 percent sure that I found some genuine articles here. Taking the ###### at some point in this day, I decided I needed to pee. so, to avoid being spotted I ducked into a small mouth of a tributary to do my business. while I was wrapping up, something caught my eye, something I couldn't believe. the outline of the Biggest, and likely one of the best lateral goblin shark teeth I have ever found. I was absolutely giddy. after picking it up and doing a little field prep washing it off in the water it was easily 1.8 in. and as the story usually goes as I am looking in this little alcove of gravel, I see the root of yet Another massive goblin tooth root, this time submerged in the dirt. I chanted to myself "please be whole" as I carefully brushed off the tooth to reveal a gloriously intact fossil. easily one of the best and most fortuitous pee breaks i have ever had! It was on my way back that I decided to put the trash bag I brought to good use and pick up the garbage I saw on the way. I'm not going to lie here, I have found it pretty shameful how many shards of glass and cans I would find in this place. But I took it upon myself to fill the shopping bag as best I could. I didn't want to be stuck out in the dark, so I hurried back to the car and dropped the trash in the nearest bin. Lodging back at the motel, I spent the evening cleaning off my newfound loot. I took this time to carefully superglue the ammonite chunk so that I wouldn't lose it. I took one of the plastic cups in the hotel room and cleaned my fossils with it. Day 2 lost sifter After breakfast, I returned to try my luck again, but when I opened the trunk of my car I was met with the absence of my sifter. I t was then that it dawned on me that when I came back to the car I had only my shovel and my trash bag in hand, tricking my brain into thinking i had everything! realizing it was probably lost, I went back to the brook to try my luck surface collecting. The region had received some rain overnight and into the afternoon, and although it wasn't flooding, the water was considerably higher than last time. i was almost discouraged until i noticed something bright blue on the opposite side of the brook... it was my sifter. right where i left it on the top of the overbank. I was so elated I was laughing at my turn of luck. "Hang On! I'm comin!" I yelled at the inanimate object. there was a fallen tree 4 meters from the sifter, so in my full wading gear, I straddled the trunk and shimmied over to the other side and retrieved it. mosasaur it was now that I decided to make my way upstream and sift past the areas that I had already hit. I noticed a few tracks of bootprints here and there. I was initially discouraged by the fact that whoever it was got further than I was hoping they did. but that all went away when as I was sifting through a pile of gravel, I noticed a sheen of blackish enamel. picking it up I realized this was likely yet Another reptile tooth, and the chances that I bagged a mosasaur had effectively doubled. (did I mention yet that this was my 1st time to Ramanessin?) check your spoils as I made my way upstream, I came across the ruins of some old concrete structure in the middle of the brook, either a dam or a bridge foundation of some sort. to my right I saw a large spoil pile. out of curiosity, I started to look at it trying to see if there was anything the previous person missed. and boy was there. I found another huge lateral goblin, and (Pictured separately) a massive sawfish rostral tooth. it was crazy to me thinking about missing not one, but Two easily trip maker sized teeth in your spoil pile. let this serve as a lesson to newbies, to double check spoil piles you see, just because you never know what the last guy missed! crow island I waded and sifted my way upstream past the concrete structure, tactically using my shovel as a sounding stick of sorts and pointing my toes in the direction of the current so as not to lose footing. I stopped just past a footbridge where there was a little island of gravel that had accumulated over the weeks. as I scanned the shore, I saw another trip maker: an absolutely huge Squalicorax prisodontus tooth. it is at this point that I notice that I want alone, there was a group of boys that went bicycling overhead. now, all through the day I was completely alone, talking to myself about the stuff i was finding and being a general silly guy. I'm sure that if anyone came up to me while I was like this, they'd think I was insane. I took this brief encounter as my sign to start heading back to the car. the wade back the wade back I made it a resolution to not sift bit surface collect only. the thing is, that in the hours between when I got there and now, it had stopped raining. and when the rain stopped the waters started to recede after an hour or two. So here I was, walking back to the car past effectively virgin shoreline, with only an hour of sunlight left. I was delaying myself left and right with tooth after tooth that I would find on the shorelines. some being decent sized in their own right! after I returned home, I spent the remaining hours of my sanity cleaning and sorting the finds of the day. this is the total finds for day 2. Aftermath below is the combined total of fossils. of the identifiable items I found approximately 234 goodies over those 2 days. my display case for Cretaceous NJ was looking a little sparse before, but now its looking a little fuller as I am writing this. if you notice any special things in the pictures I missed, please let me know, I love educating myself on these things.

Went back to Greens Mill Run with some more time for the second time this week. Found way more sharks teeth this time including some pretty exciting crow shark teeth. Need some help identifying this tooth or bone of some sort that is unbeknownst to me.

I was able to stop by Greens Mill Run in Greenville, NC once again. Only for about an hour, was able to pick up some more fossils including larger belemnites than I found previously. Less shark teeth though, but still mostly consisted of goblin shark teeth.

Better late than never right?! I'm finally getting around to sharing my finds from a recent trip up the east coast for work, with a few pitstops along the way! The first two images were from an all day hunt in a creek in Summerville, with Folly Beach Fossils! The third image are my spoils from a solo half a day in GMR... Right by elm street park, because the water was way too high to go further down stream from there, and I didn't have much time! What a great time finding a couple of new species and making a few more friends along the way! I cannot wait to get back up there and hunt again!!!

I recently went on two fossil hunting trips to Cretaceous sediments of Eastern North Carolina, the second of which was earlier today. Today’s trip to the Bladen formation yielded baculites ammonites, some worn mosasaur teeth, the nicest goblin shark teeth I’ve personally collected, some fish mouth plates, turtle shell fragments, and some other goodies. My first trip a couple weeks ago was to Tar Heel formation sediments and I collected several small mosasaur teeth, a mosasaur vertebra, a piece of petrified lignite, lots of goblin and crow shark teeth, lots of turtle shell, a very worn Deinosuchus tooth, and some coprolites (I’ve posted a few of the images from this trip in the ID section of the forum already). North Carolina is an amazing U.S. state for fossils, it has loads of fossils from the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic (although if you want Jurassic look elsewhere). If you haven’t already, you should come check it out! Pics from today’s trip: Pics from the first trip:

This riker mount displays the best shark teeth that I collected on 3 hunts sifting at Douglas Point beach, Charles County, Maryland. This is the Paleocene Aquia Formation. Bottom row contains several Odotus teeth. There are many goblin shark Anomotodon and sand tiger shark Carcharias. Also appears to be one pygmy white shark Paleocarcharodon in lower left corner.