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A couple hours of sifting and surface collecting, found a nice Mako, a couple Snaggeltooth and a handful of small teeth. Also came away with a small porpoise tooth and porpoise rib, vertebrae, and Epiphysis disk fragments.

Nice day for another hunt. Fish bones and a small crocodile tooth.

Stopped at Flag Pond today since the weather is nice.

For years I’ve had my macro fossils in drawers and my micro fossils in gem jar displays. Recently I’ve started putting some of my macro fossils in 8”X12” Riker mounts. Below are the Riker mounts that I now have. I’ll probably put together at least twenty of these. Below are two Riker mount displays with specimens from the Paleocene Aquia Formation from the Potomac River in the Liverpool Point, Maryland area. This display contains in the top crocodile vertebrae, a couple of crocodile leg bones, and two crocodile coprolites. I have larger crocodile vertebrae but they are too large for these Riker mount displays. Then a row of crocodile teeth (for size reference the largest partially rooted tooth is 2”). I have over 200 crocodile teeth from the area but the vast majority are fairly small. Then on the bottom there are turtle shell pieces and a crocodile scute. This display contains in the top ray dental plates and a ray barb. I have a lot of very nice very small ray dental plates but the larger ones tend to be damaged/beat up. Ray barbs are not really that common from the area. The middle has a few Otodus obliquus teeth and a partial vertebra. The day I found that partial vertebra, a person that I took to the site for the first time, found a complete, perfect one of the same size. For size reference, the anterior O. obliquus tooth is just less than 3”. I have over 700 O. obliquus teeth from the area but the vast majority are water worn and/or have damaged root lobes, cusplets, tips etc. I believe that these sharks ate a lot of turtles which took a toll on the teeth. At the bottom are a couple of chimaera mouth plates and a fin spine. I have at least 110 smaller chimaera mouth plates in my gem jar displays. The next two Riker mount displays contain specimens from the Eocene Nanjemoy Formation of Virginia. I posted one of these awhile back here on TFF but I’ve rearranged it as I’m now putting more of my specimens in Riker mounts. This display contains on top a few of the larger coprolites that I still have from the Nanjemoy Formation. I’ve already donated over 20,000 of these to the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. I’ve accumulated another 30,000 since my last donation in 2015. Then there is a row of sand tiger teeth two inches and larger. Then there is a row with additional sand tiger teeth and two Otodus obliquus. O. obliquus are not common at all from the area. I’ve only found five in over 165 trips to various sites in the area. Then there are two sawfish rostral spines/teeth and a sawfish vertebra, and a ray mouthplate and medial tooth with several ray partial barbs. On the bottom are three associated fish vertebrae, a small fish jaw, fish spine, and then two fish teeth. This display is a work in progress. I’m putting some of my larger reptile specimens in it. The bottom rows have two turtle lower jaws, turtle shell and a turtle bone. I have lots of other turtle shell pieces so what’s in this display is only a representative sample of what I have collected from the area. The next row contains sea snake vertebrae. I have over 100 of these so I’ll add a few more to this display. My largest, 1.5“ thick won’t fit in this display. At the top are three rooted crocodile teeth, a partial crocodile scute and a small crocodile vertebra. At some point in the future I will post more of these Riker mounts as I finish them. I’m also thinking of putting together a number of artificial shark tooth dentitions and mounting them in Riker mount displays I have several hundred thousand shark teeth from the Nanjemoy so I should have most of the positions for a number of different shark dentitions. Marco Sr.

I gave the chimera fin spine that I found at Douglas Point to the Calvert Marine Museum. They had mouth pieces and a cephalic hook, but no fin spine. I haven’t checked out the museum in years. It has a very nice fossil exhibit.

Hello, I am in Maryland (near Annapolis) and hope to take my 9-year-old son fossil hunting. He really enjoyed our hunt in Pennsylvania (Beltzville) last week. I have heard of Calvert Cliffs (any advice?) but would also be interested in other sites. We could drive to sites in southern PA, northern VA or DC. Thank you in advance for any suggestions.

Anyone having any luck this winter so far along the Potomac? Found bunches of sand shark teeth so far. Tides been high lately haven't been able to do anything this past weekend. Just checking to see if anyone has been finding anything good.

A little brisk to start the day.

Hi everyone, I was doing a beach cleanup on Sunday along the Port Tobacco River, & I noticed this little rock sitting next to an old beer can. It is 3 cm wide at it's widest point. The whitish grey color made it a challenge to photograph, so I added a slight wash to it. Any help with an ID would be greatly appreciated. I looked at many images of worms last night, but I didn't see anything with the same shape or length, & without knowing the age of the rock, I am not sure how to identify it. While it is whited out in the middle, when I look at it under a magnifying glass I can see that the horizontal lines extend through almost the whole length of the ovalish shape. This photo was magnified 2x. Thanks for looking!

I'm new to this. I'm a land surveyor; a new job site I'm on had a storm water creek burst & cut a new path. It exposed a fossil layer. At the bottom was a perfectly preserved reef of large oysters. As it had been undisturbed it was pristine. I've spent a few lunch breaks combing the creek, not much time, & found 100s of shark teeth, 1,000s of coprolites, dozens of bones. It seems everything was preserved here; I've found shrimp & crabs even. But it is getting destroyed rapidly & will be obliterated during the construction phase. I can not get anyone interested in checking it out before it's gone & I don't really know who to ask. The site is in Maryland, near DC. I don't want to give too many specifics on lacal. I don't know what to do to try & save some of what's in there so here I am. Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated. I can post pics of what I've found upon request, i just wouldn't know where to start. Thanks

Hello Everyone! I found this tooth a while back at a Ypresian, Eocene site (Nanjemoy Formation, Woodstock Member.) It puzzled me for a while, I assumed it was a weird Otodus or something until someone IDed it as a Cretalamna at a local fossil club. Apparently they have their last gasps in Maryland’s Ypresian. However, I was then informed by some people familiar with the roughly contemporaneous London Clay that it looks more similar to Parotodus pavlovi. That species is not yet described from the formation, and despite reaching out to a few collectors who have collected this formation extensively, I cannot find anyone else with one. What say you all? Scale in CM

Hello all! I recently rearranged my collection so I figured this would be a good time to show some fossils! I usually hang-out in the New Jersey Cretaceous but I have been collecting fossils for over 25 years and have found some pretty cool specimens of creatures from many different eras, That said, my collection is mainly focused on the New Jersey Cretaceous, so let's start there. These are my displays for New Jersey Cretaceous non-reptile fossils. My favorites aren't actually fossils at all but rather casts of some of my favorite finds. The crab, Costadromia Hajzeri is the earlies known sponge crab and was named after me. The lungfish cast is of one of two specimens of late Cretaceous lungfish found from New Jersey (probable new species based on time period and 'crushing' element of teeth. The big Xiphactinus tooth is another of my favorite finds along with the echinoids and Menunites ammonite (pictured).

As an early Christmas present, I ordered some waders and they came a couple of days ago. It was obviously time to fossil-hunt. We made it out to brownies pretty quickly. Fortunately, there weren’t that many people there, and we rounded the point after a quick search of the area near the entrance. We promptly found a couple nice fish verts and a couple broken shark verts in the spoil piles right near the cliffs. We continued along the cliffs, searching every crevasse for the elusive meg, checking the gravel for makos and the like. Pretty far down we turned around as the tide was coming in. As we walked back along the beach, I looked down to grab a nice tiger. Lo and behold, the “tiger” was actually a symphyseal cow! It was broken with some bits missing, but it was still the rarest thing I’ve ever found! Grateful to the fossil hunting gods, FA

Hi all! I could use some help IDing this fossil (thanks in advance for any insights!). Found on a beach in Maryland (nearish Calvert Cliffs). Could be a tooth (?), ~1in long, has a 'midline' on one side and 4 knob-like 'roots' on the bottom. Not conical but tapers to a point. Pics are front, back, and side.

Stopped in to look for shark teeth, but forgot my waders. Couldn’t search like I wanted.

Dinosaur Park in Laurel, MD, is a tiny, 7.5-acre tract of county parkland surrounded by a business park in bustling, suburban Maryland. Nevertheless, it is the most prolific dinosaur and plant site east of the Mississippi. The first fossils there were found in the 18th century by slaves in the siderite (bog iron ore) mine that was there at the time. It wasn’t until 1858 that the bones turning up in the mine were identified as dinosaur remains. The bones found that year were from what would have been, if they a had done all the paperwork, the second dinosaur identified in the US, Astrodon johnstoni, which is now Maryland’s State Dinosaur[1] . Since then dinosaurs, turtles, small mammals, crocodilians, gastropods, clams, and tons of fossil plant material have been found there, all of it now at the Smithsonian. The site is part of the Arundel Formation, dating to the Lower Cretaceous, 115 mya, when the place was an oxbow lake. Tributaries were strong enough to wash dino bones into the lake. The fossils there are disarticulated wash-out. Whole skeletons are not generally found or expected here. The exposed hillside consists of a mix of fine grey soil, siderite bog iron and lignite (coalified fossil wood the consistency of charcoal). The lignite and siderite form a thin, dense gravel layer. The challenge for visitors and paleontology volunteers alike is to find the pale blue bones and shiny teeth in the cacophony of black and orange. Collection is done almost exclusively by surface scanning. If something large turns up by way of erosion, then they cordon it off and dig it out. Anything other than the wood is documented with the finder’s name and sent to the Smithsonian. Visitors may keep one palm-sized piece of fossil wood if they like. My husband and I met a friend and her two daughters there today. It was cold, but sunny. There were harsh shadows on the ground, which are supposed to make it easier to pick out shiny teeth. I find the contrast too harsh to see details. The park is open from noon to 4 every other Saturday. We got there close to 1 and spent a couple hours there, despite the chill in the air. I didn’t expect to find any exciting fauna. That’s usually our daughter’s job, and she was at work. I was engrossed in the lignite and the siderite plant impressions, hoping maybe to find a seed cone or two for their collection. Apparently, a handful in a day is not unusual there. I had no luck on either score. I did find a nice plant impression in the siderite. Looks like tree bark. I asked if that could be the one I took home. The volunteer looked at me sternly and asked, "Do you now what it is?" "Tree bark impression in siderite, but I don't know from which tree." “What do you do for a living?” “Artist.” “What do you do that will prove to me that this will be used for educational or scientific purposes?” I told him about my fossil blog and the homeschool paleontology series I just ran at my local library. He was convinced. Now I have it at home, but I may offer it to the Delaware Museum of Natural History, where I volunteer. Each of the girls also found something nice, albeit smaller, to bring home. Unsurprisingly, most of the other kids were disappointed because they didn’t find dinosaur teeth. There was a list at the registration table of maybe a dozen interesting things found today. As far as I know, no one found anything interesting while we were there. Some days go like that, but I was not disappointed. It was a good afternoon to see someplace new. [1] Maryland has both a State Dinosaur and a State Fossil. The State Fossil is a gastropod, Ecphora gardenera.

High water and cold weather, but still found teeth.

Hi there, just dropping an intro to show face. I guess this is where I talk about myself? Not very good about these things. I'd say my interest in paleontology started on a family trip in Colorado when I found the jaw bone of an elk in a stream my cousin and I were cutting through on the way home. With the teeth intact even! The feeling I got turning over those rocks to uncover it set off a love of discovery and my hobby. I look forward to delving into all kinds of strata of conversation and discussion here with you all. Thanks for having me!

Hello everyone, I’m M and I’m very new to this site, my love and curiosity for fossils is also in its early stages. But I just wanted to introduce myself to everyone. I made my page last week but work has kept me from my intro and posting content. Thank you all for having me, and I’m around if anyone wants to chat sometime.

A few hours relaxing and finding teeth.

I found this small tooth or bone fragment at Bayfront Park on Tuesday. Any help with the ID would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.