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2 of the 4 deer that like to eat my bushes. Sorry, now to the tooth. Going through numerous teeth I have, trying to organize them. This one from flag pond. Carcharhinus? Or hammerhead?

Last year I discovered a baleen whale fossil along the cliffs of Calvert cliffs park. Tomorrow it will be getting excavated. However I broke my leg just before Christmas so I am looking to see if anyone can video the excavation for me as I cannot attend. I’m hoping to get a video and some good pictures I can share on here. Please feel free to message me as I’m anxious to see the excavation process. I just wish I had better luck so I could attend and assist in the excavation of what I found. Anyone willing to help is super appreciated !!! Thank you

Searched matoaka beach today. Lots of shells, but I don’t collect them. Not as much luck as Brownies, but not bad. I believe that I got my first fish tooth.

Hello, I have been doing some fossil hunting at Bay Front Park (Chesapeake Beach) -Brownies- in Maryland USA and have been trying to group and identify some of the teeth I found. I believe these teeth are Miocene and my guesses are as follows- what do you think? Thanks Row 1: Physogaleus contortus Row 2: Galeocerdo aduncus Row 3: Hemipristis serra

These teeth (as with my other post) are from a Miocene site in Maryland USA, Calvert Cliffs area, specifically Chesapeake Beach (Bayfront Park)- Brownies. I have tried to group and identify them. Do you agree? Thanks Row 1: Sand Tiger Carcharias sp Row 2: Cow shark Notorynchus cepedianus Row 3: Carcharhinus (I don’t know species) Row 4: Lemon shark Negaprion eurybathrodono

Here are some Nautiloids that I collected from the Eocene, Nanjemoy Formation of Maryland. I believe that they are Hercoglossa Tuomeyi. I’ve found lots of fragments but these are the larger, more complete specimens. Most of the outermost shell material is gone with the exception of the large specimen back, right which still has most of it. The large specimen center, back measures 12”x10”x6” and weighs 35 pounds. I about broke my back lugging it more than a mile off the beach. I’m not really sure that the small specimen on the stand in the center, back is the same species as it does seem to have different features from the others. Marco Sr.

Went to Brownies for the first time Wednesday. Met up with @searcher78 and had a good time looking stuff. It is completely different then what we have in Jersey. The cliffs are really amazing. Enjoy the pics. Appreciate any feedback on the pics. Thanks as always. what could have been a nice Mako my first hemis ever! front and back of what I think is a piece of cow shark?

Here are three more Riker mount displays that I just put together with my macro specimens from a site in Maryland with both Eocene and Miocene formations. The first 16”X12” display has shark specimens with Miocene shark teeth above the shark vertebrae and Eocene shark teeth below the shark vertebrae. The bottom Eocene shark teeth are mostly Otodus aksuaticus with a few Otodus auriculatus (for size reference the largest O. aksuaticus is 3"). The top Otodus teeth are Otodus chubutensis (for size reference the largest O. chubutensis is 3.5"). There is also a Miocene Parotodus in the top middle of the display. The second 16”X12” display contains both marine and terrestrial mammal specimens, bird specimens, reptile specimens, bony fish specimens and two bivalve shell specimens. Some of these specimens come from the Miocene like the two peccary teeth in the bottom right and some definitely come from the Eocene like the sea snake vertebrae in the bottom left and middle. The third display (8”X12”) contains both Eocene and Miocene ray including sawfish specimens (for size reference the large partial eagle ray barb, which is in two pieces, is 6.5" total length). This display also contains at the bottom two medial Eocene ray pavement teeth, Leidybatis jugosus. Marco Sr.

Here are three more Riker mount displays (8”X12”) that I just put together with my macro specimens from the Miocene and Pleistocene of Virginia. The first two displays contain Miocene crab specimens in concretions. My sons and I have probably several hundred of these crab concretions. Unfortunately the quality of these specimens isn’t like the great crab specimens that come out of the state of Washington but they are still interesting to find. The second display also has a few borrows. The third display contains some miscellaneous specimens like petrified wood from Pleistocene bog iron of Virginia, Miocene terrestrial mammal teeth including a piece of a Gomphothere tooth, bony fish specimens like opercular series bones, tilly bones and sturgeon scutes, and some bivalve shell internal casts. Also in the display, bottom far right, is the only piece of a burrfish mouthplate that I’ve found in the Maryland/Virginia Miocene. Here is another 8”X12” Riker mount display that I just put together with macro specimens from the Miocene of Maryland and Virginia. This display contains some of the very first fossils that I ever collected dating back to the 1970s. In the early days of my collecting I only separated my macro fossils by age/time period and not by formation or location also. So I’m not sure of the location that a lot of these specimens were found at. Most are from the Miocene of Maryland. However I do remember that the two dark gray Otodus megalodons were found by me on the same day diving at Governor’s Run Maryland and that they were my first megalodons ever collected. I also remember collecting the ocean going sunfish jaw at Plum Point Maryland and the thickest sperm whale tooth at Stratford Hall Virginia. Marco Sr.

Don’t know what this is, but I kept it because it looked cool.

Turtle shell? Can’t get good light right now.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.