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I hate that Stratford Hall closes at 4:00 PM, though my wife and I still got a couple of hours of searching at low tide. The Potomac was completely placid today, wish I could have searched around the cliffs...someday I'll go on one of the trips there. We didn't get much, but a couple of near finds. The complete haul. Not a complete cow shark tooth but only the second one I have found. My wife found a stingray barb.

Headed out to do a little hunting and it was a gorgeous day out today. I got down to the water and immediately headed to my favorite spot. The water was high today, which seems to be coming a common theme. I haven't done a good amount of digging and sifting in ages, so i decided to put some work in. After about a half an hour of digging and finding some small teeth here and there, I came across a whale ear bone! It's the first one I've ever found so i was pretty excited. I kept digging and the only other find worth mentioning is a little beat up mako with a tip ding. I decided to take a break and walk the beach as the tide had dropped since first getting there. I was almost back to my sifting spot when i bent down to pick a little black mako that was laying on top in about 6 inches of water. Sitting right next to the mako was this little Meg. Its a little beat up but its still nice to find a Meg (keeps the spirit up). If anyone else hunts Westmoreland frequently let me know.I hope you enjoy the pics! Boneheadz

Found this washed up at Westmoreland State Park, VA, on the Potomac River. Same environment as Calvert Cliffs. Any thoughts?

Set out for a two day expedition with my girlfriend down to Westmoreland SP to see what we could find. The first day was ok, finding a lot of broken teeth and some bone. The second day we cleaned house and my girlfriend found her first Meg. This excites me because hopefully this will keep her motivated to come fossil hunting with me haha. She really had a great day finding a couple beautiful makos, a meg, and a sweet upper sevengill tooth. If anyone could help me identify this chunk of bone that'd be great. Hope you enjoy the pics! Boneheadz

I had the day off on Thursday and after that storm we had on Wednesday night I couldn't help but go looking for some fossils. I got down there at sunrise and headed down to the beach, thats when i realized that the water was extremely high due to rain and the water was very murky. I didn't find much all day but i did make a friend who was new to hunting for fossils, said he hunts for gems and arrowheads. I ended up giving him most of my shark teeth and bones, in exchange he gave me an arrowhead and a piece of quartz crystal. So the day wasn't a total bust. I'll add some macro pics of some nice extinct tigers I found. Boneheadz

I went down to Purse state park this past Saturday morning. Didn't find anything crazy but did manage to take some pics for you guys. Someone even had their Duck blind set up right on the beach, not sure if this is legal or not. I know its legal to hunt down there but seeing up a structure, I haven't seen this before. Also took a few macro shots of some small teeth i found. Enjoy!

I had an opportunity to go down to Westmoreland twice this week because I was lucky enough to have off work. The first day I took my GF with me because she had off as well. The first day was pretty nice and sunny, the wind wasn't a factor that day so it was perfect for hunting in the water. Being down there only a short time I found one of the most beat up shamer megs I've ever found. Im not sure how it could've gotten this bad, but atleast it was a good sign. We found a few teeth that day including a decent little Snaggletooth. On the second day i went down by myself and found that the wind had picked up significantly from the previous day. I was limited to whatever was laying on the beach. Luckily, I was able to find a couple teeth including a beat up Mako and a nice upper snaggletooth. Here are some pics for you to enjoy. If anyone has any theories to what happened to this meg, I'd love to hear them. The inside of it is mushy and pretty much broke apart in my hand. Thanks, Boneheadz

Hey, i often hunt fossils in Virginia and Maryland and am primarily looking for shark teeth and other marine fossils. I frequent Westmoreland SP and Purse SP. Ive been hunting alone a lot lately and although I'm getting used to it now, I'd still feel more comfortable and enjoy it more if i had someone to go with. I mainly go during the week because less people are down there hunting. If anyone would be like to meet up, send me a message. Thanks, Boneheadz

Just a few of my finds from 2015 at Westmoreland SP along the Potomac river. This is my fist time posting and my finds include Megs, makos, a couple gator teeth and a complete Ray plate. I hope you enjoy. More pictures upon request.

Here's my contribution, two otodus with a slant height of over 2". Does anyone else have any large ones?

Hello everyone. I'm new t the forum and to fossil hunting in general. I just came back from Myrtle Beach and found quite a few shark teeth on the beach and now I'm hooked. I'm planning on heading to Purse State Park early tomorrow morning with half the day that I can devote to looking for some fossils and shark teeth. I'm just wondering where I should head on the beach to try to find some nice teeth and maybe some other kinds of fossils? Thanks in advance!

I found this yesterday along the shores of the Potomac River in Virginia. We find a lot of shark teeth and crocodile teeth here, but never anything like this. I'd love help identifying what it came from! (I have more pics I can post if it would help, but it won't let me load all of them on one post.)

I really wanted to take one last trip to the Potomac before it gets too cold. So we drove there after the rainfall on Saturday. A few minutes into the hunt, and I found the largest shark tooth and Otodus my family has ever found! My brother found another Otodus, a bit smaller than mine, about 45 minutes later, the enamel was scraped off a bit, but it was still a large tooth. After a long walk, I found a (what I'm almost positive is a) Palaeocarcharodon, but the tip was missing!! I was still pleased about it though. My brother found a tooth with double cusps on each side, which I think the specific species is a bit uncommon, it starts with Palaeo I think! I also found an angel shark tooth. Near the end of our trip, my brother found another worn (broken!) Palaeocarcharodon! 2 in one day isn't too bad, if only they were whole! I also found a couple of very pristine teeth that were sticking out of the cliffs. We had a great day, but that will probably be the last chance we get for a while! Anyone out there have any suggestions for a good fossil hunting site closer to Richmond, VA? I'd love to search in the phosphate mines in NC, but I'll have to wait till I'm 18 apparently! Let me know what you think of the teeth!

Easternshore and I met up again for another trip, this time we decided to collect a spot along the Potomac river where I usually do well and this time was no different. The only problem with this spot is accessibility and it involves hiking a good 5-6 miles through, over and around fallen trees. It's not much fun after your legs are cut to bits by the branches and look like you were trapped in a lions den. We each were finding the usual small teeth when I glanced up at the high gravel line and spotted the find of the trip. A beautiful 2 1/8" C. Aksuaticus. Which is a transitional tooth between Otodus and Auriculatus and can only be found at just a few known locations. They are usually extremely worn or in bad shape but this one was only missing one cusp and nearly unworn so I doubt it had been in the water very long. The tooth actually had some matrix near the root. The color and odd shape make this one my favorite tooth of this species. I also found a 1 7/8" sand tiger. The winds began to pick up and we were getting sand blasted and with the long journey ahead of us we made our way back to the car. If we had more time I'm sure we would have found some other nice teeth. Happy hunting and holidays everyone! http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac342/Steven_Ferguson/image_zps5fd1d70b.jpg http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac342/Steven_Ferguson/image_zps8a22182e.jpg http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac342/Steven_Ferguson/image_zpse2a5ad28.jpg http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac342/Steven_Ferguson/image_zps3d1a35a6.jpg Steve

My wife found our largest Otodus tooth last weekend -- a lot of enamel missing, but otherwise fairly nice -- just over 1.5" slant height. I picked up whatever that is on the left. We would love to ID it... I can provide more photos if necessary, including edge-on shots. Thanks for looking!

My family went on our first fossiling trip of the season this weekend. It was a guided group hunt with access to normally restricted areas under the cliffs at Stratford Hall along the Potomac River in VA. The cliffs hold an amazing array of fossils from the Miocene era (10-20 million years ago), from when the area was covered by seawater. I don’t normally like to hunt with so many people but in this case the site access, along with so many seasoned hunters to learn from, made it a special experience. Bit of background: as a child/teen I searched near there at Westmoreland, when I was an adult and went back I was sad to see that there was only a small picked over section of beach left to search. So last year we started paying fees to visit Shark Tooth Island (aka Hollis Marsh). This is really only my second year of real hunting and I still have a lot to learn, so we thought we would do a guided hunt to learn more and have access to a new site. So anyway, back to this past weekend. Unfortunately the finds were harder to come by this weekend than normal (people who do this trip twice every year said it was the worst ever). I thought that since we were under the clay cliffs it would be better, but it turned out to not be much better than finds that wash up on the island. Tides were not on our side and there had been no recent storms. I don’t get out searching as often as I would like so I was really worked up in anticipation about this weekend. Anyone else get like that? Plus I really wanted it to be special for my kids and wanted them to have some finds, which they did eventually but not at first. It was still overall a good weekend, learned a lot, found some neat things, and met some amazing people. Met two forum members, Glitchy and Optimist. Optimist is a really seasoned hunter with a vast knowledge of teeth, and she was kind enough to help me sort and identify some of our finds. All the people were so nice, some were helping my kids find or were giving them teeth, and some even lent us their screens. Usually you don’t have to screen so I didn’t have one, but like I said finds were hard to come by on the beach so we had to work for it. Saw some folks with prospecting screens, hadn’t seen that before and they seemed to work really well. Also saw one man with a plastic spice jar on a string around his neck, and all he had to do was flip open the “spoon” side of the jar to add teeth for safekeeping. Genius! Some decent Megs were found by other people this weekend, mostly by screening, one had washed up. Some crocodile teeth, squalodon, scutes, dolphin teeth, lots of whale bones and verts, lots of different kinds of shark teeth, and someone even found a perfect arrowhead. A really nice large Mako and the biggest Hemi have ever seen on a hunt were found by people a few feet from me. Happy for them, frustrated for me, you know what I mean? Then there was this one really nice guy who had been letting my son help him screen and had been teaching him about fossils. On day two I heard him yelling… turns out he found a lovely Meg on his fourth screen for the day. I was thrilled for him. The guide, a paleontologist and former curator of the VA Museum of Natural History, found a fresh fall FULL of Chesapecten Nefrens. Some even had both valves. He collected the specimens and let people choose from them. He also showed us a large (at least 5 foot) whale skull in the cliff. For complicated reasons there are no current plans to collect it. He hated having to leave it exposed~ both to the elements and the possibility of poachers who might damage the specimen and destabilize the cliff. On to my family’s finds: My son found an amazing turritella impression, and I found a partial inner mold. Then someone who heard I was giving a presentation of fossils to my son’s second grade class gave me a bag FULL of perfect inner molds (found in a fall in NC) to give to them. Like I said before, amazing people. I also found a tiny turritella shell. We have a partial croc tooth, lots of ray plates, a fish vert, whale verts and bones, and varied teeth: grey, hemi, lemon, mako, sand tiger and tiger. My husband found our biggest Mako so far, it was beautiful. I also found a cool trace fossil: a tiny portion of a burrow. My Dad found and gave away what I now know was a large shark vertebra, several inches across. He didn’t realize what he had and did it before I could speak up. I was upset then, and even more so when I realized what it was. Somebody tell me they aren’t that rare and I will feel better. I’m all for sharing, and did some myself, but I would prefer not to give away our only specimen of a new find. I hope those guys cherish it Some firsts for me were a portion of a stingray barb and a partial cow shark tooth. Neither is great quality, very small and broken, but like I said, first finds of those specimens so very exciting. I also found an adorable tiny little impression, not sure if it is turritella or not. Plus when I was rinsing everything off I found a dolphin tooth in our collection! Not sure if someone in my family found it and didn’t know what it was/ thought it was bone, or if it was in the teeth that Optimist gave me. Either way it was a fun moment and we are excited to have it… another first! All in all a fun and informative weekend, but of course I am not fully satisfied because it is so addictive… I can’t wait to go back again!!! In fact, I couldn't seem to turn it off when I got home and kept seeing shark tooth shapes EVERYWHERE... in the scrollwork on my lamp, in the pattern on a marbled tabletop, even when I closed my eyes. Pics of a few of the pieces in a few, and will be posting about yesterday’s visit to my son’s second grade class to show off and give away some fossils J

We love to find teeth with clean cusps on each side. As I looked closer at our recent finds I discovered that one of them actually had double cusps on each side. It's a very small tooth and a little worn, but I was wondering if it is a different species or is it more about the position in the mouth of the shark that determines the cusps.

I just recently joined the forum and wanted to show off some of our finds from the Potomac River. This is the best from a half a dozen or more trips. I'm interested to know if the large croc tooth is anything special, or anything else that seems especially nice. Thanks

Hi All, Just got back from Purse State Park on the Potomac River where we were collecting from the Aquia Formation which formed in the Paleocene Era. My daughter collected a large number of very small teeth, found some nice shells and turritella molds but I'm stuimped by the last two pictures. Any idea what this is? Thanks

From the beach at Westmoreland S.P..