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I made another trip to Post Oak Creek yesterday. I visited a spot on the creek where I'd already been twice last year, in the first months of my fossil hunting. The conditions the second trip were much like yesterday, months of low water and very picked over. I didn't find much that second trip. But I suspected that I have become much better at spotting tiny teeth on a gravel bar, and went back yesterday anyway. Judging from what I found, I must have been right. There were lots of broken teeth again, and nothing spectacular or unusual enough to justify a post, but I do enjoy documenting my trips, and have a question about one of the bones, so here I am. First, some in situ photos. The tooth in photo 6 is pretty hard to see. Hint: it's a Ptychodus tooth.

I purchased some Ptychodus teeth and I can not determine the exact ID on my own. They are smaller than P. whippeli or P. mortoni teeth I have and bigger than the single P. anonymous tooth I have though that is the species I originally though, and still think these are. They are from the Kamp Ranch section of Eagle Ford in Texas. I consulted a very well put together ID guide here but am still just not sure what I have, other than nice Ptychodus teeth lol Any help would be appreciated.

I usually don't post the trip to POC anymore but this time there were some oddities i wanted to confirm and or see if anyone knows what they are. I found the usual few ptychodus teeth as well as tons of broken shark teeth but also some more rare items. There is one small shark vertebrae, a piece of a fish vert, two broken ends of sawfish rostral teeth, a weird piece that looks like coral to me but also looks like it has teeth poking out of it, a large piece of mammoth enamel, and what I believe is a small mosasaur tooth. Pictures 2, 3, and 4 are the mosasaur tooth. I have it in my hand for scale and it is small but it looks exactly like ones i have seen posted from the North Sulphur River just smaller than most. Pictures 5 and 6 are of the coral looking thing. I could have sworn i saw something like this on the forum before but i have looked and can't find the post. Any ideas of what this is? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Teeth of the shell-crushing shark Ptychodus sp. are fairly common in the Late Cretaceous deposits of Texas and are also found in Alabama and Kansas (and maybe other states). However, Ptychodus seems to be completely absent from the Late Cretaceous deposits of New Jersey. Why is this? One explanation I can think of is differences in age- the Late Cretaceous formations at Big Brook and other famous NJ sites are Campanian or Maastrichtian, while my understanding is that the Late Cretaceous deposits of Texas and Kansas are a bit earlier. So perhaps Ptychodus became extinct after the Texas/Kansas/etc. formations were deposited, and just before the New Jersey formations? Or was there some subtle difference in the environment between those other sites and New Jersey? All theories are welcome; theories solidly backed by fact, or that have been published by professionals, even more so. Thanks.

These look easy enough to ID but this is just my 2nd tooth so would like to confirm I got it right, or not. Found in Post Oak creek, Cretaceous Eagle Ford.

Found in TXI cement plant (MMI) in Midlothian, TX. Please help me identify. Ruler is in centimeters. .

This weekend we had some nice weather for this time of the year , so we went to the beaches in the north of France for a stroll with the dog and hopefully some fossils. It is a 2h drive from were we live, so we got there around 10 o’clock. That’s around the time that the tide was starting to lower again, so we had all day access to the beach. We started our walk in Sangatte, just under Calais. And went south following the Turonian chalk cliffs. After a while we spotted our 1st fossil echinoid between the flint pebbles on the beach. Further South, the retreating tide started to uncover some interesting chalk boulders that could contain some ammonites. A few half or severely worn down specimens could be spotted, but after a while we found something really promising. A small part of different colour that could be the start of an ammonite rib was peeking out of one of the boulders. A quick hit with the chisel next to it exposed a larger part of what was indeed a large ammonite. We then took our time to clear out the whole fossil. We got it out in one piece , A 35cm wide Morrowites wingi. After this we didn’t get much further down the beach due to the weight of the ammonite in the backpack, but we kept looking in the same area for other fossils. We each found an additional echinoid on the beach and as a bonus on our way back to the car we found a ptychodus tooth.

As it looks like I won't be able to make it back out to Charleston for quite a while, I was wondering what the fossil hunting scene looks like here in Texas. I've heard that there's some miocene material to be had around Galveston and Bolivar, and I've heard about the Eagle Ford Formation and Post Oak Creek, but I haven't come across a whole lot of information. I do know there are some invertebrate fossils along the Brazos, but I'm not super big on snails. I'm in the Houston area, so a day trip down to the coast is definitely feasible, but I need to do some more research before I commit to making a trip up to North Texas, which seems to be where most of the action is. Can someone just give me a quick rundown on the general information I need to know?

I made a trip to a creek in East Texas today and brought home a nice collection of very small teeth. It was the first time I've ever had success finding fossils less than an hour drive from home, and I was pretty pleased about that. This was a Kincaid Formation outcrop. The teeth came from a shell hash that was on top of some very hard limestone. Some of the matrix which contained the teeth was the same gray as the limestone, and some of it was a tan color. I looked at a lot of identical looking matrix which had nothing but shell fragments in it, but once I found teeth, there were more teeth nearby. I had to chisel into the matrix to find teeth, so as I searched for teeth, I just kept tossing matrix pieces into my backpack to take home. So now I have a bunch of matrix to go through. I'm looking forward to doing that in my air conditioned house rather than outside in today's 98 degree temperatures. LOL. I made an early day of it after it got so hot, heading home before 1:00 in the afternoon. I'll post a reply after I've gone through all the matrix. Here are some matrix pieces I brought home. The upper two are the same gray as the limestone they were on top of. But there was also some tan matrix mixed in, like those two bottom pieces. Both had teeth in them. Two teeth in the matrix on this rock. The top one was still attached to the matrix, but the bottom one was loose inside a hole that it looked like someone chiseled. So much for my secret spot. Some of the matrix I brought home had teeth that weren't too hard to spot. Here are the 20 teeth I've found so far. I'm going to have to do some research to identify some of them. The Kincaid Formation and Paleocene period are both new to me. The surprise of the day was a single small ptychodus tooth I found. Since Kincaid is 66 to 56 mya, and ptychodus supposedly went extinct 85 mya in the Western Interior Sea, I didn't expect to see any today. But this one was in the same matrix the other teeth came from. It appears I found a tooth from one of the last of the Mohicans. Does anyone here have experience hunting Kincaid? If I thought last week's teeth were small, then these teeth are REALLY small. But I had a blast finding them. And I have lots more matrix to go through. I'll check back after I've been through it. Thankfully, it's nowhere near as hard as most matrix I seem to bring home.

Tuesday morning, I made a trip back to the Ellis County creek where I've found so many teeth. I had been making a short hike across the pastures of two land owners to get to this creek, but the last time I asked permission, one of the land owners refused me, saying he had made a deal to give exclusive rights to another fossil hunting family. I can still get to the creek, but now it's a very long hike for me. So, I waited until the hottest part of summer was gone to try that long hike. When I reached the small section of the creek where I'd been finding most of the teeth, this is what I saw.

Here is my latest trip to POC. Another nice large tooth (I took a picture with a cm ruler for the non-Americans out there), some mastodon or mammoth enamel, a few nice ptychodus, chunkasaurus, and several chunks of matrix with teeth sticking out of them. I also had a few questionables. Anyone know what kind of tooth is in pictures 5 and 6? Or 7 and 8? Im thinking 9,10, and 11? 12, 13, and 14 might be crushed crustacean or coprolite? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

I've had little free time as of late, but I've made good use of some of it by starting to learn how to prepare my fossils. Here's a find I made recently that I finished tonight. It's taken a little longer than i expected, but that's because I would live stream some the prep on TikTok, where I'd prep (with one hand, risky business!) while also answering some questions about fossils and how to get started hunting, etc. This made it slow but enjoyable work. These come from my current best site that I have. The teeth are small, but perfectly preserved, since they come straight out of the ground. I made do with what I have, using a screwdriver pick I found in the garage that must've come with a screwdriver kit. It works just fine. I also found that a good playlist makes prepping even more appealing. Lately I've been getting into Colter Wall and Tyler Childers, and they've made a great vibe during my preps. First - the slab of two Ptychodus teeth, as found (sorry for the quality, it comes from a video) and here it is tonight! Next here's another tooth that I decided to break out of the paper thin slab that held it. This is my largest Ptychodus tooth from this site so far - I suspect it's a Ptychodus mammilaris, and it's slightly larger than the two above.

I finally broke through today, and made some of my proudest finds ever... multiple times. I have some questions on a few ID's. When I compared these Ptychodus to the Ptychodus ID guide, they kind of reminded me of anonymus and mammilaris. I'm excited because everywhere else I've only ever found mortoni before. I did not find any mortoni here. In the same slab as a ptychodus, there's also a small tooth that's perhaps suggestive of Mosasaur - however, fish teeth from those like pachyrhizodus look deceptively mosasaurian to my inexperienced eye. Furthermore, it's small size could also indicate fish, but a mosasaur pterygoid tooth could be in the running this way still as well. One half is covered in matrix still, so I understand this complicates getting an ID Eagle Ford fm. Travis county, Texas Scale bar = 1 inch 1.) 2.) Ptychodus on the same slab 3.) Another Ptychodus (different slab) 4.) Fish tooth? Or chance of reptile? (scale bar= 1 inch)

Found this in some midlothian matrix. Is it possible to tell what species of ptychodus this is from these photos? I originally assumed posterior p. whippeli but I am not great at identifying ptychodus teeth. Any help would be much appreciated. 6mm long

I made a trip to a new creek in Hill County last Thursday. This is another Eagle Ford creek, though it is very close to Austin Chalk coverage. It was another creek that's tough to hike in places. Even with my new, first time ever, prescription glasses on, I didn't find a whole lot, but I did bring home a few interesting pieces. Here are opposite direction views of the same outcrop in the creek. It has the blue gray clay you find so often in Eagle Ford outcrops. There were lots and lots of small ammonite imprints in rocks, like the one in the upper left part of this rock, but no surviving ammonite fossils that I found. And there were lots and lots of shell fragments in rocks. These were bigger than most. This rock looks like just another of those with lots of shell fragments. But this side view of the same rock shows a hidden jewel I almost missed. That's a ptychodus tooth. Shark teeth were few and far between in the creek, but here are a couple of pretty ones, though small, still in the matrix. As I get more experience, I've gotten better about not just picking up everything neat looking that I find. But I couldn't resist this, one of the larger bison teeth I've run across. There were lots of hard to identify fossils in the rocks. That looks like some kind of tooth on the left, but I have no idea what the others are. They all look too delicate to remove from the matrix, but I may do a bit of pick work to try and tell better what they are. And finally, this bone. The first photo shows a view of each side of it. There is still a bit of rock attached. I didn't remove any matrix from it; this is just the way I found it. The last photo shows a side view. Does anyone have a clue what this is?

Hey ya'll Here's a small Ptychodus that my step brother found while we were hunting a gravel bed. Still in the matrix... you can say I'm a little jealous. I'm thinking, based off the ID guide that's pinned, that it could be mammillaris. Let me know if more or better photos are needed.

Today was a memorable outing, and our net results were the best I've ever had for a single day in Austin. This morning started quickly. My step brother, Christian, was already knocking on my door at 9:30 - yes, that may be late in the morning for everyone else, but it's a full hour before I'm usually fully awake. I guess that's the trade off for late nights! Yesterday we made plans to spend our day today hunting a spot that I was used to scouring but had not visited in a while. That was not the only motivation for choosing this particular spot though. When I originally discovered this area, there were lots of associated large bones in the creek. After finding one of those water stained vertebrae, I decided "wow, that's huge! Not fossilized though.Looks bovid. Must be cow...eh " *toss* Looking back at it, I was (and am) kicking myself hard enough to break a toe. I never even thought to look for a skull, to just be sure, and the more I think about it, the more the odds fall in favor that the bones were bison, and I completely disregarded a very interesting Pleistocene skeleton. So, this was going to be an attempt at redemption - I had observed many bones downstream during successive returns (still met with more, "eh, must be cow"), but this time we were going to do something about it. The locality is cretaceous, so we'd hunt cretaceous material on the way up, keeping a look out for those "cow bones", until arriving to the site where the bulk of the skeleton used to be. At least, that was the plan... After parking by a small business (which hasn't towed me a single time- shout out to them), we made our way on foot over to a bridge, which we then started descending. The creek is on public land, but there's no parking or easily accessible points down to it. Once down at the creek, we wasted no time and took a turn left - the direction I've always gone. Christian was immediately impressed by the enormous size of the Exogyra oysters, which are abundant here. He's not an ardent fossil hunter, meaning he's never had the intent to go do it on his own, for example, but he is impressed by fossils and has a wickedly perceptive eye. We worked our way up the usual spots - it was his first time here, but probably my sixth or seventh. I pointed out to him where I made my best finds - the mosasaur tooth, the plesiosaur caudal rib, a bison tooth, etc, but in the end we didn't find much there. The "bison" skeleton was nowhere to be seen anymore, and while we found other cool fragments of definitive Pleistocene bone, none were identifiable further. One find of note however, was a echinoid that Christian spotted. I don't know how the dude does it, but he finds echinoids everywhere, it's like a superpower of his. No matter where we go or what we're doing, if it's outside, he'll spot an echinoid somehow. (Below - an interesting mushroom, which I believe to be Ganoderma sessile ) The real party started once we made it back to the bridge that we started at. Our plan was to scout the left side of the creek, the part I've never hunted before. We rounded the corner, and upon seeing the steep banks, it was clear that we had to walk across some deep creek crossings. I took point, and seeing that the water came almost to my stomach, Christian decided to settle for what he had found and instead poke around under the bridge again while he waits for me to finish scouting. Immediately after finishing my first deep crossing, and as Christian was starting to walk away, I found my first proper arrow head, ever. Previously, this creek had produced some rudimentary stone tools, one of which we even found earlier on this excursion. But they were nothing like what I had stumbled across here, sitting proud and jet black under a centimetre of water. I yelled back for Christian to come check it out - if there was any motivation for him to cross the creek and continue to scout with me, it would be this. Apparently though, he was probably a cat in his past life, because even this, found 5 minutes into this scouting run, was not convincing enough. Besides, it had started raining, so he still decided to poke around under the bridge. From this point on, I decided to make haste. I wasn't a fan of being in the rain either, but it certainly wasn't enough to stop me. I made my way down, crossing through water a few more times to avoid climbing the steep banks, and eventually came to some great looking exposures with many small, tight river bends in the creek that accumulated lots of gravel.By this time, the little cloud burst had cleared, and things were nice and cooled off. I took a video to show him for when I got back, but before that video I accidentally took a picture of the beginning of the exposures: On the walk back, I found a palm sized piece of chunkasaurus, and the mother of all Exogyra, with both parts of the shell still present, I imagine it's Exogyra ponderosa, but I know that there are some other big local Exogyra species as well, so I could be off. Scouting was successful, so I continued walking back in earnest. When I got back to the bridge, I quickly showed Christian the tid-bits I was returning with, and asked if he had any success. "Oh, you have no idea..." he replied. He then held out his hand, and we both just crumpled into another dimension. The hype was unreal. In his hand, and as the product of just thirty minutes, were two Ptychodus mortoni teeth, another echinoid, a piece of Enchodus(?) tooth, and a new shark tooth I couldn't quickly identify.It's shape is suggestive, so I'll be putting it in Fossil ID first, in the event that I'm wrong.They were small, but none of us cared - this was in AUSTIN! Three shark teeth in 30 minutes is absolutely bonkers! Furthermore, Neither of us had ever found a fish tooth, and that top shark tooth looked new for both of us. He was as stunned as I was. This was the same bridge gravel I gave minimal attention to all 6 times I've been here, and we both walked past it or spent time there already, before he really started looking as he sat around waiting for me in sheer boredom. Apparently, all he had done was assign himself to small (as in a few square feet) patch of gravel at a time, giving the smallest rocks the most undivided attention, picking up anything darkly colored. Needless to say, we both had new drive to stick around longer, now using this technique to hunt, but funnily enough (I guess I'm bad luck, lol) we both couldn't find anything else for about 40 minutes. That was until Christian then decided to uncover the next crazy trip maker of the day, a small Ptychodus mortoni still in matrix!! At this point I was reduced to a blubbering fool, and had to explain to Christian the gravity of his find. Now more than ever I had a fire under me to at least pull one shark tooth from this spot today. After another 10 minutes, my hard work was rewarded! ......with one of the tiniest shark teeth I've ever seen Some seconds after taking this picture, I noticed an echinoid just to my right, and plop! There went the tooth. I couldn't find the tiny tooth again, but it was alright, because it's sacrifice made for a sweet consolation prize Some minutes later, while I was standing up, I saw yet another echinoid, but this one was different to the others... and what a great little sea urchin it ended up being. It still had some texture on it, and despite probably being too water rolled to suite the taste of an echinoid aficionado, it was more than enough for me, as this was the first echinoid I've ever found with it's little bumps preserved. (spot the echinoid) My last find here I almost missed - it was an ammonite chunk of a species I didn't recognize. The chunk is incredibly water rolled, but still note worthy because of those distinct suture lines that I'm not used to seeing. So, while we walked away with no bison material, we at least had new perspective on on old spots, and I'm sure this place will produce many more fossils and memories in the future. Entry Actions

I fossil hunted the lower limestone flag member of middle Eagle Ford Formation in Travis County, Texas USA yesterday. I came up with three nice finds. The first is a 130 mm x 75 mm section of a large ~2' diameter ammonite. Two pics included but it is difficult to make out. I think it is an EUOMPHALOCERAS genus, based on GEOLOGICAL SURVEY PROFESSIONAL PAPER 274-C 1955. Any different opinions? The second find is a 15 mm wide Ptychodus Occidentalis per Shawn Hamm's recent email help for me on a couple of 10 mm wide Ptychodus out of 8 total located ~1/2 mile NE from the subject area. Check out last two ptychodus pics in question. He says ridge bifurcation doesn't always occur on P. Occidentalis. Sometimes the ridges extend to the marginal area and curve anteriorly without bifurcation on one or both sides. The third is a shark vertebrate?? The largest I have seen in Travis County at 33 mm diameter. All three were present in the same 20' x 20' area in a 2" thick layer of limey mud rock coated top & bottom with thinner layers of oyster shell hash. Wow! Lots of fun!

After nine months, I finally made it back to the Ellis County creek where I've found so many teeth. This is an Eagle Ford outcrop. The water level was much higher than I expected. It wasn't quite up to the matrix that holds most of the fossils, but high enough to make wading across the creek dicey, plus I didn't get to hunt most of the sand bars. This is the biggest fish vert I've ever found. Most of the fish verts I've found in this creek aren't in very good condition either, but this one is in really nice shape. As usual for this creek, most of the Ptychodus teeth I found were pretty small, but I did find these two nicer ones. These are still in the matrix. Are they verts? If so, from what? I've never found anything like this in the creek before, and today I found two of them. As usual for this creek, I brought home lots of interesting looking matrix to go through. Here are the other teeth I found. As usual, there were more Ptychodus teeth than anything else. I'm sure there will be more from the matrix. I'll add photos after I've gotten through the matrix.