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Looking for some help to try and id this tooth I found along the St. Marys River in southern Georgia/ Northern Florida yesterday. My initial thought was a proboscidean milk tooth but after reviewing similar specimens from previous posts I believe it could just as well be dugongid@Harry Pristis and @Shellseeker have both posted excellent photos of both, but I just can’t seem to decide. Are there any distinguishing characteristics in the photos I posted that will allow one to say with some degree of certainty which one it is ? The tooth measures 25mm X 15mm. The low ridge shown in the first picture is not a feature I can find in any dugong tooth pictures. Many thanks !

Here is a brief report from one of our latest forays into Calvert County, MD. The well-known stretch of shoreline along the western Chesapeake Bay is loaded with Miocene fossils, with the Calvert, St. Mary's, and Choptank formations progressively exposed along a ~24 mile stretch of beach and cliffs. We found an Airbnb in Lusby, MD which was not too far from Matoaka Lodges, which seemed the best bet since the nearly 2 mile walk to the beaches at Calvert Cliffs State Park is impractical for our family at this time. Covid-19 and Maryland's onerous private land regulations can make it tough if not impossible to access some of the other municipal beaches along the coast. For example, Brownies Beach, Dares Beach, Cove Point, and Flag Pond are all restricted in some way to town or county residents only. Matoaka Lodges however will grant day-pass access for a small fee, and the beach is from my experience very diverse and productive in its fossils. We spent a total of 5 hours there, employing an 1/8" sieve and also simply walking the surf line. The largest tooth pictured here actually washed up at my feet as I was surreptitiously bending over at the same time. Most of the rest were found with the sieve. Most of these are shark or sting ray teeth and a few turtle shells plus some of the smaller items I could not identify. A local told me that porpoise teeth can be found there also. This lot comprises the smallest fossils found; in addition to these (mostly) teeth and shell fragments were found a large and diverse sample of vertebrate fragments, corals, miscellaneous other fossils (snails, mollusks, etc.) which I will post in the follow-up report to this one. Having spent some time at some of the other sites along Calvert Cliffs this summer, I would say based on the diversity, number of fossils, and time spent collecting, that Matoaka is definitely worth the return trip.

The title says it all.... And if you can't find them here, where can you? Thanks, FA

Okay, here's a weird one for any shell people out there. Found this on the Potomac's beach where the cliffs have Eastover, St Mary's and Choptank FM exposures. At first, it was a blob of clay with what looked like a hinge showing at one end. I chalked it up to oyster or mussel. Brough it home, cleaned it up most of the way and said, "What the heck?" The texture is really strange. It's convex where I would expect it to be concave. It's lumpy, but not heavily sculptured. I took it to some people who were more familiar with the spot and/or knew something about vertebrates, in case my mollusk assessment was totally off. No, looks like invertebrate of some kind, they said. I've identified and catalogued over 70- species from the cliffs, pouring over the same references for countless hours. There are a few approximately the right shape, given how broken it is, and have similar parallel growth lines, but the texture and lumps???? And that weird ridge 1/2 of the length from the beak? Multiple shells overlapping? Again I say, "What the heck?"

Hello All, a friend recently recommended this site to me who lives right down in Calvert itself. He recommended it to me if I wanted to learn more about Maryland Fossils. My question to you all is: is this source present-time and accurate? It was published this year, but may contain information from previous years that has now been proven different. Thank you all because I am eager to learn! Site itself:https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327907444_Miocene_bony_fishes_from_the_Calvert_Choptank_St_Marys_and_Eastover_Formations_Chesapeake_Group_Maryland_and_Virginia PDF is available for downloads. Thanks in advance.

Hello all! Hope everyone's years are off to a happy and huntfull start! Well I started the year off spending some Christmas cash on a meglodon tooth. (Having only found fragments myself) any way I was wondering if there is a tie between locations and colors of teeth. I found this beauty at an pass-proof price. It is a beautiful orange/red. At 5 inches almost exactly. The previous owner says it came from the st. Mary's river area of Georgia. (Pretty close to where I was when I got it). I am just curious if this is a common color for other areas or even in the st Mary's area? Thank you all for any input.

Better late than never, here's a report from June 4th. As some of you knew, and now all of you, I'm the trip coordinator for the collecting trips into the St Marys quarry in Bowmanville ON to collect in the ordovician Lindsay/Cobourg formations. There is also some Verulam fm. at the bottom and Whitby fm. at the top of the quarry. We had 20 people show up for the annual spring fossil dig and in keeping with tradition, it was raining. I, and about half the crowd, started on a large pile on level 3. Almost immediately, the first trilobite was found, an enrolled Isotelus. After a quick preliminary look all over the pile, as I made my way back to get my saw to cut out the first roller, I found his older sibling –same orientation but a bit larger. Not a bad start; one hour in and 2 bugs for me. After hearing that not much was being found on level 2 or 4, several of us continued on the same pile and a surprising amount of stuff came out of it that we all missed the first time around. I cut out 3 prone Isotelus for 2 first timers, another ¾ complete one for another rookie and what may be a really nice one for myself, almost entirely buried so fingers crossed. Several others were found and I left a couple that were just a bit too far gone. One collector spent most of his time in the Whitby Shale at the top of the quarry and was rewarded with a nice Pseudogygites trilobite, the only one of this species found. My find of the day however was a beautiful crinoid (Iocrinus subcrassus) sitting on a rock clear as day with about an hour left in our allotted time. How everyone, myself included, missed it up until now was beyond me, but I won’t complain. This makes it 3 straight trips for me bringing home a crinoid, 3 different species as a bonus, after going years without ever seeing a decent one at this site.

Well I managed to lure the wife into another beach excursion. The only stipulation was that I was in charge of cooking barbecue dinner. We packed up the car and drove 90 minutes to our destination with a four month old. My daughter was good for the most part but she had her moments. Here's the trip in a nutshell. Mrs Fossil-Hound with baby and I at the top of the cliffs. The drive was certainly worth it. The beach office had a custom Miocene Shark Tooth display with a lot of large teeth. A box of free shark teeth for travelers! A coveted fern plate from the Pennsylvanian of St. Clair PA. Massive prehistoric whale vertebrae. The office manager said he found this on the shoreline after a storm. Found some beautiful Chesapecten nefrens from the Choptank and St Mary formations. Went to my secret spot and starting seeing Ecphora's poking out of the mud. This one looks complete but was broken on the inside. This large Ecphora was another heart breaker. Found a marble sized Ecphora and began the long trek back towards the cabins when out of the corner of my eye I spotted a few large ribs sticking out of the mud. I worked carefully around the edges and took my time. The result was an Ecphora gardnerae the state fossil of Maryland and one of my favorite fossils. The back side view. This specimen is in dire need of cleaning. That night I began to clean the Ecphora. After a light cleaning, super glue was applied to all of the cracks. Referring to a complete specimen on the right I continued to carefully remove sand and mud from the gastropod. This morning more glue was applied along with some more light cleaning. Still a lot of cleaning to do. Notice the crack on the left side. I applied a lot of super glue to this snail. Made leaps and strides in cleaning it tonight. Here it is after the initial phase of cleaning. More cleaning and possibly another coat of superglue to some small cracks will be underway tomorrow.