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From the Calvert formation in VA. The shape of this specimen suggests cetacean tooth, but the hollow tip and keratinous feel make me doubt it.

Serrations are almost completely worn but faintly visible on the left side. The right side is also a bit damaged, so correct me if this is not a meg. If it is, is it a posterior with a skinny crown or some sort of symphyseal? Length is 1.27 cm.

Recent trips. Weather has been warm, so the water is still warm. Hitting my usual spots, doing well on cowshark teeth (happy! thought the 4th was a broken one but the two pieces don't match up) and finally found a decent, nice (almost 2") mako (been a while). Bunch of non-descript gray shark teeth, skate teeth; fewer angel shark and drum teeth than usual. Peculiar tiger shark(?) tooth; not flat like usual, big almost L-shaped root with a bump/boss at middle (not as pronounced as those bumps/bosses om big sand tiger teeth.

The mammalian tooth has two worn cusps missing points. The small tooth is serrated, the small blade sets up from a thick root on the labial (?) side; when set on a flat surface to scan, the blade sticks in the air like an angel tooth. The lingual(?) side of the blade has a vertical ridge down the center (also like angel shark tooth, but the tooth while small is much bigger than my biggest angel shark tooth. pretty little tooth. Tried placing on edge of a small vertebral "cookie" but didn't scan well. Not sure the two bones have enough left to identify; remind me of whale ear bones but much smaller and thinner. Interesting shapes, both sides.

can anyone please help me identify this. I found this today at green mill run GMR in Greenville Nc.

Just had a nightmare time getting my scanner going. This is some of my finds from my last three trips (actually from two and a half-- tripped over a root and lost some colorful teeth). Mostly the usual sand tiger teeth (some colorful), but a few oddities; a skate dentacle, a pellet with 'mud shrimp' coprolites, a pathological tooth, a dolphin tooth(?), a sandtiger parasymphysial, some cow shark (all partials), a few angel shark and drum teeth, small verts, a tiger shark with a very flat crown, an almost complete ecphora, for a change, and a small piece of jaw with four tooth sockets. I'll try to get some scans of the more interesting stuff later (can't fight the scanner anymore today!)

This seems to be a Sullivanichthys mccloskeyi fish jaw. Muddy Creek VA. Nanjemoy Formation, Eocene. Can I get confirmation?

Have made several trips, lots of teeth (mostly small and broken), but have done better than usual on cow shark. Nothing particularly dramatic. A few interesting things will post ater for ID. Generally mostly sand tiger per usual (and a few at top left not clear what they are to me). Not as many with cusps, some sites were gravel and shell bit holes; a long rough history of washing in the sand perhaps. Highlights (second) some verts, bunch of angel shark teeth, lots of drum teeth, a few sand tiger parasymphysials, one pretty just over an inch mako, and three cow sharks (been a good year so far for those; mostly I find broken). Last photo is of the smaller stuff. .

Lots of competition in the summer, and while it's good to see kids out hunting, they have destroyed a few of my favorite spots, and my shark teeth numbers have dropped. But they seem oblivious to everything but shark teeth. Had an interesting trip lately, some teeth the kids missed, but mostly other stuff. Numbers down, but diversity up! (Size is always an issue there). . Top left: cowshark teeth pieces and one with a huge oblique root (but only one spike?) top, center and right, skate denticles, two verts, some teeth and bryozoans(?) more teeth, on right, three angel shark, two sandtiger parasymphyseals(?) teeth, a weird "three headed" thing? (have others from earlier), just below that a small hard-to-photograph 3D object more, some colorful, teeth, in center a broken Tilly bone, showing concentric calcium deposition rings, to the right a puffer plate, bonito nose and tiny ecphora, @Shellseeker two unbroken tilly bones (more like the two types I usually find), tiny piece of coral four drum teeth, two tiny mako, and a perfect red 1" mako (made the trip special, hadn't see one in a while)

On a recent fossil outing, I visited a large shell bed in a creek near Williamsburg, VA that I read to be of the Late Miocene Cobham Bay Member, Eastover Formation. Many of the fossils we found seemed to confirm that this site is Miocene age. We found Chesapecten middlesexensis, Isognomon sp., Glycymeris sp., Ostrea compressirostra, Lirophora sp. However, we also found these three Turritella shell fragments. They measure about 2-3cm in length. I thought these shells looked very similar to the Turritella alticostata posted by @sixgill pete from the Yorktown Fm of NC or the Turritella alumensis posted by @MikeR from the Jackson Bluff Formation of FL. The issue though is that both of these species are from the Pliocene. Turritella plebia is supposedly the species found in the Miocene Eastover Formation, but these shells don't look to be T. plebia. I would normally say that these are probably loose finds from the Yorktown Formation that got mixed in with the other Eastover Formation fossils, but these fossils were found in situ and in layers below those that I found the Isognomon sp. shells. If these were Pliocene aged, I would normally expect that they would be located above the Miocene Isognomon shells. I was wondering if someone might be able to solve my confusion. Perhaps these shells are of a third Turritella species that I am not aware of or perhaps the species I referenced above were not limited to the Pliocene. Alternatively this site could not be of the Miocene Eastover Formation and I am just very confused. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you!

This past weekend I had the chance to collect at a number of exposures along the James River in Virginia, including at several exposures of the Late Miocene Eastover Formation (Cobham Bay Member). At one of the exposures I found these two fossils. I was hoping to get some assistance identifying what they might be. Any help is greatly appreciated. @WhodamanHD@sharkdoctor@Gizmo@HoppeHunting I am fairly confident this is a shark vertebra. The only confusing piece is the hole in the middle and the slits in that hole that run to the slits on the outside of the vertebra. Someone told me that it could be tuna, but it does not have the wings to it that would indicate fish. It is also a rather tall vertebra, measuring 3/4" in height. At the same site I found a large bone eroding out of the cliff. Unfortunately it was already heavily eroded and broke into a million shards. I picked up a few pieces and was excited to find scavenging marks on them. It is the first piece of bone that I have found with bite marks. My initial guess is that it is some type of whale bone, but I was confused by the fact that the bone was hollow on the inside and thus the fragment of the bone incredibly thin. Is it a piece of a jaw bone?

Some oddities while metal detecting can anyone help me ID this its like nothing else Ive ever seen before thanks!!!

It has been a bit since I have done a post. It has been over a year since I have been out hunting. I am days away for things to open up for me.... finally. I am ready to just live in a creek and look for fossils for weeks. I have been lucky to pass the time over the year looking through matrix from different locations. I was very fortunate and extemely thankful to receive some matrix from @sharkdoctor. These two squalus teeth are from matrix in Calvert Formation in central Virginia. Each of them are just a tad over 1mm. Found this one last week Just found this one tonight

I had the opportunity in January and February to visit a couple of Miocene and Pliocene deposits in Maryland and Virginia that were full of fossil shells. I ended up picking up a couple of extras in hopes of trading them to help expand another member’s fossil collection and to expand my own collection. I primarily collect plants and sea life but am always looking to add something new to my collection, so if you’re interested, let me know what you have in mind and let’s work out a deal. I can also throw in some other stuff from my trips if you’d like. I would be willing to trade these individually or as a group. Chesapecten nefrens with barnacles Chesapecten middlesexensis with both valves, measures 18cm wide Chesapecten middlesexensis, measures 16cm wide Chesapecten middlesexensis with barnacles Chesapecten jeffersonius, including the right one with barnacle scars

Last month my girlfriend and I took a trip to her parents' vacation house in North Carolina and on the drive down and the drive back we visited the Yorktown Battlefield and made a couple of fossil collecting stops in the Williamsburg area. These sites exposed the Late Miocene Eastover Formation (Cobham Bay Member) and Early Pliocene Yorktown Formation (Sunken Meadow Member). While we enjoyed weather in the low 50s during our stops on the drive down, we had to combat temperatures in the 30s and snow and frozen ground during our stops on the drive back. Though she did join me for some of it, to say the least my girlfriend spent most of the time on the drive back in the car while I collected in the field. I cannot thank @MikeR enough for his patience and assistance in identifying some of my finds. My favorite site we visited was actually our very first stop. We ended up visiting this site again on our drive back, so the photos are of our combined finds over both trips. The site is a shell bed full of Chesapecten middlesexensis and other cool shells dating to the Late Miocene. The fossils are preserved in life position so shells are simply stacked on each other, making this site just rich with fossil shells. On our walk back to our car we ended up speaking with a local property owner who said that he too has a shell bed on his property and has even found a whale vertebra there. Unfortunately no whale bones were found during our visits to this site. We were fortunate to find quite a few unbroken Chesapecten middlesexensis, including eight that have both valves I had a lot of fun searching for the largest and the smallest C. middlesexensis that I could find. Although I found one smaller, the smallest one that I was able to safely bring home is this one that is about 1.3 cm wide While the largest one that I found - and now proudly displayed in my house - is about 22cm wide! It is complete with both valves and has some barnacle pieces and a little bit of coral on the other side Here is a photo of the excavation of this behemoth scallop Some of my other favorite Chesapecten middlesexensis include these two shells covered with coral (Septastrea marylandica). The first one is my second largest find, measuring 20cm wide And this smaller one with barnacles (Balanus concavus) on it Some of the colors on the shells are amazing, including this one that I call blue jean blue Another highlight find was this partial Ecphora kochi covered with barnacles, coral, bryozoan and even a tiny tube worm Here are some of my other finds: Astarte cobhamensis Costaglycymeris mixoni (including one with both valves) Cyclocardia vautrotorum Dallarca carolinensis Dosinia blountana Isognomon (Hippochaeta) sp. Lirophora vredenburgi Mansfieldostrea geraldjohnsoni (with both valves) Marvacrassatella urbannaensis (with both valves) Fragment of C. middlesexensis with Septastrea marylandica and Balanus concavus Serpulorbis cf. granifera Spisula bowlerensis Turritella subvariabilis After cleaning my finds I decided to screen the excess material and search it for tiny gastropods and bivalves. Some of my effort is in the fossils above, but here are two of my smaller finds Epitonium humphreysii Parvilucina crenulata After a couple of hours driving around the Yorktown Battlefield National Historic Park, we made our second and last stop of the day - York River near the mouth of Indian Field Creek. This site is a well-known exposure of the Yorktown Formation, Sunken Meadow Member. When we arrived, I was astonished by the amount of shells just lying on the beach. Unfortunately almost all of the fossils on the beach were heavily water worn, so I decided to only keep a couple of things. A shark tooth of a requiem shark (Carcharinus sp.) A broken and worn Ecphora gardnerae Three large coral chunks (Septastrea marylandica) Some bryozoan (Tretocycloecia sp.) We ended up spending about two weeks in North Carolina, and while we worked remotely from the house, it was a nice change of scenery. Our first stop on the drive back was a different exposure of the Eastover Formation, Cobham Bay Member. While we found some of the same fossils at this site, the micro fossils were much more abundant. I had a lot of fun screening and picking through the excess material from cleaning my finds. Here are some of our finds from this stop: Chesapecten middlesexensis. By comparison to the ones above, the largest one we decided to keep from this site is only 3.3cm wide The number of isolated barnacles (Balanus concavus), including some barnacles on barnacles, was a real treat

A few weeks ago my girlfriend and I decided to take advantage of the unusually warm December weather in Northern Virginia to visit the historic Stratford Hall and make a couple quick stops at the Miocene deposits in Westmoreland State Park and Stratford Hall and the Paleocene deposits in Purse State Park. To say the least, this trip was planned a bit on a whim. I was thoroughly unprepared - lacking boots or waders and having to buy a cheap plastic colander at Target to do some sifting. Luckily the Potomac River was cold, but not that cold, so I was able to wade out in my bare feet up to about my knees. This was also my first time collecting along the Potomac and I totally messed up the tide tables. By the time we made it to Purse State Park, it was high tide. There is little to no beach exposed at Purse at high tide, so my hope to do some surface collecting for larger shark teeth went totally out the window. Lesson learned! I ultimately brought home two gallons of gravel to sort through. Almost all of my finds are from that micro matrix. As expected there were a lot of broken shark teeth and ray teeth. I only included here the ones that I decided to keep. I tried very hard to identify these small teeth from Purse. I am sure @MarcoSr and others who know these sites far better than me will tell me that I got everything wrong. Here is a photo my girlfriend took of me wading out in the Potomac at Westmoreland State Park. You can see that my legs had grown red and numb from the cold water Our finds from Westmoreland State Park. We collected here for only about 45 minutes. We found three requiem shark teeth (Carcharhinus egertoni), a lemon shark tooth (Negaprion eurybathrodono), a tiger-like shark tooth (Physogaleus contortus), a sharpnose shark tooth (Rhizoprionodon fischeuri), and several pieces of whale bone. After spending several hours at the museum and plantation house at Stratford Hall, we made our way to the Fossil Beach at Stratford Hall. To my surprise we were the only ones there. Here are our finds after about 40 minutes of collecting. We found two snaggletooth shark teeth (Hemipristis serra), a requiem shark tooth (Carcharhinus egertoni), an eagle ray medial tooth (Myliobatis sp.), and several pieces of whale bone. Our finds at Purse State Park were much more varied, including both shark teeth and invertebrates. Although shark teeth and the occasional crocodile tooth are the real highlights of the Aquia Formation, I was excited to find these four nearly complete Ostrea alepidota oysters with both valves. An interesting Pitar pyga steinkern Some Turritella sp. steinkern pieces Paralbula marylandica Scomberomorus sp. An unknown bone fragment, probably bony fish Cow-Nose Ray Medial Teeth (Rhinoptera sp.) Eagle Ray Medial Teeth (Myliobatis sp.) Eagle Ray Lateral Teeth (Myliobatis sp.) Angel Shark (Squatina prima) Tope Shark (Galeorhinus sp.)

Hi i'm a Returning member my name is Michael. I'm in Richmond, Virginia, and do a lot with stuff with Virginia Museum of Natural History theses day. I help them out a lot - i work mostly with Triassic material.

For the Columbus Day weekend my girlfriend planned a three-day trip down to Southwestern Virginia as a birthday present to me. The plan was to do a little sightseeing, go on some hikes, enjoy the fall foliage, and, most importantly, collect some fossils. Unfortunately Hurricane Delta had other plans for us. As the weekend approached it looked like the entire weekend would be soaked with rain. We tried to change our reservations, but we were not allowed to postpone. Not knowing what to expect for the weekend, we made our trip. Sunday was to be my big day of fossil collecting. It was also the day that Hurricane Delta was expected to pass through Southwestern Virginia... Lucky for me, luck turned out to be on my side (at least in part). I had an all-day fossil trip planned, but due to the weather, I had to cut the trip in half. After a later start to the day than I had hoped for, we headed towards two sites that I had identified for the day. Both were exposures of the Middle Ordovician Benbolt Formation. A few showers on the drive but for the most part the rain held off while we collected. Our first stop was a large, open road cut. The limestone there is just covered with brachiopods, trilobite pieces and bryozoa I thought the number and orientation of all of the bryozoa in this hash plate were very cool There were a lot of bryozoa at this site. Some small and some large, like these pieces of Mesotrypa sp. and Batostoma sevieri My favorite bryozoan found here though was Ceramoporella sp. This piece of Corynotrypa inflata comes in a close second. This bryozoan is encrusting and was often found on the inside of loose valves of Strophomena sp. I am still trying to identify all of the brachiopods. I believe the left and bottom center ones in the second photo are Rafinesquina champlainensis while the right most one is Multicostella platys Another really interesting fossil was this undetermined sponge One of the unfortunate things about this site is that because it is so exposed, the fossils there weather very quickly. This is most apparent on all of the trilobite pieces. Here are two cephalons and a pygidium of Illaenus fieldi I think this is a right cheek and eye of Eoharpes sp. Here is an additional mystery trilobite piece

I have been out a bit in August and September, not finding much (pottery shards the kids miss). Shark teeth are few and far between, but now that summer is over, less competition (i hope). Here is a photo of my bigger teeth (makos and a few odd ones), some would be nice but busted up. The kids don't care about the shrimp coprolite burrows, so I have a bunch of those (will get them together and post separately). Getting lots of angel shark and drum "teeth", lots of sand tiger shark (but most missing cusps), but not a lot of novel/ interesting stuff. Posted the mammalian tooth in the ID section, started to throw away until I realized it had two little "teeth". Found a seal tooth several years ago, hoping this might be a weird one. Lots of rain from TS Sally, and wind supposedly the next few days, hope some new stuff appears.

Found some teeth lately. Shown are a cow shark tooth (of course missing the root!), some type of small jaw with teeth(?) and what I'm most interested in, a root with two tiny silver white barbs. Maybe there was more to it at one time but this is all I ended up with. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

Last week me and some friends went to a couple of localities in Virginia! It was a nice change from collecting in the heat. Came back with boxes of Ordovician-age fossils on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday then went to good 'ol Purse for shark teeth the rest of the week and weekend. Came back with quite a few well-preserved brachiopods, graptolites, and a few fragments of trilobites. So many ray plates and a few shark teeth from Purse. I'm backlogged for weeks! Too tired to bother writing properly.

Too cold and rainy to fish (no speckled trout yet for me, just out of season rockfish, huge cow nosed rays, and stiffback perch). So went tooth hunting. Unfortunately the kids(?) had dug a giant hole in one of my favored spots, so I ended up hunting one of the kids' favored spots. A hard grayish blue clay area which is usually too hard and unproductive for me, but when walking past I saw a black shiny object glinting in the sun; looking closer I noticed a fine serrated edge and digging around it soon discovered just a shard from a megalodon (which I had never noticed in the creek before). Very disappointed of course that it wasn't whole, but the clay was softer than usual with all the rain so I was able to dig into the bank and did pretty well. Several hemi teetch and pieces (lots of busted stuff here) plus a few makos and lots of teeth that are not the usual sand tiger spikes. Not sure what they all are, but usually these are in the minority, today they were the main things I was finding. Generally these teeth were fewer than what i find in the sand and gravel, but bigger and heavier. The kids must have found some nice stuff here. A layer of giant tree oysters below and mostly scallops (pectans) above, some in better shape than the teeth. Having some issues with my scanner, but will post some of my more "normal" finds from last week as well if I can get the scanner going.

Back to the creek, stopped by the spot the kiddies had been working. Although nothing last time, gave it a try. Breezy, but not the sticky hot weather we should have, and the birds and frogs were alive (was almost over-run by a turkey who exploded into the air over top of me.) Almost immediately I found a big mako. Excepting a small chip near the root, it was in great condition (though hard to scan?) About 6 cm, almost 2 1/2 inches along the longest side. Not much of a yield, but I dont find many "big" teeth, so was happy. Also found several non-serrated heavy small triangular teeth, some of which are for sure mako teeth. Most missing roots, per usual: