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Hey guys! As a new fossil hunter, I am terrible at keeping up with my trip reports, so instead of struggling to remember the little details, here's a compiled post on how the past three months went. I don't have professional photos of every find, but hopefully what I do have will scratch the itch for anyone interested in my escapades. Oh - I'll be in NJ this Saturday for another hunt with DVPS - any tips for shallow creek hunting would be appreciated! ~ January My first ever attempt at winter hunting. Armed with tips from you generous folks, I went solo! Due to high winds, low temps, and icy shores, my scant finds were all broken or small. Even so, I learned a lot and went home with tiny, worn ecphora. This trip was originally scheduled to be a CHAPTours trip, but Paul wisely cancelled due to the weather. I, however, had gotten myself a hotel room in the area and couldn't get a refund. Therefore, I made the...interesting choice to try hunting in 20-degree weather with 10-15mph winds. I posted in the forum to get some tips on winter hunting, adapted my plans accordingly, and when the date came, headed out. The signs pointed to "go the hell home, Samantha" rather early. When I arrived at Matoaka, the owners were out and I didn't have change with me for my ATM-obtained $20. I hope they used the extra $10 to feed that new pup of theirs! After I came to terms with this, I went down the cliff and started my hunt. Well, attempted to, anyway! The ice made hunting very, very difficult. The waves reminded me of a melting slushie (video!), building up more ice with every wash. I discovered quickly that walking on the ice was a no-go unless I wanted a busted ankle from falling through into the shallow water. Pulling clayfall apart was impossible too - the blocks were frozen solid. Therefore, I stuck to scanning the beach for material. The cold never once really bothered me; I was dressed in chest waders, a polar knee-length coat, 5mm neoprene gloves, and a neck gaiter to protect my face when needed. The wind, however, bit like nothing else! My glasses fogged no matter what I did and what direction I faced, and my nose and ears were all complaints when not covered. @RuMert was a genius to suggest a vacuum-sealed thermos containing hot water, because keeping my core warm was what allowed me to stay on the beach for 6 hours. At the end of the day, the hunt was not at all productive for a tooth-lover like me. I found a broken hemi, a drumfish tooth, and a few other tiny fossils. However, I did walk home with the smallest ecphora I've ever seen, about 90% complete (still needs prepped), and a wealth of knowledge about winter hunting. This was an important lesson. February My first tour with a guide, Paul of CHAPTours and DVPS. Tides were low and the weather cooperated for the most part. While my finds were few, I walked away with my first whale vert! Rescheduled from January, this was my first time going on a guided fossil hunt. I finally got to meet Paul, a fellow member of DVPS and owner/operator of CHAPTours in Maryland. He made the experience smooth for me and the other attendees by having us caravan from beach to beach, with GPS for back-up guidance. At the first beach, the exceptionally low tide exposed sandbars that prevented wave activity, and my rubber boots allowed me to walk several meters out into the crystal clear water without getting wet, which made hunting so very easy. While walking along towards the cliffs, diagonal to the shore, I came upon an old drone that had been in the ocean for a few weeks at least. I pulled this out of the water to be discarded on my way out, and placed it on the shore with my heavier belongings. Then, I returned to where I'd been walking to be sure I hadn't missed anything. A few moments later, I found my first ever whale vertebrae in about a foot of water! Further exploration yielded a broken piece of cetacean bone, as well as a thin piece of rib from a land animal of some sort, as well as a few small hemis, but the highlight of this beach was definitely the vert! Beach two was known as an "unusual" beach, where unexpected finds tend to pop up. Personally, I had no luck here, though I brought home a few interesting shells for friends. Even so, I enjoyed the walk and took a photo of some of the impressions left in iron by shells. The final beach of the day was good ol' Matoaka! Being that we were there thanks to Paul, we were able to park much closer to the beach than usual. The wind picked up though, so the crowd thinned out rather rapidly. I found a couple more tiny teeth before the unexpected cold chased me to my car as well. I thanked Paul for his time and effort, then headed on home. All in all, a great first time with a guide! March The experience with CHAPTours was so good that I signed up again. The weather was better, but the tides were higher as well. I found an unexpected artifact in fresh fall and educated a passersby here and there. A large clay-fresh hemi made the trip for me! This tour was quieter than the last, with a scant four attendees plus Paul leading the way. I enjoyed the peace, and the weather was nice too! While the tides were higher than desired, the water temperature was just nice enough that I was excited to sift with my sore feet in cold water. We began with an unfamiliar beach, one that was best known for large shells. While this wasn't really my speed, I made it my goal to help spot fossilized invertebrates for the shell enthusiasts along with me. It turned out, however, that I had very little spotting to do! We came upon a massive amount of fresh fall, yet undisturbed by the weather or other people. This fall was so fresh that we were trying to avoid falling through the loose dirt and clay! Needless to say, my fellow hunters found many a large shell here. I picked up a smaller, easier to carry shell, and a delightful but small hemi. While the guys continued to fawn over their massive bivalves, I started back towards the cars. Then, I found something even further out of my wheelhouse - a lid to a clay pot! Once home, I contacted archeologist Dr. Alex Glass and provided her with additional photos. She had this to say: Again, I don't typically have much interest in archeology, so this lid will be donated to the archeology lab when I next visit Maryland. I thought the extra information was very cool to read though! Now, back to the hunt! For the second beach, we once again headed to the place where I found my whale vert. This time, the sandbars were submerged and the tide kept us close to the cliffs. There was some older but "new to us" fall here, which we had to navigate, including some fallen trees. I didn't have much luck this time, finding only small teeth, but I enjoyed myself nonetheless! We then hit Matoaka as our final beach. It was busy this time, as the weather was good enough for beachgoers to be out and about. This time, I had my sifter out, and I was prepared to get wet. I spent the majority of the time there sifting away, pulling up small but pristine teeth - some of which I was able to send home with curious folks who had budding interest in what we were doing. (It was this trip that convinced me to start bringing along a dry box of small or broken teeth to give to potential hobbyists, because there's nothing like the excitement in someone's eyes when they realize what you've given them!) Eventually though, I took a break from the constant bending and lifting, and began using my fossil-hunting stick to dig through some fall. This was where I found my best find to date - a large, prisitine hemipristis serra, protected from erosion by the fall it was buried in. You don't find them much bigger in Maryland, from what I've heard! This was a dream find for me, and it sent me over the moon. I found other beautiful teeth on the beach that day, but nothing surpassed my gorgeous bed 17 snaggle. Going home that day, I was exhausted in the best way. The hunt was a delight, the company was good, and the experience was unforgettable.

Remember the creek spot I hit in the summer in July? Went back there yesterday to Creek hunt, willing to brave the very (VERY) cold water to hunt for the shark teeth I knew were plentiful. Surprisingly, I only found a couple of teeth (probably because the water was absolutely freezing, and I wasn't crazy enough to swim in freezer water to get teeth). The best thing I found tooth wise was this decent (but tipless) little Angie: The highlight of this trip, however, is not the teeth, but my very first (and very, VERY big) whale vert: One end And the other end At 2 7/8" long and 2 5/8" wide, it's really heavy (If I wanted to I could probably even use it for weight training, lol). However, a good chunk of it is missing (though the veins where the bone marrow was is pretty cool)... The really cool part, however, is what I saw on this big guy after looking more closely: See the clean scratches? I dunno about you, but they look an awful lot like predation marks to me. If they are, then this definitely one of my coolest finds so far. Confirmation, anyone? Family photo for this trip. Yeah, it's not much, but the specimens weren't terrible either:

Went out for a quick hunt this afternoon. I found a sweet upper anterio-lateral cow, a barracuda tooth which is rare for the beach i was on, and my largest to date shark vert. Also i think i found some sort of munition the round ball beneath whale material it is made of metal and is mushroomed on one side. Not to shabby for a quick walk.

Hello fellow fossil hunters, After one month, sorry for the delay, here it finally is: my trip report of the fossil hunting in Cape Town, South Africa! First off, I just wanna say this: before my trip to SA, I asked here whether it was possible to hunt there. Everyone said that SA had strict laws on fossil hunting, and that I would have no chance there. Obviously I was disappointed, yet also confused, because on Fossiel.NET (Dutch version of TFF), there were two locations with lots of info about them in SA, and they didn't say anything about the law. After that, on Instagram, I met a guy that lived in Cape Town, and his posts were those of fossils he had found there! So I sent him a message asking about the rules, and he said the following: fossil extraction/digging is forbidden, but if the fossils are found in loose sediment, you are allowed to pick them up. Which was great news, because this meant I could hunt at Milnerton! Now, to the report. As we arrived in the parking, we saw the big sandy beach stretching out. As we got onto it, we could barely see 20 meters in front of us. Then the fog cleared up slightly, giving us a better view of the beach. We then met a lady who was also hunting for sharkteeth, and she gave me some tips for searching. As we continued our walk on the beach, after about an hour of having found nothing except for a few modern seashells, we arrived at the lighthouse. We got up close to the lighthouse and noticed some people sitting there, with a towel in front of them. We went over to see what they were selling, and, of course, there were sharkteeth! Extinct giant whites (mako's) and great whites, many complete and in good condition. They also made necklaces out of the teeth that were less well preserved. So we bought 3 sharkteeth from them, and also got a small necklace for free, all that for only 120 ZAR (more or less 8 USD)! They were extremely nice with us, and gave us many more tips for finding fossils, as we had explained that we also love to find them personally. Thanks to their very helpful tips, we soon found some teeth too! And we also found some pieces of bone, very similar to those I find on the Zandmotor, my usual hunting spot in the Netherlands. Finally, towards the end, I even found a big whale vert! All in all it was an amazing day, and the weird weather made it a unique experience.