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Back in January I decided to check out the Ammonite Beach at Lake Texoma for the first time. The site is well known for its giant Duck Creek ammonites that can be found scattered all over the shoreline. The weather was surprisingly not that bad despite it being the winter. The water level was quite low and there was plenty of good ground to search along. During my time there, I had some success in finding my own ammonites which gave me an excuse to finally put my rock hammer to use. I stumbled upon some echinoids, but none of them were in all that great of condition, so I might need to head back again in the future to solve that issue. Lastly, there were some interesting fossil finds of stuff I didn't expect to be there (more on this later). A lot of the ammonites that come out of Texoma are encased in a decent amount of rock/mud. I have very little experience in any sort of prep work, so cleaning them up was my chance to try something new. My tools were a bit primitive (hammer and kitchen ice pick which got destroyed), but I managed to clean up an ammonite without breaking it for the first time. I didn't think to take a before pic, but the whole face was covered in hard matrix much like on the reverse side. Unfortunately, I made a lot of white scratch marks on it, but I'm mostly just relieved that it came out in one piece. Apologies if this hurts the eyes of any more experienced ammonite preppers reading this . It was a long process and I decided against cleaning up both sides as that seemed too risky of a prospect. I'm fairly certain it is one of those Mortoniceras given the pointy tubercles covering it. Once I finished that, I watched a Lake Texoma video made by "The Fossil Fiend" on YouTube. Even though this was a few weeks after my trip, my exact ammonite showed up on his video! I couldn't believe my eyes when he was pointing right at it as shown in the screen grab above. It's a perfect match to my second pic. What a funny coincidence! My brother and I hauled up a much larger ammonite as well. I'm going to try harder to not scratch this one. I managed to get some work done before winter break ended, but there's still a long way to go. This is gonna be a fun summer project. Beyond ammonites, I came across a plethora of smaller finds that I view to be just as interesting. Below is an overview of the coolest ones: 'A' and 'B' appear to be Leptostyrax macrorhiza? and Cretolamna appendiculta? respectively. I heard that sharks teeth were rarely found at Texoma so coming out with two of them in a single hunt was really exciting. Additionally, I found a piece of what I think is some sort of Cretaceous fish tooth (C). It's black and fairly reflective. A cross section of the tooth is like a football in shape. In other words, there are two edges that run opposite of one another from top to bottom while the rest is rounded. I tried to capture a photo of this, but had some difficulty. Here are some closeups: Something very unexpected was the large amount of pyritized microfossils to be found all over the shoreline, interspersed with the ammonites and echinoids. I had never heard of pyritized microfossils being at Texoma, so I was a bit confused as to why they were there and in such great numbers. It really did feel like I was back in the Waco Pit. I found pyritized ammonites, bivalves, and gastropods. I'm curious if anyone knows what formation they're from. I am under the impression that the whole area is Duck Creek formation, so is that simply what happens to smaller shelled fauna in that layer? The pyritized ammonite 'E' I have below somewhat resembles Mortoniceras, but I'm not sure if they come from vastly different points in time. 'F' reminds of me of a miniature Oxytropidoceras. 'D' is a pyritized heteromorph ammonite. I don't think heteromorph ammonites are known to come out of the Duck Creek, at least in larger form, which makes me think these pyrite fossils are from a different period. Really curious to hear what you guys think of all this! I covered them in wax to prevent degradation. That made it a little harder to pick out details, especially through a camera unfortunately. Here's some closeups: The last handful of fossils are just a sample of the fish verts and tiny oysters I came across: All in all, it was a fun trip - very different from the other sites I have been to. After learning of the huge presence of pyritized microfossils there, I get the impression that it's like having two sites in one; the Waco Pit and the more traditional Texoma famous for its beautiful ammonites/echinoids. Paired with its proximity to Post Oak Creek, I will definitely being taking more drives up there in the future when I'm back in DFW. As usual, let me know if you would like any additional close ups. Thanks for reading!

Would love some easy to get too places to take my daughter around the Sherman area.

Hey everyone! I thought I'd share a few of my finds from the past couple months and get yall's opinions. Over winter break, I went back home to North Texas and did some searching around Ammonite Beach at Texoma and the NSR with my family. At Texoma I had a nice time hammering out a few ammonites, collecting teeth, and surprisingly finding lots of smaller, pyritized ammonites that I did not expect to be there. The NSR was a bit slower, but I at least got a nice Squalicorax as shown in the pics below. Since school has started, I've been down in Austin. I've been finding the usual stuff, but the pyritized disk I've attached is new to me. I'd love to hear what you guys think! Austin Finds: Pictured above is the pyritized disk and a pyritized clam found in a gravel bar next to what I believe to be an Ozan exposure. The area has a decent amount of the pyritized clams and other marine fossils that I assume are cretaceous in age given the local geology. My initial reaction was that it could be a vertebrae, but the bulging center and distorted shape throws me off. It has very apparent concentric rings on both its faces. In pics 1 and 3, you can see that underneath that outside layer there is a lot of pyrite. Parts of the edges are also pyritized while other sections have an iron concretion look to them. The face shown on pic 2 resembles and feels like petrified wood. I suppose this could be a pyrite sun, but I'm not seeing anything too similar to what I have on google images. Super interested in what you guys have to say! Texoma Tooth (left) and NSR Tooth (right) Left (Leptostyrax macrorhiza?): Pretty tooth found by my little brother at Texoma in the Duck Creek Formation. Did some quick googling and found that Leptostyrax macrorhiza was in that formation and saw some pictures that were similar to what I have. Right (Squalicorax): Had a bit of a slow day at the NSR, but managed to at least find this at the end of my cold, muddy adventure there. It's preserved very nicely. Looks like Squalicorax to me. Would love to know the species. If you guys would like any additional closeup pics feel free to let me know! I might share some of my other finds later on, but I don't want to inundate the forum with my rocks lol. Thanks for reading.

Alright folks, just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of our fateful trip... but if your in a TLDR mood.... Fossils get real heavy, real fast, and we found a lot. I had a rare full weekend off work, so my son and I went back to hunt the lake Texoma shoreline for a 2 day exploration. We started off in the same beach we found last time (that I dubbed "Echinoid Beach"), but construction had changed everything and made it much harder to hunt. The worst part is that last time we left a small pile when moving everything back to the truck. I knew where it was, but when we arrived, I realized that its buried and probably gone forever. But we made the best of it and hunted what we could. We wound up finding a lot more echinoids and one huge partial mortoniceras ammonite, plus it has echinoids in the matrix with it, so I couldnt hack that off in the field to save weight (it was HEAVY). Oh, that little one on the bottom left... I have hopes its a nautilus! Will have to prep it out to see what all is there. We had originally planned to camp out overnight, but a strong north front had pushed in overnight before, so it was 20 mph winds and lows in the 20s. So, instead we went into the town of Durant and got a hotel room. The next morning the temps were again in the 20s, frost covering the truck, but at least the winds were mild (but not absent) so we decided to check out "ammonite beach" close to the spillway. I have seen a lot of reports and pics from there, so I had an idea of the details, but this was our first trip there. Let me just say.... be careful what you wish for! I had seen pics of giant ammonites. I wanted to find a giant, complete ammonite. I wasnt mentally prepared to recover a giant, complete ammonite! We started out hunt right at the boat ramp, following the shoreline all the way around. Actually found several small partials right away, so I had high hopes. We continued on. Lots of large gryphaea in areas, and isolated areas with lot of ammonite molds and partials, so we spent a lot of time examining everything, but not finding much beyond the oysters. Finally, (I think it was over an hour later) we got to the holy shrine of the ammonite. The sights were just as the legends fortold. Ammos everywhere! Molds and partials every step you took. Some of the partials were massive as well. We looked carefully, hoping for something missed by the throngs of previous searchers, with little luck. Mr. George and his sister had passed us waaaaay back towards the start, and they were ahead in the next cove, and working on something too. They obviously knew more than us, so me made out way that direction. We did find a couple of very nice partials (halves) from the cliffside as we went, so we stashed those and moved one. Then we got to the blocks. That is where George was hammering away to chisel a monster free of the rock. Wonderful fellow, and it turns out I follow him on Youtube (North Texas Fossil Dude). He showed us what and where and how, and we moved down the beach hunting for our own monster, and we found one. Buried in stone, only the top showing. Was it complete? Could we get it out? was it excessively buried under the big caprock above? We decided to give it a go. We hammered, and hammered, and hammered on the chisels. Our arms ached but we were making progress. We kept working until finally we could see a separation develop under the bottom edge. Carefully we pried and lifted and it came free! YAY!!!! We had out ammonite! But now we had to get it back to the truck. It a LOOOOONG walk with 75??? pounds of fossils each (I had all the partials and my son had the big boy) plus hammers, chisels, picks, camera, etc. My rough measurement looks like about 1-1/2 miles long the shoreline. It felt like about 3. George and his sister were kind enough to leave us a 3rd ammonite and a half dozen tiny echinoids they recovered from their spot. The ammo wasnt tiny either! It measures 11 1/2" across! We had originally planned to go creek scouting for our next trip, but we were absolutely spent getting everything back. I helped the local economy by having a great lunch in Dennison at burger shack a block off the highway called "Best Burger Barn". If you go, get the pretzel and cheese appetizer. Seriously the best pretzel I have every had.

Fossil Friday! Today's FF video post is from Lake Texoma. We made our first ever trip to lake Texoma to search the duck creek formation for ammonites. After much research and planning, we arrived to find we could not access the locations we wanted, so we ended up scouting around. It turned out well and we found some great fossils including ammonites, oysters, clams and echinoids.

Yesterday, my son and I finally made a day-trip to Lake Texoma for some fossil hunting. We've been wanting to make this trip for while, but it can be difficult between both our jobs and weather, and lake levels. I planned for this trip by searching the google maps for good looking locations with a nearby shore access. Unfortunately, one spot turned into a private drive, and the other was closed off by the Corps of Engineers for some unknown reason. We didnt want to hit the same spot that everyone else goes to so we began just driving and looking. The first place we stopped was a gravel bar in creek. When I drove over the bridge and saw the bar, I immediately made a u-turn. I'm sure that this has been searched, but it didnt disappoint. There were a lot of Gryphaea in the marl walls as well as gravel. We found a couple large segments of ammonites and eventually found a small, complete ammonite, about 2 inches in diameter. Then we drove around the lake roads until we found a likely looking shoreline, which fortunately was only a short walk to the exposure. Hunting started slow, and we could see a couple piles of rejects left by other hunters. But we stayed optimistic and kept searching in depth, and then the finds started to show up. There were huge Gryphaea everywhere, many were 1-1/2" long. I eventually got tired of picking them up. There were huge oysters, but they were mostly broken. I did find a smaller one, about 4 inches across. Then there were many partial ammonites and finally several complete ones. Our favorite finds were the echinoids! I found the first one, and then my son found 3 more, all close together. Some of the ammonites are still imbedded in matrix, and I'm hopeful they will prep out cleanly. One of the small partials I have started trying to prep is having problems. Some of it come out clean, but some spot dont seem to have any separation plane between matrix and fossil (which is a steinkern anyway).

Found this little guy on texoma appears to have bacteria like little bugs throughout the stone

Too bad we can't haul this one out. 200 lb beast. Lake Texoma is on Duck Creek formation.

Too bad we can't haul this out. 200 lb beast.

Fossils found out of Shawnee creek in texoma

Greetings all, My wife and I were heading back to Altus AFB (where I am currently training), after a weekend away in Dallas. We decided to make a brief detour to Lake Texoma, and the famous "Ammonite Beach." Parking by the dam, we followed the southern coast west for a little over half a mile. We passed a few (what I believe were) fossilized shrimp borrows and a couple of oyster shells. After turning the corner around one of the points, it was quite clear that we had arrived! The location absolutely lived up to its reputation, and we quickly faced a paradox of choice, in terms of which ones to bring back with us. Unfortunately we were only able to spend an hour searching, as we didn't want to contend with the storm system that recently hit the central part of the country during our drive home. All-in-all, it was a very productive trip, considering how briefly we were there. We found a few fragments, and a couple of relatively complete specimens. For one of those, we were able to extract both the fossil and the negative, which is always fun to show to people. I'm hoping that the central portion of the ammonite is present on the far right specimen, but don't want to touch it until I build my fossil prep station (e.g. micro sand blaster, air scribe, etc) after I move up to WA, later this spring. We will definitely be going back once more, prior to departing Oklahoma, to search for that "statement piece" for our collection. That being said, I've also heard that various echinoids can be found in the vicinity as well. I didn't see any, but I honestly didn't spend too much time searching closely for them. If anyone has any recommended sites for echinoids at or near Lake Texoma for a subsequent trip, I would love to hear about it. Cheers! -Nick

Need help identifying species of this Lake Texoma Ammonite. Duck Creek Formation. Does anyone know of a good reference for identifying Texas Ammonites?

Found at buncome creek lake texoma looks like turtle but I'm not sure cretaceous period

I have a dozen of these guys and want to clean them right now I'm using water and a toothbrush

I found these close to the dam at Lake Texoma this past weekend. Need help with the type of ammonites they are, as I am a novice. The lake is down right now and so hunting is good. The first two pics are of the same specimen. The last is from another.

Also found this and need help to ID or say geologic....... Thanks in advance for any help.