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Hi All, I could use some help identifying what looks to be a tooth? I found it on Wrightsville Beach, NC. Is it a tooth? If so, what kind? Porpoise? Whale? I have been searching with no luck so I thought I would ask the kind people on this forum. Thanks, J

I have a dozen teeth from Aurora, North Carolina that I believe to be from the toothed whale Squalodon. Instead of uploading photos of that many, I'm uploading a few that are representative of the dozen and detailed photographs of three of these. For context, the first tooth here is 2.5" long and 1" wide at its thickest.

I have here a tooth from Lee Creek, Aurora, North Carolina. I believe it to be Kentriodon. It's a hair above 1". Does this seem accurate? If so, could it potentially be narrowed down further yet? Thank you, Bellamy

I have here a 3" piece of bone, found in Calvert Cliffs, Maryland. I'm not well-versed enough with these to narrow it down further from marine mammal, and am hoping that these photographs contain some identifying features that may be useful to one more familiar with these. Can it be narrowed down any further?

Hello. I'm working on organizing my collection and was wondering if anyone could help me with some identifications. Thanks for any help. I don't have any info on this one. I think it is a Mucrospirifer brachiopod. Can someone confirm this? Help with the species name would be appreciated. Thanks. These are crinoid stems. I don't have any further information. Does anyone know the species, where they came from, or the approximate age? Thanks. I think this is a dolphin tooth. It was found on the Ernst Ranch in Bakersfield, California. Can anyone help me identify it further? Thanks. Last, here are some fossils I collected when I was young. They were found near Thermopolis, Wyoming. They were found on one of the paleontology digs that the local museum hosts. I think they are orthoconic nautiloids, but I am not sure. 6 year old me was not taking good notes. Thanks for any ID help.

Hey all, I wrote up some more on our recent paper on the giant dolphin Ankylorhiza (formerly Genus Y) from the Oligocene of South Carolina - this is a bit more interesting as it covers the anatomy, adaptations, feeding ecology, and evolutionary implications of the discovery. Hope you can give it a read! https://coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2020/08/ankylorhiza-tiedemani-giant-dolphin_9.html

Hey all, Since COVID began and I've had more free time I've been getting back to blogging, and now I'm regretting taking such a hiatus since I started here in Charleston. I've written the first of a 2 or 3 part series of semi-technical blog articles that most here should understand and appreciate on our new study on the giant dolphin Ankylorhiza tiedemani (formerly known as Genus Y). The first post is about the background to our paper, and the second one will be a bit more on the anatomy, feeding behavior, locomotion, and evolutionary implications of Ankylorhiza. Take a read here: https://coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2020/08/ankylorhiza-tiedemani-giant-dolphin.html

Found August 1st in Calvert Cliffs State Park in Maryland. Found digging around in deposits about 4 feet into the water. Area is known for Miocene fossils... Sharks teeth, vertebrae, whale bone, etc. It is definitely stone not some kind of metal.

While working in James City NC today I ran across someone else's find sitting on a bulkhead. It appears to be modern but it was still something to see completely intact.

I celebrated my birthday recently with three days of shark tooth hunting along Maryland's Calvert Cliffs (Miocene exposures) and had a blast, despite the hot and muggy weather. I still haven’t found that elusive Meg, but I added some great new finds to my growing (since January) collection! Day 1: Matoaka For the first day, I went to Matoaka. Low tide was in the early morning and I wanted to beat both the heat (as much as possible) and crowds, so I got up bright and early, arriving just after sunrise. I’m pretty sure I was the first one on the beach as I didn’t see any footprints in the sand and didn’t see anyone else until I doubled back later in the day. I didn’t find any particularly large teeth but I did find several firsts: my first “cookie” (cetacean epiphysis); first barracuda tooth; first thresher shark (Alopias sp.) tooth, I think; and first Miocene croc tooth (a bit worse for wear). I also found a root worn Carchardon hastalis (above on the far right) and a few dozen other teeth (Hemipristis serra, Physogaleus contortus, Galeocerdo aduncus, Carcharhinus sp., and Negaprion eurybathrodono) in various conditions, shown below.

Hello all! Sorry for the not-so-great photos here. My phone camera is... kind of a fossil. I found this mystery fossil on the beach in North Carolina, USA, somewhere near Emerald Isle if I'm recalling correctly. My best guess is that it's a periotic bone from a dolphin, porpoise, or something of the like, but it doesn't totally match up with images I've seen. I've also considered that it could be a ballast bone, but again, hard to confirm via Google search. Any thoughts would be appreciated!

Hey all - in discussing my recent research on the new extinct dolphin Ankylorhiza with science journalists, I was reminded of previous frustrations from earlier discussions with students, museum visitors, fossil collectors, journalists, and even other scientists about the meaning of the words whale, dolphin, and porpoise. Some disagreements were on this forum, others were on facebook fossil groups - the whole notion of "that's not a dolphin tooth that's a whale tooth" or vice versa is plagued by the fact that these terms have multiple established meanings and are imprecise, leading to lots of confusion, to the point where I pretty much have to start every discussion off with "there are two groups of cetaceans living today..." - many, for example, are confused about toothed baleen whales existing if only odontocetes have teeth. One thing I tried was to conduct a twitter poll showing four modern species and asking if people thought they were a whale, dolphin, or porpoise - and the majority was right only half the time: a leaping beaked whale was thought to be a dolphin, and a small dolphin was thought to be a porpoise. I've had so many discussions on here and have had to repeat some of these arguments ad nauseam, so I thought I might as well crystallize my thoughts into a blog post. I hope you enjoy it! http://coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2020/07/whale-dolphin-or-porpoise-meaningful.html

I need help identifying this Bone I found after a storm at OBX. The sandal in the picture is a mans size 10.

I have recently found dugong, whale, and dolphin ribs. Hunting friend gave me a tiny rib that we both thought might be dolphin. He is NOT a bone collector. I found a small dolphin tooth. It is 13mm. How small do these get? and then a predator tooth. I will just leave the photos, and request comments and identifications.

Hi all - I did not have time in January when I normally write these up, but thanks to Covid quarantine I managed to get some time last month and write up a comprehensive review on my blog of every single 2019 paper in marine mammal paleontology. Enjoy! https://coastalpaleo.blogspot.com/2020/05/2019-in-review-advances-in-marine.html

We are on vacation at Atlantic beach NC. My wife and l went shell collecting and I just happened to find these. I recognize the ray mouth plate but I'm drawing a blank on the other, dolphin or fish?

Is this bone from a porpoise or dolphin? it came from Palo’s verdes California and was found on the beach there. If so any idea on the age?

Found this tooth the other day at a miocene exposure along the Potomac River in Virginia (Westmoreland State Park). Hoping someone can help me identify Thanks in advance - Mitch

Hi all, I had a fairly productive first outing to Westmoreland State Park but I have no idea what any of the fossils I found are. I am happy to provide close-ups of any of the individual fossils, and in addition to the photos here, I posted some to imgur to get around the size restriction here. https://imgur.com/gallery/2uIedQS Thanks for your help!

Good day out on the bay, I kayaked down the cliffs in the morning and pulled in to do some surface collecting. I wasn’t finding many large shark teeth but I found my most amount of dolphin teeth in a day!

Great hunt today, left with a hand full of nice teeth, the best being my Chub and my dolphin teeth

This one is a first for me. Online sources indicate perhaps dolphin/porpoise/whale? Can anyone narrow it down? Myrtle beach find. Thank you! - Paula

A couple hours of sifting and surface collecting, found a nice Mako, a couple Snaggeltooth and a handful of small teeth. Also came away with a small porpoise tooth and porpoise rib, vertebrae, and Epiphysis disk fragments.

Friends of ours had their daughter come to visit for the holidays. She likes to rockhound and collect crystals and pan for gold back in the Seattle area where she lives and was eager to try the experience of fossil hunting in the Peace River. The weather (and river level) was looking good till a few days back when that huge mass of unstable air over the southeastern US unleashed torrents of rain. In fact, we were kidding Kelly that it was her presence here that brought the Seattle weather. She had a red-eye flight into Fort Lauderdale airport a few days back and on the morning of her arrival, the FLL airport received 4.5 inches of rain in an hour--shutting down the airport due to runways that were under water! Her flight was diverted to Miami but the airline she was on does not normally fly to MIA and there were no gates nor attendants to great the flight. They sat on the tarmac for 3.5 hours till they could find someone to unload the plane. Of course, they couldn't manage to unload the luggage at Miami and so the plane flew up to Fort Lauderdale later in the day so that the passengers could finally be reunited with their luggage. Hope there were no cruise passengers on that flight or their holiday vacation was well ruined. The bulk of the rain went north and south of the Peace River drainage basin but it did catch enough to push the river level into movement in the wrong direction. Canoe Outpost (where we rented our canoes) has been measuring the river level in Arcadia by calling the "normal" river level the point at which their floating dock is level with the bottom stair of their fixed dock. They declare fossil hunting season "open" when the level is 12" BELOW this "normal" level. The rain had pushed the level to around 9" ABOVE normal or just under 2 feet higher than I'd have liked it to be. We only had Saturday available as a date to try this and so we did. At worst we figured we'd have a relaxing trip down the river by canoe--in the rain! (Did I forget to mention the weather forecast was for warm temps, near 83F, but with an 80% chance of rain?) We chose a 10:00 a.m. departure over my normal choice of 8:00 a.m. which maximizes the workable time on the river with the canoes due back in before 5:00 p.m. This let us sleep in just a few hours more with a departure of 6:00 a.m. instead of 4:00 a.m. We loaded ourselves and the fossil hunting gear, snacks, and change of clothes into our friend's minivan and were off very nearly on schedule. It was an overcast (but dry) trip across state to Arcadia where we arrived in good time to sign in and catch our bus to the put in. We were pleasantly surprised to find Canoe Outpost to be celebrating their 50th year in operation (and Becky, the owner, there for 35 of those years). The peace sign in much of their signs is both a reference to the Peace River and the summer of love that was 1969. To celebrate, the canoe rentals were half-price and our two canoes for the day came for the price of one. I was quite happy to find that, though the levels were higher than I'd hoped for, the large well known gravel bed just downstream from the put-in at Brownville Park was not too deep to work. The current toward the center of the river was ripping and made it tricky to stand up and keep sand/gravel on your shovel as you raised it from the bottom to the sifter. One side of the river was protected somewhat by some trees in the water just upstream and was easily workable. The waist-deep water was comfortably cool (78F) and high enough not to have to bend over much but not too high to work effectively. There were a few other canoes launched with our group but they rolled past us when we stopped to start fossil hunting. We spotted a few additional canoes pass us from the 11:00 a.m. put-in but otherwise (mostly) had the river to ourselves. A large group (tour?) of 9 jet skis came flying up the river while we were taking a lunch break. They slowed just a bit but the wakes definitely caused a stir as the combined waves smacked our canoes pulled up along shore. We were to encounter them again on their return trip downstream a few hours later. This time we were paddling and had to move to the side of the river and point the bow of the canoes into the huge waves to keep from capsizing. Jet skis and canoes simply do not mix well. At least nobody flipped over. It remained a cloudy day with the sun only making a few brief appearances to cast some color on our sifting screens filled with black gravel. We got sprinkled and full-on poured upon several times throughout the day but Tammy even remarked that the warm air temps and a windbreaker jacket actually made the rainy canoe paddling rather pleasant. The warm temps had a number of gators (big and small) out trying to sun themselves on the banks. In total we spotted an even dozen of them in the first half of the trip back to Arcadia. There are fewer good haul-up spots and the fading light toward late afternoon usually means we see few if any gators on the last half of the paddle back downstream. It was interesting seeing the new tree falls along the banks and the other changes to the topography of the river after the summer's floods. It appears that someone's boat had come loose and found itself in a rather non-seaworthy state among the willow trees along one bank. A good example of the power of the river in flood stage! We tried to get into a deeper spot on the river that for some unknown reason is chocked full of dugong rib bones. It has larger chunky gravel and so I like to look there for the promise of larger fossils (like meg teeth). I like to take newbies to the river to this site as they can then collect multiple "paleo paperweights" as I call them and maybe come away with a meg tooth (or at least a decent fragment). We pulled to canoes to the bank at this spot and I got out to check it for depth. The bottom usually slopes down from a sticky/slipper/stinky muddy bank into a deeper channel a few meters from shore before becoming more shallow rising up onto a bit of a sand bank. I walked (slid) out into deeper water and got to neck level without it ever getting shallower and so (as I feared) this site was simply impossible at this river level. We paddled on to a final spot I like to stop at which has only fine pea gravel but often provides a copious number of smaller dime size shark teeth. I enjoy taking groups with kids there as we have a competition to see how many shark teeth per screen we can find. I believe the record still stands at 26. This site is also quite shallow (even dry sand bars when the river is good and low) and so I knew we'd have no problems there--it was my ace in the hole in case the other locations were all not accessible. In addition to many nice tiny teeth it also delivered some surprises.

I recently found a distressed canine in the Peace River. When possible I really want to identify all such fossil canines. The length is 1 and 1/8 inch. At the river I seemed to see (photo #1 & #2) "latitudinal banding" which means marine mammal. At home, I note that the root end turns to the side of the canine (photos #3 & #4), a characteristic that I mostly associate with porpoise. So , what is my question: Do all Dolphin/Porpoise teeth have such banding? The only reason I do not detect it on 95% of my Florida Dolphin/Porposie fossil teeth is that the banding is covered by cementum. I appreciate all responses, Jack Here is a picture of Whale tooth composition. These are Peace River or Bone Valley Whale Teeth: