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Fossil of giant 70 million year-old fish found in Argentina (PhysOrg) De Pasqua, J.J., Agnolin, F.L. and Bogan, S., 2020. First record of the ichthyodectiform fish Xiphactinus (Teleostei) from Patagonia, Argentina. Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology, pp.1-5. (Researchgate PDF) Yours, Paul H.

Two hunts, two creeks, two legendary finds in one week. I don’t know what you know about Texas weather, but in July it’s hot. Downright miserable, unsafe heat at times. Just a week and a half ago we hit a heat index of 111 degrees. So when you have a day that tops out in the mid 90s for a high, you take advantage of that cool front. I checked the weather and saw that Tuesday had a high of only 94. I messaged my buddy @sharko69 and said, “Hey, its gonna be a nice day. Let’s do some hunting this afternoon after work.” So we meet up at our usual hunting spot and he shows me a new drop in that I had yet to explore. So we drop in and right away I spot a Ptychodus whipplei tooth coming out of the wall. Woohoo! I’m on the board! Not a bad start. So we head upstream walking through knee high water, boots sinking in the silt, and the occasional game of limbo as we climbed under fallen trees. All the while taking great caution. On his scouting trip to this spot my friend saw a slide mark on the muddy bank. Was it crocodile or beaver? A crocodile in a creek in north Texas would be highly unusual, so we hedged our bets on the laws of probability. After all, fortune favors the brave right? Still I did desire to return home to my family that night, so we were on high alert. Then we arrived at our destination; the place looked almost heavenly. An enormous gravel bar stood before us, we knew it had to contain something wonderful, but would we find it? Fast forward to an hour later, the only thing I’ve found since my Ptychodus are mosquitoes. Oh and the breeze stopped, so now it’s hot-ish, humid, and still. But I’m focused and press on despite feeling like I’m in an oven. After a while I found another shark tooth. Squalicorax, one of my favorites. Nice. My friend and I are chatting and he walks over to show me his find, a nice Cretalamna tooth. As he leaves I scoot over to continue my search and right behind his steps lay a sight unlike any other. A black, deeply striated, and large tooth. I jump up speechless and throw my hands on my head. I turned away and had to do a double take. Surely I can’t have seen what I just saw. Yup, I did. A beautiful Pliosaur tooth was waiting right there atop the gravel pile. My friend sees my silent commotion and bolts over. He starts yelling, jumping up and down, and freaking out, just like I am on the inside. I gently pull it out and it’s in wonderful shape and it even has some of the root still attached. To put this in perspective finding a Pliosaur fossil here is insanely rare. While I don’t know the exact number I can virtually guarantee that the number of Pliosaur teeth found here in north Texas in the last decade is in the single digits. My friend found one just two weeks prior in the same creek and back then I thought I had seen the only Pliosaur tooth I would ever see. Boy was I glad to be so wrong. The rest of the hunt after that is somewhat of a blur. I found a few more shark teeth, a tennis ball sized piece of coprolite, oh and a smile that I’ll have to have surgically removed from my face. Fast forward a few days to Friday night. My friends sends me a picture of a monster 2-1/4" shark tooth he found from a new creek earlier that day. Wanna join me early tomorrow morning to hit up the spot some more? Pssh, does a fat puppy hate fast cars? Of course I do! So the alarm goes off at 6 am and I successfully beat the sun out of bed for today's hunt. After a cup of joe I hop into the car and begin the trek. We meet up in an empty parking lot, it looks like we're spies out for a super secret rendezvous or up to some type of nefarious behavior. But the only nefarious behavior that was happening that day was.... well actually none at all. Just a nice fossil hunt, social distancing style. We drop into the site and get to work. Unlike last time where I found something immediately we were held to a big fat goose egg for quite a while. A solid hour or more. "Boy I'm not finding anything." "Yeah me neither." 30 seconds later i hear behind me, "Oh heck yeah!" I turn around to see my buddy holding a nice segment of Mosasaur jaw. Missing the tooth sadly, but a heck of a find nonetheless. Well, it's good to know that they're out here, but I just can't believe they're all scurrying away once I get close to them. So I continue to search. Fun fact about my buddy @sharko69. He is a master Ptychodus hunter. He's so gifted in fact, that I have accused him of selling his soul to the devil. And that in return he was given the power that whenever he walks by a Ptychodus tooth, it just hops up into his pocket. The verdict is still out on that accusation. So he tells me, "I have yet to find a Ptychodus yet here." So they must not be here, it's the only logical explanation given his power. So imagine my surprise when I looked down and saw a gorgeous Ptychodus latissimus tooth. I'm not getting shutout today! Whoop whoop! We press on and for another 30 minutes, nothing more is found except for a ton of broken and busted up septarian nodules. These dirty rotten tricksters are littered all over the creek. They constantly tempt us into thinking they're something cool, only to be let down yet again. I look down towards the water and see what looks like another septarian nodule. "Not fooling me this time" I say to myself. I look away, but as I do I instantly stop and look back. Something seemed odd about that one. I approach it and I freeze. I say out loud to my buddy who's standing next to me but facing the other way, "There's no way this is what I think it is." He turns around and shouts out, "YES IT IS!" I reach down and pull it out. What I hold in my shaking hands is a stack of associated Xiphactinus vertebrae. 2 complete vertebrae, half of a third, and a tiny piece of a fourth. They're resting nicely in a perfectly flat piece of matrix, almost as if mother nature herself carved it out for a perfect display base. The rest of the trip continued uneventfully for me for another couple hours. Yielding to me "only" an additional Squalicorax tooth. On the way back my friend pulls out yet another 2-1/4" tooth. His fifth tooth near or above the 2 inch mark in a week. (I meanwhile have yet to join the 2" club, but it's something I'm working on). At least with this find I can confirm that he is not bringing them from home and planting them and is indeed finding them. So that capped off a week in which I found two legendary once in a lifetime finds. It was a fun week filled with mild-ish weather, fun times spent with the Prince of Ptychodus, and brilliant one of a kind fossils. But I think the greatest treasure of all, was that of the deeply forged bond of friendship through the medium of fossicking. TLDR; Found two cool fossils.

I had a great day on the North Sulphur River.

Long nine hour freezing hike in Northeast Texas. The partial mastodon tooth and tylosaur jaw section with replacement tooth were the highlights of my day. I dated the old soda bottle to the 1950's. The artifacts were a nice bonus.

Hello I found these two in some loose soil from a creek wall that has recently eroded. Each vertebra was found around 7 ft from one another. Found in Central Texas (Travis county)

Here's a few Xiphactinus fossils in my collection that I collected at the North Sulphur River Texas. My arm for scale lol.

My man cave is coming along nicely. Most are personal finds from Northeast Texas. A few were gifts or purchases.

Water was a little high but I found a few things at the North Sulphur River Texas.

I found this vertebra last week in a Cretaceous deposit in Monmouth County New Jersey. It measures a shade under an inch and is a lot bigger than the normal fish vert I usually find here so I wanted to ask - is there a way to tell the difference between Enchodus and Xiphactiuns vetus? My initial thought was Enchodus but I didn't see any examples online that looked like this one. Also, any recommendation on how I should prep this? I only showed one side because the rest of this is embedded in the matrix. I currently use really old dental tools. Thanks! -Frank

Hi all, It has been sometime since I added something new to my collection but I just obtained a juvenile Xiphactinus. Discovered by my friend in Kansas many years ago. Both sides were preserved and so it was mounted on a rotatable stand. These are pretty rare nowadays in my opinion. Enjoy!

Hello! These were all found in Monmouth County, New Jersey (Late Cretaceous). I have believed the first tooth to be Xiphactinus Vetus for years but am a little thrown off by the general texture of it and after searching images of Xiphactinus teeth, I can't find another that looks similar. I have found deteriorated Mosasaur teeth with a similar appearance so I was wondering if it could just be stream-worn. The tooth is about an 1.5 inches long, has two very defined cutting edges and a nice curve (which are all consistent with X. Vetus). The last thing I could add - it either has 'fluting' or is faceted but I'm not sure how to determine that. The second set of pictures is of different shark teeth from the same location. As always, all help is greatly appreciated! -Frank

Ive been hunting the Sulfur River for 10 years and here is a small handful of the Sulfur River finds of mine including the partial Toxochelid I found sticking out of the shale and the 35 pieces of shell and a couple pieces of bone I recovered.

Hello everyone, this is Trevor. I have been meaning to post this for a long time and finally got around to doing it. I would appreciate help identifying these finds. Also, stay tuned I have a trip report coming out later this week, probably Friday. What type of ammonite is this? (middle)

I found this tooth last week in the blufftown formation that runs through South Alabama. It was found on the same bar as the fully rooted Xiphactinus tooth I posted a couple of weeks ago. To me, it appears to be another tooth with a partial root but I’m unsure. It has characteristics of both Xiphactinus audax and vetus so that’s what has me so puzzled. It’s just over 1.25 inches long and a .25 inches wide. Any thoughts/comments would be greatly appreciated!

I need some advice here. It's been a dream of mine to have a xiphactinus jaw, and here I have two. They are both dentaries: right and left side. (Let me say I will not be purchasing these for probably a good few years.) I wanted to know if it's possible to separate them and remount them to make an inflated lower jaw? I would probably have to send them out to have a professional do it because I have a feeling this is a job for the masters.