A few pics of my shark tooth site

[Ludwigia]

Actually, it's not MY site. It's freely available for everyone and I do meet up with some enthusiasts there occasionally, but usually I just pedal out there on my bike and enjoy the peace and quiet. The most active creatures at this place are actually the wood ants in the summertime when they like to climb up inside my pants. I was there again today and this time I took along my camera for posterity's sake.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Continued...

 

[Ludwigia]

 

And here are the ones I kept cleaned up.

 

 

 

[nala]

I would be happy to bike in this site!great pictures Roger!

[facehugger]

Beautiful site. Would be worth visiting even without fossils...

[Ludwigia]

6 minutes ago, nala said:

I would be happy to bike in this site!great pictures Roger!

 

2 minutes ago, facehugger said:

Beautiful site. Would be worth visiting even without fossils...

We're really lucky here since there is a lot of this sort of landscape in the area. Lots of hills and gullies carved out by the waters of the receding glaciers exposing a lot of Miocene sediments. Mostly not very fossiliferous, but wonderful with their rough beauty.

[Doctor Mud]

21 minutes ago, Ludwigia said:

usually I just pedal out there on my bike and enjoy the peace and quiet

Wow! A shark tooth site that you can bike to from your house? Now there’s a good motivation for some exercise.

[Tidgy's Dad]

Nice photos and what a pretty place. 

Doesn't look much like a fossil locality, but nice little teeth there. 

Ants in your pants leads to rants or a dance that ain't romance. 

[Ludwigia]

3 minutes ago, Doctor Mud said:

Wow! A shark tooth site that you can bike to from your house? Now there’s a good motivation for some exercise.

You said it

 

3 minutes ago, Tidgy's Dad said:

Nice photos and what a pretty place. 

Doesn't look much like a fossil locality, but nice little teeth there. 

Ants in your pants leads to rants or a dance that ain't romance. 

And I'm a poet, I know it and hope I don't blow it.

Actually I've taken to wearing my wellies there in the summertime.

 

[sixgill pete]

Roger what a beautiful spot. it did not produce teeth, I could see myself going there. 

[Ludwigia]

1 minute ago, sixgill pete said:

Roger what a beautiful spot. it did not produce teeth, I could see myself going there. 

Yes it sure is nice for an outing. Like I said, there are a lot of spots like this around here that I love to bike through.

[CousinLarry]

Crazy! Doesn't look like a spot you'd find teeth!! But then again, I've found some big megs in some weird spots too!

[Ludwigia]

5 hours ago, CousinLarry said:

Crazy! Doesn't look like a spot you'd find teeth!! But then again, I've found some big megs in some weird spots too!

I agree, it looks somewhat different here than it does in the Carolinas, Florida or California, but the lithology is basically the same nevertheless. The stone that you can see in the first pic is a finely grained sandy conglomerate which was originally deposited at the cosast in a sidearm of the Tethys before the raising of the Alps forced it to draw back out of this part of Europe. The surface at this site has been weathering for a long time and the teeth often find their way into a mix of humus, sand and gravel, so I scratch away with my trusty old Swiss Army knife in the sand and dirt you can see at the wayside. Most of these types of deposits are often buried under meters of humus in this area and more often than not they are free of shark teeth.

[FranzBernhard]

Thanks for sharing, @Ludwigia! Very, very nice theeth and they look totally fresh.

 

But sure you didn´t take the first two pics somewhere around me here in Graz?? 

No, no, all the other pics say, that´s not the case, because we don´t have such prolific shark tooth sites here.

 

What makes me wondering is, that this side is not digged harder! It seems to be nearly untouched, despite some/many people knowing it - ???

Franz Bernhard

[Ludwigia]

8 minutes ago, FranzBernhard said:

Thanks for sharing, @Ludwigia! Very, very nice theeth and they look totally fresh.

 

But sure you didn´t take the first two pics somewhere around me here in Graz?? 

No, no, all the other pics say, that´s not the case, because we don´t have such prolific shark tooth sites here.

 

What makes me wondering is, that this side is not digged harder! It seems to be nearly untouched, despite some/many people knowing it - ???

Franz Bernhard

It's been known for a long time, but just locally and mostly families come and scratch a bit occasionally. There aren't all that many serious shark tooth collectors in our area and we don't especially advertise the location.

[Monica]

What pretty teeth, Roger!  And you just dig them right out of the sand?  Cool!

 

Re: ants - I actually had a bad experience with one this past September, when Sara The Ceratopsian was visiting.  She, Viola, and I went to the Credit River so Viola could pick up some of her own water-worn colonial rugose coral pieces, and the little patch of rocks next to the river that we were checking out had some red-coloured ants crawling around in places.  I had noticed them the last time I was there, and they didn't do anything other than the odd one getting onto my rubber boots from time to time, at which point I would simply shake them off - no big deal.  Well, this time I saw that one had gotten onto my leg (I was wearing my boots with shorts rather than long pants - I had just finished at the gym and didn't want to change into clean clothes when I knew I was just going to get dirty again while looking for fossils - very silly of me, as it turned out!) so I swiped it off and didn't think anything of it.  A short time later, I started to feel an intense burning sensation just above my left knee - it was red but didn't look too bad.  By that evening, the red area had been reduced to a small patch and had become itchy.  By the next day, it became a fluid-filled blister, and was intensely itchy all around!!!  After a couple of days the blister drained and my skin began to heal, but you can still see where the injury occurred - it's still a white circle just above my left knee.  I'm not really sure what happened that day by the river, but I think I may have been bitten by a fire ant while looking for fossils - yikes!!!!!!!!!!

[FossilNerd]

1 hour ago, Monica said:

I'm not really sure what happened that day by the river, but I think I may have been bitten by a fire ant while looking for fossils - yikes!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry to hear this Monica! While I was reading your post, fire ants where the first thing that came to mind. Then I got to the end of your post and I saw that you were thinking the same thing. I didn’t know they were so far north though. I guess the bright side is that it was only one ant. Usually, when I hear of someone being bitten by fire ants, they accidentally disturbed the whole hill and were swarmed before they realized what was going on, causing them to be bitten multiple times. 

[FossilNerd]

Looks like a nice little spot! Now when you say that it is close enough to bike to, do you mean that it is 10 kilometers away or 100 kilometers? You have been known to bike quite a distance for fossils!  

[Fossildude19]

Great documentation of a wonderful site, Roger. 

Thanks for taking the time to photograph it.  

[Ludwigia]

3 hours ago, Monica said:

What pretty teeth, Roger!  And you just dig them right out of the sand?  Cool!

 

Re: ants - I actually had a bad experience with one this past September, when Sara The Ceratopsian was visiting.  She, Viola, and I went to the Credit River so Viola could pick up some of her own water-worn colonial rugose coral pieces, and the little patch of rocks next to the river that we were checking out had some red-coloured ants crawling around in places.  I had noticed them the last time I was there, and they didn't do anything other than the odd one getting onto my rubber boots from time to time, at which point I would simply shake them off - no big deal.  Well, this time I saw that one had gotten onto my leg (I was wearing my boots with shorts rather than long pants - I had just finished at the gym and didn't want to change into clean clothes when I knew I was just going to get dirty again while looking for fossils - very silly of me, as it turned out!) so I swiped it off and didn't think anything of it.  A short time later, I started to feel an intense burning sensation just above my left knee - it was red but didn't look too bad.  By that evening, the red area had been reduced to a small patch and had become itchy.  By the next day, it became a fluid-filled blister, and was intensely itchy all around!!!  After a couple of days the blister drained and my skin began to heal, but you can still see where the injury occurred - it's still a white circle just above my left knee.  I'm not really sure what happened that day by the river, but I think I may have been bitten by a fire ant while looking for fossils - yikes!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, I just dug them out of the sand and gravel.

Well, I'm not so sure that that was a fire ant, but it obviously pumped a lot of poison into you whatever it was. Wood ants bites are also nothing to sneeze at, which is why I have always taken along some kind of protection after my first experience with them.

 

1 hour ago, FossilNerd said:

Looks like a nice little spot! Now when you say that it is close enough to bike to, do you mean that it is 10 kilometers away or 100 kilometers? You have been known to bike quite a distance for fossils!  

10 Km. I also do go on somewhat more liesurely tours

 

1 hour ago, Fossildude19 said:

Great documentation of a wonderful site, Roger. 

Thanks for taking the time to photograph it.  

You're welcome. Glad you enjoyed it.

 

[Troodon]

Very cool site, surprised it's not worked harder by collectors.  Do you find anything else other than shark teeth?  Thanks for posting..

[Ludwigia]

10 minutes ago, Troodon said:

Very cool site, surprised it's not worked harder by collectors.  Do you find anything else other than shark teeth?  Thanks for posting..

Bivalves are pretty common, although mostly in shards and also the odd bryozoa and bream tooth. Other things are pretty rare, but I have found a small dolphin tooth, a ray barb and even a Lagomeryx tooth.

[sharkdoctor]

Great post. With that sandy matrix, I wonder if there are lots of microscopic coprolites, teeth, etc. Maybe in the range of one to 3 grains of sand long?

 

[siteseer]

14 hours ago, Ludwigia said:

I agree, it looks somewhat different here than it does in the Carolinas, Florida or California, but the lithology is basically the same nevertheless. The stone that you can see in the first pic is a finely grained sandy conglomerate which was originally deposited at the cosast in a sidearm of the Tethys before the raising of the Alps forced it to draw back out of this part of Europe. The surface at this site has been weathering for a long time and the teeth often find their way into a mix of humus, sand and gravel, so I scratch away with my trusty old Swiss Army knife in the sand and dirt you can see at the wayside. Most of these types of deposits are often buried under meters of humus in this area and more often than not they are free of shark teeth.

 

Hi Roger,

 

There's a wooded site like that in the Santa Cruz Mountains in California where you can find Paleocene sea urchins.  They aren't common and they're usually distorted but sometimes you get a nice one.  It's not a site for people afraid of spiders or snakes, though (just garter snakes so far).

 

Jess

 

[Ludwigia]

10 hours ago, sharkdoctor said:

Great post. With that sandy matrix, I wonder if there are lots of microscopic coprolites, teeth, etc. Maybe in the range of one to 3 grains of sand long?

 

I sorta doubt it, but I've never tried that out, so you never know.

[GreatWhiteMac]

Great pictures and some nice sharks teeth to go along with the scenery!  Beauty