Hunting Locations and Land Sites

[grahamguti]

@Kane I'm referring to Lowcountry South Carolina---I don't think it's physically possible to stuff all of the past 100 million years in our pockets.

[Fossildude19]

Just now, grahamguti said:

@Kane I'm referring to Lowcountry South Carolina---I don't think it's physically possible to stuff all of the past 100 million years in our pockets.

It is still ridiculous to think that all those layers can be exposed and accessible to fossil hunters.

Access is finite, therefore, the fossils are as well. 

[Boesse]

Here in the Carolinas, fossils do seem to be a neverending resource, but it depends upon several factors: how densely fossiliferous the deposit is and how they are being found. Spoil piles in quarries often need to be subjected to years or decades of rain in order to be sufficiently winnowed down; at Belgrade Quarry in eastern NC for example, newer spoil piles do not produce anywhere near as much material. On another occasion, I was invited along to Belgrade about a month before the annual Aurora Fossil Festival field trip there and we collected quite well - and then a month later, even with a bit of rain, the pickings were quite slim at the AFF field trip. And this is a large, large quarry - a dozen people or so highly reduced the collecting capacity for the following field trip, which I'm still a little embarrassed by.

 

If all the fossils are concentrated into one layer - as was the case in my cautionary tale - they absolutely can be completely exhausted rapidly by unethical collecting methods. The commercial diggers I mentioned would scoop grapefruit sized clumps of sediment out with medium sized shovels, keep the complete meg teeth, and toss everything back into the reject sediment. They dug through 10% or so of the available exposure of this bonebed in a single day.

[Fossildude19]

This topic will now be locked. 

Arguing about site access is a no win for all here. 

Hopefully, the OP will be able to find some sites worth collecting on his own.