Caspersen Beach - Shark Teeth ID (Part 3)

[JLittlejohn]

[digit]

I see you've discovered this interesting little beach in Venice where I too first found fossil shark teeth in Florida.

 

There is a good abundance of teeth that can be found washing up on the beach as the tide goes out (if you can get to them before other fossil hunter do). This is a great introduction to the hobby (addiction) of fossil hunting and if you are well hooked you'll soon want more.

 

Casperson Beach is nice in that you don't need much in the way of equipment to spot some little black fossil treasures. Many don't do more than just check the rocky gravel/shell hash along the beach but some will bring along simple tools like spaghetti strainers (my first fossil tool ) to optimize their search. The problem with the teeth from Casperson is that most have been rolling around in the surf for an extended period of time and much of the sharp detail is lost from these teeth. Your finds are pretty typical from this spot. You look to have a nice assortment of Lemon Shark (Negaprion sp.) and requiem shark (Carcharhinus sp.) teeth with a few Snaggletooth (Hemipristis serra) at the top of the last photo above.

 

If your interest in fossils is more than just a fun activity while out at the beach (and your presence here suggests that you are being sucked in deeper into the addiction) you'll soon be looking for less worn teeth and your first goal will be to find the famous yet elusive megalodon tooth. For this your best bet would be to go fossil hunting on the Peace River. If you have your own watercraft (kayak/canoe) then you can explore less paddled stretches of the river. If you don't then you can still rent and work the stretch upstream of Arcadia. The water level on the river is currently still way too high (and wasn't helped by the late season hurricane/tropical storm that just dumped on Florida). You can keep an eye on the water levels remotely by making use of the excellent USGS water gauges available online. Here's the one for Arcadia (there are many more available):

 

https://waterdata.usgs.gov/fl/nwis/uv?site_no=02296750

 

If you change the number of days plotted to something larger like the last year (365 days) you will see a good range of the river's range. You can see by the graphic below that the Peace momentarily peaked above "Floodstage" a short time ago and is still far from where it was this time a year ago (left edge of the image).

 

 

A good way of learning if the river is in range for fossil hunting is to check the water level page at the Canoe Outpost website. They update it every few days and will indicate when it is low enough to paddle the river and stop at gravel bars to dig and sift for fossils.

 

http://www.peacerivertrips.com/water-weather/

 

Looks like we will have to wait some time before the river is ready. We call this "fossil hiding" time in preparation for "fossil hunting" time. Drop me a PM here on the forum if you are interested and I'll clue you into some spots that you can walk into the river or spots that you can paddle to and hunt. Here's a link to show the equipment I use when hunting for fossils on the Peace River (or other waterways) that I posted some years back (still using the same gear).

 

http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/42992-end-of-year-peace-river-trip/&do=findComment&comment=467550

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken