Virginia Shell Hunt

[historianmichael]

Last month my girlfriend and I took a trip to her parents' vacation house in North Carolina and on the drive down and the drive back we visited the Yorktown Battlefield and made a couple of fossil collecting stops in the Williamsburg area. These sites exposed the Late Miocene Eastover Formation (Cobham Bay Member) and Early Pliocene Yorktown Formation (Sunken Meadow Member). While we enjoyed weather in the low 50s during our stops on the drive down, we had to combat temperatures in the 30s and snow and frozen ground during our stops on the drive back. Though she did join me for some of it, to say the least my girlfriend spent most of the time on the drive back in the car while I collected in the field. I cannot thank @MikeR enough for his patience and assistance in identifying some of my finds. 

 

My favorite site we visited was actually our very first stop. We ended up visiting this site again on our drive back, so the photos are of our combined finds over both trips. The site is a shell bed full of Chesapecten middlesexensis and other cool shells dating to the Late Miocene. The fossils are preserved in life position so shells are simply stacked on each other, making this site just rich with fossil shells. On our walk back to our car we ended up speaking with a local property owner who said that he too has a shell bed on his property and has even found a whale vertebra there. Unfortunately no whale bones were found during our visits to this site.

 

 

We were fortunate to find quite a few unbroken Chesapecten middlesexensis, including eight that have both valves

 

I had a lot of fun searching for the largest and the smallest C. middlesexensis that I could find. Although I found one smaller, the smallest one that I was able to safely bring home is this one that is about 1.3 cm wide

 

While the largest one that I found - and now proudly displayed in my house - is about 22cm wide! It is complete with both valves and has some barnacle pieces and a little bit of coral on the other side

 

Here is a photo of the excavation of this behemoth scallop

 

Some of my other favorite Chesapecten middlesexensis include these two shells covered with coral (Septastrea marylandica). The first one is my second largest find, measuring 20cm wide

 

 

 

And this smaller one with barnacles (Balanus concavus) on it

 

Some of the colors on the shells are amazing, including this one that I call blue jean blue

 

Another highlight find was this partial Ecphora kochi covered with barnacles, coral, bryozoan and even a tiny tube worm

 

 

 

Here are some of my other finds:

 

Astarte cobhamensis

 

Costaglycymeris mixoni (including one with both valves)

 

Cyclocardia vautrotorum

 

Dallarca carolinensis

 

Dosinia blountana

 

Isognomon (Hippochaeta) sp.

 

Lirophora vredenburgi

 

Mansfieldostrea geraldjohnsoni (with both valves)

 

Marvacrassatella urbannaensis (with both valves)

 

Fragment of C. middlesexensis with Septastrea marylandica and Balanus concavus

 

 

Serpulorbis cf. granifera

 

Spisula bowlerensis

 

Turritella subvariabilis

 

After cleaning my finds I decided to screen the excess material and search it for tiny gastropods and bivalves. Some of my effort is in the fossils above, but here are two of my smaller finds

 

Epitonium humphreysii

 

Parvilucina crenulata

 

 

 

After a couple of hours driving around the Yorktown Battlefield National Historic Park, we made our second and last stop of the day - York River near the mouth of Indian Field Creek. This site is a well-known exposure of the Yorktown Formation, Sunken Meadow Member. When we arrived, I was astonished by the amount of shells just lying on the beach.

 

 

Unfortunately almost all of the fossils on the beach were heavily water worn, so I decided to only keep a couple of things.

 

A shark tooth of a requiem shark (Carcharinus sp.)

 

A broken and worn Ecphora gardnerae

 

Three large coral chunks (Septastrea marylandica)

 

Some bryozoan (Tretocycloecia sp.)

 

 

We ended up spending about two weeks in North Carolina, and while we worked remotely from the house, it was a nice change of scenery. Our first stop on the drive back was a different exposure of the Eastover Formation, Cobham Bay Member. While we found some of the same fossils at this site, the micro fossils were much more abundant. I had a lot of fun screening and picking through the excess material from cleaning my finds. Here are some of our finds from this stop:

 

Chesapecten middlesexensis. By comparison to the ones above, the largest one we decided to keep from this site is only 3.3cm wide

 

The number of isolated barnacles (Balanus concavus), including some barnacles on barnacles, was a real treat

[historianmichael]

Mansfieldostrea geraldjohnsoni with a little barnacle on it

 

 

Mariacolpus plebeia, including two encrusted with bryozoan

 

Mercenaria druidi

 

Dallarca carolinensis

 

Bryozoan colony

 

A tiny fish vertebra and spine

 

 

Fragments of Spantangoid Echinoids

  

 

Cadulus thallus

 

Dentalium attenuatum

 

Dentalium sp. (these might be Dentalium attenuatum but they lacked the clear striations so I wasn't sure)

 

Spisula bowlerensis

 

Corbula cuneata

 

Corbula inaequalis

 

 

Astarte sp.

 

Parvilucina crenulata

 

 

Nucula proxima

 

Nucula sinaria

 

 

Nuculana acuta

 

Tellina declivis

 

Tellina producta

 

 

Yoldia laevis

 

 

Calliostoma virginicum

 

Drillia incilifera var. angulata n. var.

 

Drillia incilifera

 

Drillia limatula

 

 

After a return visit to the Eastover Formation site that we visited on our drive down, we stopped by a creek and nearby road cut that I had read exposes the Yorktown Formation, Sunken Meadow Member. As soon as I arrived at the site, I noticed fragments of large Chesapecten jeffersonius shells in an adjacent drainage ditch. I was a little nervous that the information I read was old, but as soon as I saw that, I knew I was in the right spot.

 

 

Here are the Chesapecten jeffersonius that we collected

 

The largest one we found measures 17.5 wide, so big but not as big as they can get

 

The smallest are about the size of your finger pad

 

 

We found two that have both valves

 

 

I thought the barnacle scars on these C. jeffersonius were really cool.

 

 

They look like the famous drawing of C. jeffersonius in "Historiae Conchyliorum, Liber III" by Martin Lister, published in 1687

 

Here are some of our other finds:

 

Immature Placopecten clintonius

 

Mansfieldostrea compressirorostra, including one with a surprise barnacle on the underside 

 

 

Mercenaria sp., including this one with both valves and these two immature venus clams

  

 

Kuphus fistula

 

Cadulus thallum

 

Dentalium attenuatum

 

Costaglycymeris subovata

Eucrassatella virginica

 

Dosinia acetabulum

 

Macoma virginiana

  

 

Stewartia anodonta

 

Spisula confraga

 

Tellina declivis

 

I found quite a few of these Cyclocardia granulata but I was really awed by how these two looked under my microscope  

 
 

Astarte coheni

 

Astarte exaltata

 

Astarte undulata

 

Astarte undulata vaginulata

 

Bostrycapulus aculeata ponderosa

 

Bostrycapulus aculeatus aculeatus

 

Chama congregata

 

Including these immature Chama congregata

  

 

Parvilucina crenulata

  

 

Clinocardium acutilaqueatum

 

Hiatella arctica

    

 

Corbula inaequalis

 

Corbula cuneata

 

 

Diodora redimicula

 

Acteocina myrmecoon

 

Boreotrophon tetricus
 

 

Carinodrillia smithfieldensis

 

Dentimargo aureocincta

 

Euspira interna, including some tiny ones

 

 

Fusinus propeparilis

[historianmichael]

Lyrosoma sulcosa multicostata

 

A couple tiny unidentified Neogastropoda

 

 

Turritella bipertita

 

Volvulella cylindra

 

 

On the walk back to the car I noticed a couple of loose fossils at the base of the nearby road cut. They were caked in dirt so I ended up bringing them home to clean them up. After a quick rinse, I discovered that the scallop I picked up was in fact Chesapecten madisonius of the the Late Pliocene Yorktown Formation, Rushmere Member. Since I visited the site expecting to only collect from the Sunken Meadow Member, it was very cool to get to sample another exposure. My finds from here are few because I didn't do much exploring.

 

Chesapecten madisonius

 

Ostrea sculpturata

 

Balanus concavus

  

 

You can kinda see it in the photo above, but when I looked at the last one under my microscope, I discovered several awesome bryozoa on it

 

Possibly Theonoa glomerata n. sp.

 

 

 

An unidentified bryozoan

 

 

Another unidentified bryozoan

 

 

If you made it this far, I want to thank you for reading. I know that I have probably overwhelmed you with finds and photos. It was a great trip and I am excited to soon get back to explore some other sites in the area. Hopefully I got correct the identification on most of these finds and that this post can be used as a tool for others seeking to identify their finds from the Eastover and Yorktown Formations. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

 

[aplomado]

Oh, that looks like fossil heaven!  

[traveltip1]

Awesome finds. I like the predation boring holes in some of the bivalves.

[fossilizator]

jealousyjealousyjealousyjeal...

no words only emotions

p.s. very good place for rest