Texoma Duckcreek fm hunt

[hadrosauridae]

Yesterday, my son and I finally made a day-trip to Lake Texoma for some fossil hunting.  We've been wanting to make this trip for while, but it can be difficult between both our jobs and weather, and lake levels.  I planned for this trip by searching the google maps for good looking locations with a nearby shore access.  Unfortunately, one spot turned into a private drive, and the other was closed off by the Corps of Engineers for some unknown reason.  We didnt want to hit the same spot that everyone else goes to so we began just driving and looking.

 

The first place we stopped was a gravel bar in creek.  When I drove over the bridge and saw the bar, I immediately made a u-turn.  I'm sure that this has been searched, but it didnt disappoint.  There were a lot of Gryphaea in the marl walls as well as gravel.  We found a couple large segments of ammonites and eventually found a small, complete ammonite, about 2 inches in diameter.

 

Then we drove around the lake roads until we found a likely looking shoreline, which fortunately was only a short walk to the exposure.  Hunting started slow, and we could see a couple piles of rejects left by other hunters.  But we stayed optimistic and kept searching in depth, and then the finds started to show up.  There were huge Gryphaea everywhere, many were 1-1/2" long.  I eventually got tired of picking them up.  There were huge oysters, but they were mostly broken.  I did find a smaller one, about 4 inches across.  Then there were many partial ammonites and finally several complete ones.  Our favorite finds were the echinoids!  I found the first one, and then my son found 3 more, all close together.

 

Some of the ammonites are still imbedded in matrix, and I'm hopeful they will prep out cleanly.  One of the small partials I have started trying to prep is having problems.  Some of it come out clean, but some spot dont seem to have any separation plane between matrix and fossil (which is a steinkern anyway).