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What's In Your Pavement?


Plax

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Was walking at lunch time and took a pic of a shark tooth weathering out of the asphalt road. Was about to crop my shadow out when I realized there was another tooth upper right. There are a lot of fossils in the aggregate used for asphalt and cement in this area because of the formations quarried. The New Hanover Member of the Late Eocene Castle Hayne is a phosphatic conglomerate limestone that is sufficiently indurated to be sent to the crushing mill at local quarries. The Rocky Point Member of the Peedee actually makes up the bulk of the rock going to the mill but it has few vertebrate fossils. We see teeth in cement paving as well as asphalt in the Cape Fear Region of NC. Will post more pics as I get them. Any vertebrate fossils in your local paving?

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Cool discoverys, though I recomend you don't try fossil hunting in the middle of the road;-)

-Lyall

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I had about a half dozen pics of shark teeth in our local streets but they seem to have gotten deleted :blink: one was even a decent sized upper Mako. :)

Every once in a great while it's not just a big rock down there!

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Interesting. Never seen teeth in asphalt before.

Bulldozers and dirt Bulldozers and dirt
behind the trailer, my desert
Them red clay piles are heaven on earth
I get my rocks off, bulldozers and dirt

Patterson Hood; Drive-By Truckers

 

image.png.0c956e87cee523facebb6947cb34e842.png May 2016  MOTM.png.61350469b02f439fd4d5d77c2c69da85.png.a47e14d65deb3f8b242019b3a81d8160.png.b42a25e3438348310ba19ce6852f50c1.png May 2012 IPFOTM5.png.fb4f2a268e315c58c5980ed865b39e1f.png.1721b8912c45105152ac70b0ae8303c3.png.2b6263683ee32421d97e7fa481bd418a.pngAug 2013, May 2016, Apr 2020 VFOTM.png.f1b09c78bf88298b009b0da14ef44cf0.png.af5065d0585e85f4accd8b291bf0cc2e.png.72a83362710033c9bdc8510be7454b66.png.9171036128e7f95de57b6a0f03c491da.png Oct 2022

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I haven't seen shark teeth in the street out in front of my house (unless I dropped one there) but the formations that they mine limestone from here in South Florida are rich in shell hash. I would think that a significant portion of the limestone material in that asphalt likely contains semi-identifiable shell material. If I remember I'll take a camera when I go out to grab the mail this afternoon and see if I can find anything interesting in the surface of the street.

Looking forward to images from others to see what cars are rolling over in their areas.

Cheers.

-Ken

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My little brother and I used to pick tiny 3-D brachiopods out of the deteriorating asphalt in front of our grandfather's house in N.W. Pennsylvania. They still had nacreous shells on them :)

(This was in the '60s)

"There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant

“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley

>Paleontology is an evolving science.

>May your wonders never cease!

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This is not in my pavement,but in the Politehnica metro station`s floor in Bucharest. Accidentally(in a hurry) was paved in 1983 in red marble with rudists beside snails and corals.Just a few photos I want to share...

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" We are not separate and independent entities, but like links in a chain, and we could not by any means be what we are without those who went before us and showed us the way. "

Thomas Mann

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Interesting. Never seen teeth in asphalt before.

Hi Don I had to comment on this... When we went to the fossil festival there was a big tooth that appeared to be just laying on the road. If I remember right it was just down from the homemade ice cream guy! Noelle saw it and got super excited. lol. That tooth wasn't going ANYWHERE... Haha! You'll have to look for it next year!!! :)

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Here's a view of the asphalt on the street right in front of my mailbox. The limestone aggregate used in this asphalt is mined relatively locally at one of the large pit mines scattered around the area. This is probably a Chione which seem to be pretty common.

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I can see even more variety in the sandy soil that is my yard.

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When digging for planting or sprinkler maintenance I commonly see Arcs, Cockles, Disk Dosinias, a variety of Murex, Olives, Tulips, and Lightning Welks in addition to the Chione (Venuses).

These fossils, likely from the Bermont Formation (400,000-1,000.000 BP), would probably intrigue me more if they weren't so common here--familiarity breeds contempt, so they say. It takes an uncommonly rare or well preserved fossil shell to even get a second glance in my yard. Have never come across a single fossilized shark tooth in my yard (that I didn't accidentally drop). Though I have thousands of fossilized shark teeth from Florida I'd likely display any one found on my property in a place of honor--funny that.

Cheers.

-Ken

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It's a funny thing that shark's teeth appear to be rare in some shell beds. Our local Waccamaw looks to be relatively shark tooth free until it is driven over on a driveway for instance. The continual crushing and rinsing with rain expose teeth after some months of driveway exposure. Apparently the teeth are not abundant but are covered in bryozoa etc and can't be easily discerned amongst the shells.

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Hi Don I had to comment on this... When we went to the fossil festival there was a big tooth that appeared to be just laying on the road. If I remember right it was just down from the homemade ice cream guy! Noelle saw it and got super excited. lol. That tooth wasn't going ANYWHERE... Haha! You'll have to look for it next year!!! :)

too bad the highway dept. wouldn't let you use a little acetone or gasoline to dissolve it out! Am joking of course; wouldn't recommend anything like this.

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Don't forget--all the dirt roads around Aurora and other places in the county were once "paved" with shark teeth (reject) to help them hold up longer. Ah, the good old days when one could take a country walk and pick up squalodon teeth and amber and sharks teeth. Sigh. :drool:

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  • 1 year later...
On 9.7.2015 at 0:12 AM, Triceratops said:

Cool discoverys, though I recomend you don't try fossil hunting in the middle of the road;-)

 

Look what happened to the skunk ;)

 

Greetings from the Lake of Constance. Roger

http://www.steinkern.de/

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Huh!!?, I thought someone must have seen the same video!!!

panhandle Sharkteeth on You tube captured some vid of TONS of sharkteeth in pavement near Venice beach Florida.

Skip to about 3:30 to see them!!

 

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  • 10 months later...

the teeth we see around here are not intentionally used to make decorative pavement but are in cement and asphalt all over the coastal plain. Here are a couple of shots from the walkway at a church in Castle Hayne NC. These have been through the crushing mill at the quarry where they make aggregate for concrete and asphalt paving.

lag fossils in ag2.jpg

lag fossils in ag1.jpg

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