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Good Fossil Hunting Places Near Dallas?


DChalo

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most people won't tell you their good spots unless they know you well and feel like you will safeguard the information and also help them with new spots.

the north sulphur river is a good public place not too far from dallas that has definite cool, old fossil bones. if you hunt river terraces around dallas, you might find bones, but you'll have to learn to tell modern bones from pleistocene bones.

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Along the banks of the river or creek.

Hmm, post oak creek. A very deep creek that i found some minerals in

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over long periods of time, flooding events and changes of river courses change the areas around rivers. many times, when you're driving down a road and get near a river or creek, you will notice that before you get to it, you go down one or more little dips in elevation to flat areas lower than before. if you don't think about it, it can escape your awareness that the river affects more than just its banks over the millennia. one of the things found around rivers are their terraces.

get the picture?

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No, not always, learn the formations and that will give you an idea as to what you can find. A lot of it is trial and error, not all will have fossils, it depends on the locations.

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For bones around Dallas you can try "Quaternary" deposits along the major rivers which are of Pleistocene age. Also you can find fish and shark verts and miscellaneous bones in the Eagle Ford shale deposits which are of Cretaceous age. I would heavily recommend getting the geologic map for Dallas area from a Mapsco store.

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Hmm, post oak creek. A very deep creek that i found some minerals in

Odd that you found minerals there... Post Oak Creek is full of shark teeth! FULL of shark teeth! Like, everywhere you look full of shark teeth! :)

Every complex scientific problem has an elegant and simple solution... and it is wrong.

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For bones around Dallas you can try "Quaternary" deposits along the major rivers which are of Pleistocene age. Also you can find fish and shark verts and miscellaneous bones in the Eagle Ford shale deposits which are of Cretaceous age. I would heavily recommend getting the geologic map for Dallas area from a Mapsco store.

Name a quaternary deposit

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um, no idea. you just said to name a quaternary deposit, so i decided to name it "vinnie".

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um, no idea. you just said to name a quaternary deposit, so i decided to name it "vinnie".

I meant where are quaternary deposits

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Quaternary deposits are basically the gravels and muds deposited along the major rivers and creeks during Pleistocene days (1.8 million to 10,000 years ago). You pretty much have to look in these areas to find bones of animals of that age such as mammoth, mastodon, camel, smilodon, sloths, bear, glyptodon, etc.

Now that you've been teased... I have NO idea if there are any accessible areas in Dallas county OR any areas you'd feel safe to look in by yourself.

Your best bet for fossils would be the Eagle Ford shale deposits in western Dallas County. The transition where Eagle Ford is overlain by the Austin Chalk is a good zone for shark teeth. A mile or two west of this contact the shales contain a thin flagstoney layer called "Kamp Ranch" which often contains the much prized Ptychodus shark teeth and other goodies. The Dallas sheet of the Geologic Atlas of Texas (check Mapsco store) will show the areas.

Also do search on this forum for "Dallas" and read what's already been said.

Name a quaternary deposit
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I've linked to a geo map PDF for Dallas county I've been working on that's about 2/3rds done. The green Kau = Austin chalk, blue Kef = Eagle Ford shale, orange Qt = Quaternary terraces, yellow = Quaternary alluvium. The lighter green areas inside the yellow areas just mark the river greenbelt areas, ignore those.

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Good Fossil Hunting Places Near Dallas?

I don't know what "near Dallas" means. Do you mean in the city proper? In the county? In the DFW metroplex? North Texas?

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um, no idea. you just said to name a quaternary deposit, so i decided to name it "vinnie".

Is that near the "Gino" deposit?

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Odd that you found minerals there... Post Oak Creek is full of shark teeth! FULL of shark teeth! Like, everywhere you look full of shark teeth! :)

You can also find bones in there sometimes.

Are you a fossil newbie or do you have some experience?

Like Lance says, study the maps, read/search the posts in the Hunting Trips section, do some research on the formations. You will be much better prepared to find something.

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I think the biggest problem you are having, is that you need to train your eye. Look at some books, learn what can be found at the different locations, then you will start finding things. You have already been to 2 very productive sites and didn't really find anything. The fossils are there but you have to go slow and low and know what to look for.

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