My second trip to the Calvert Cliffs

[Kurt Komoda]

Last Monday, June 12th, was my first trip to the Calvert Cliffs, and while my haul is hardly breathtaking I was very happy with it since it was my first tooth-hunting trip ever (first pic). I did my best to try and i.d. the finds, but I'm probably off on some of them. In fact, looking at this again, I can see that the top middle one is probably the tooth of a Lemon Shark, not a Gray as I had labeled it a week ago. I didn't spend much time each time I stopped at a beach (I was kayaking from Brownie's Point), because I didn't know how much there was to see as I traveled south. Turns out, only that first run of cliffside beaches at low tide offered anything, but I spent most of the day paddling south past the rocky shore, wooden piers and private beaches.

 

 

 

There were thunderstorms on Monday so I went yesterday, June 20th. This time I spent the entire time on those cliffside beaches at low tide. I'm pretty happy with what I found, though I'm sure it's pretty standard fare.

 

 

As I was walking past one of the several landslides that spill out into the sea from the cliffs, I saw something sticking straight up out of one. It turned out to be half of a meg tooth (on the right, below)! I clawed around in the surrounding clay to see if the other half was anywhere to be found, but that search was as useless as I expected it to be. Looking down, I found what I think is a second partial meg tooth. I ended up finding a number of teeth visible on the surface of these landslides, but I didn't have any tools aside from a small hand trowel for scooping up stuff for sifting. 

 

 

I found some sort of bone in one of the landslides, and I *think* it's a partial cetacean ulna?

 

 

Two other notable finds were what I think is a Shortfin Mako shark tooth and an Odontocete tooth- which, btw, I almost threw away. I didn't know what it was and it looked like something from a modern plant.  It passed my completely silly squeeze test (it didn't fall apart like rotted plant matter), so I kept it. Well, now I know.

 

 

So, are we allowed to dig around in those landslides? I know, aside from it being dangerous, that we're prohibited from touching the cliff face, but these landslides extend out from the cliff and most reach the waterline. Some of them seem pretty new, just based on vegetation -or absence thereof- on them.
 Anyway, I had a great day and I hope to return soon.

[Trevor]

Excellent finds!

[izak_]

That stuff is amazing!

[Doctor Mud]

Nice finds!

 

I think the bigger "Meg" is a Carcharocles chubutensis. There are cusps.

the smaller tooth could also be.

 

I think you are bang on with the ulna.

the bone beside it in the first picture is an epiphysis from a cetacean vertebra.

 

i would love to visit this site one day.

[Vieira]

Nice finds.

Congratulations

[Darktooth]

Nice finds! Yes you are allowed to dig only in the piles that have fallen off the cliff.

[Gizmo]

Great finds and report! 

[gavialboy]

congrats on the great finds.

[Auspex]

Thank you for your excellent report! It is well photographed and well annotated. You did some good research on your finds, too.

Well Done

[jcbshark]

Awesome finds, congrats 

[Kurt Komoda]

2 hours ago, Darktooth said:

Nice finds! Yes you are allowed to dig only in the piles that have fallen off the cliff.

Next time I'll bring an entrenching tool. Not sure what these cliffs are made of, but the yellowish clay is extremely dense and sticky. When it gets caked onto you, it takes a bit of scrubbing in the ocean water to get it off, so I'll have to deal with that. There were occasionally these mini-landslides occurring and so there'd be this little shower of pebble-sized clay wads tumbling and skipping down. You can see how this stuff collects at the bottom in the photo. It also freaked me out when I realized that all those "boulders" lying on the shore are soft- if I hit them with my hand trowel, I could cut into them slightly.

 

 

You can see from the photo below that the landslides contain oodles of goods- albeit mostly broken up bits of goods. You can see that I'm pointing to a fragment of what I think is a meg tooth. I didn't get a photo, but there was a lot of this iridescent mother-of-pearl material that wasn't attached to anything. It was paper thin and was only held together by the clay it was on, so you couldn't really collect it. Does anyone know what that is? It doesn't look like anything, but you can see a scrap of it in the upper left of the photo below.

 

 

Thanks, everyone for you kind comments! I'm just starting fossil collecting, but I've wanted to do it all my life. Now, I'm going to search through the forum to research ways to file, store, or display my finds.

[Kurt Komoda]

5 hours ago, Doctor Mud said:

Nice finds!

 

I think the bigger "Meg" is a Carcharocles chubutensis. There are cusps.

the smaller tooth could also be.

 

I think you are bang on with the ulna.

the bone beside it in the first picture is an epiphysis from a cetacean vertebra.

 

i would love to visit this site one day.

 

 Thank you for this information!

 I found the epiphysis cookie on top of one of the landslides. I had no idea what it was, but it definitely looked to be worth keeping. Now, I need to find an intact specimen.

 

I hope you get to visit the cliffs, Doctor Mud! I live in Central Jersey, so it's a 3.5 hour drive for me. I'm about half an hour from the Big Brook fossil site, though. I've only found handfuls of Belemnites, but I still think they're pretty cool. I found a pretty big one on Monday.

 

[Fossildude19]

Great report, finds, and pictures.

Thanks for posting this. 

Regards,

[ynot]

39 minutes ago, Kurt Komoda said:

there was a lot of this iridescent mother-of-pearl material that wasn't attached to anything. It was paper thin and was only held together by the clay it was on, so you couldn't really collect it

Those are fragments of shells.

 

Nice finds and report, thanks for sharing.

[Darktooth]

One thing to keep in mind is that these landslides sometimes come down in huge sections and have extreme potential to seriously hurt or even kill someone. So be mindful of this. They can let loose without warning. Usually when I hunt there, my rule of thumb is if I get showered upon by debris I leave that immediate area.

[DevonianDigger]

Awesome finds! I was just on the other side in the Potomac over the weekend. Found lots of nice teeth, but nothing as large as what you found on the ocean side. 

 

Loving those belemnites, wouldn't mind getting up to Big Brook one of these days!

[jewelonly]

I enjoyed your report very much! Congrats on your finds!!  

 

Leah

[SailingAlongToo]

@Kurt Komoda

2 things:

 

1st: You can send photos of your cetacean limb bone and tooth to Dr. Stephen Godfrey at Calvert Marine Museum and he can quite probably ID it to Genus and maybe species. He will want clear photos from all angles with a scale in each photo. It's really good to learn about the science of these creatures and how they came to be where we are now finding them. If you haven't visited CMM, you should do so. Great people and great displays. @Boessemaybe able to help too.

 

2nd: As someone who has 15 years in teaching and assessing mine safety and is trained in difficulties and dangers of trench / engulfment rescue techniques, I will reiterate what @Darktooth stated. Those cliff sloughs are extremely dangerous. A rock or hard clay the size of your fist hitting you on the head, neck or shoulder area from 100 feet (+/-) up can easily kill you or at least knock you unconscious. Anything larger would certainly kill you or break bones at a minimum if it hit you below the chest. You can't run as fast as gravity can make those blocks of material fall. That material weights an average of 2,200 lbs per cubic meter (+/-). That means roughly for every 3 foot wide X 3 foot deep X 3 foot tall block you see = A TON!! Not to mention, running away in water or the gooey clay as you pointed out, won't help you escape. Another issue is once material starts falling, you don't know how far linearly (upstream or downstream) the slough or fall will extend. Many times you couldn't cover enough ground fast enough to get out from under it.

 

If I can offer 1 piece of advice about collecting around the cliffs, always be aware of your surroundings. Don't walk head down focusing on what you can find. Every few minutes you should look up and assess the cliffs you are getting ready to walk under and then the beach you are getting ready to travel through. Waves hitting against the slough sitting at the bottom of a cliff leaves NO escape route or margin for error. There are obviously situations that should be avoided or areas that should be traveled through as quickly as possible, if you've chosen to walk in that area.

 

Happy hunting and hopefully, we will run into each other sometime along CC.

 

SA2

[Kurt Komoda]

Yes, Darktooth and SailingAlongToo, I was extremely apprehensive about being so close to the cliffs, and I tried to stay away or move quickly through areas where the cliffs overhang in that "I'm absolutely going to fall sometime soon" way. The safest situations seemed to be where the landslides had created a shallow incline that extended out into the water and was far enough away from the cliffs. Now, I'm not saying that I did it right. I probably did a bunch of stupid things, but I'll definitely be taking your advice in the future.

 

I'll look into contacting Dr. Godfrey! Thanks so much for the info!

[CrocodileJen]

NICE! I live in Richmond and hunt similar formations near Westmoreland but have always wanted to go to Calvert. Looks like you had a great time. 

 

And I concur about watching out for falling objects. HUGE slabs can slide off with no warning and people have been seriously hurt or killed. The cliffs are eroding rapidly. 

[Kurt Komoda]

I can't wait to go back, but I can't make these 3.5 hour trips from Jersey all the time. I'll be sure to be extra careful whenever I'm near those cliffs. I should probably check out the areas further south at some point. Will check the forum to see where others have been.

[doushantuo]

Good report ,Kurt.

Scenic,good pix

Boesse  might know this one

Pathology & osteology:

mms12363.pdf

[doushantuo]

short review

outtake(nb:from 1990)

[Ropterus]

Congratulations on your finds! I only started getting into this just over a year ago and it's very addicting. Keep hunting and thanks for the great report!

[Fossil-Hound]

@Kurt Komoda the mother-of-perl shells are most likely Chesapecten nefrens but I would need a complete shell to know for sure.