Happy 4th of July hunt from Calvert Cliffs

[paxhunter]

Spent the day on 2 different beaches and was rewarded with a rare excellent summertime hunt. Paper towel is from on the Bay in the morning low tide and a close up of the good stuff the bigger meg is 2 3/4 teeth on the plate are from the river on the afternoon low tide before the storms chased me off the beach with a ground shot of the river meg oh how rare it is to find megs on the river!!!

[Fossil-Hound]

@paxhunter Megs at CC are rare! My last day in Maryland is next Sunday. I'm going to miss that place. What beaches did you go to?

[paxhunter]

4 minutes ago, Fossil-Hound said:

@paxhunter Megs at CC are rare! My last day in Maryland is next Sunday. I'm going to miss that place. What beaches did you go to?

Thanks it is rare to find megs in the summer with all the sand its not normally till fall and winter when i do well and In the morning i was over by plum point and on the river in the afternoon up by hall creek and are you moving away

 

[Trevor]

Awesome finds!

 

[jcbshark]

Wow great haul! 

[CBOB]

Wow!  You did great!  Thanks for sharing!!!!

[Darktooth]

Nice megs and cow shark!

[Doctor Mud]

4 hours ago, paxhunter said:

Spent the day on 2 different beaches and was rewarded with a rare excellent summertime hunt. Paper towel is from on the Bay in the morning low tide and a close up of the good stuff the bigger meg is 2 3/4 teeth on the plate are from the river on the afternoon low tide before the storms chased me off the beach with a ground shot of the river meg oh how rare it is to find megs on the river!!!

I would be stoked with that paper towel find, so well preserved and.... Dry!

 

Seriously though, I'm green with envy and hope to find my own teeth like this one day. Megs are just so rare down here!

[paxhunter]

24 minutes ago, Doctor Mud said:

I would be stoked with that paper towel find, so well preserved and.... Dry!

 

Seriously though, I'm green with envy and hope to find my own teeth like this one day. Megs are just so rare down here!

Calvert Cliff Megs rival anywhere on the planet in my opinion they might not be as big as other spots but the quality makes up for it by far, if you find yourself stateside let me know i will show you around the cliffs

[Doctor Mud]

12 minutes ago, paxhunter said:

Calvert Cliff Megs rival anywhere on the planet in my opinion they might not be as big as other spots but the quality makes up for it by far, if you find yourself stateside let me know i will show you around the cliffs

Thanks Paxhunter,

A very generous offer. I would love to take you up on that one day. When is the best time of year to visit the cliffs?

it is a dream of mine to visit such a site.

 

Thanks also for not taking offense at my weird sense of humor 

[Shellseeker]

41 minutes ago, Doctor Mud said:

I would be stoked with that paper towel find, so well preserved and.... Dry!

 

Seriously though, I'm green with envy and hope to find my own teeth like this one day. Megs are just so rare down here!

 

I realized that 1) I do not know which parts of the world have Megs and which do not AND 2) I do not know WHY Megalodons would be missing from a specific location.  Is it because that the land was always land during the years 23 to 2.6 myas? That's a real possibility. Please educate me/us on the other reasons.  Thanks Jack

[paxhunter]

While the land masses were generally in the same place as they are now there were differences some areas like the east coast of the united states were underwater and did not emerge until after the last ice age exposing the miocene deposits we enjoy here in maryland. The Salisbury embayment gives us a very wide date range to explore from 23million years ago to 3-5 million years old in the south in only 20miles we have 3 different formations to play in to the north in the Calvert formation we find a lot of transitional teeth ie chubutensis and further south in in the Choptank and St. Marys formation we find more of the big classic megalodon teeth. Plus so many other marine fossils are in the cliffs and some land mammals as well it is truly some of the most diverse deposits on the planet. So to wrap up without doing some research on your particular area my guess would be that Australia in particular was above water during the Miocene epoch hence no megs :-( And the best time to find large amounts of megs with any regularity is the winter months Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb, Mar, April, And early May. June July August and Sept are rough because of the higher water and wind directions that tend to pile sand up on our deposits of material making it more of a luck game than skill.

[Doctor Mud]

2 minutes ago, Shellseeker said:

 

I realized that 1) I do not know which parts of the world have Megs and which do not AND 2) I do not know WHY Megalodons would be missing from a specific location.  Is it because that the land was always land during the years 23 to 2.6 myas? That's a real possibility. Please educate me/us on the other reasons.  Thanks Jack

That's a great question Shell Seeker.

 

Is it population size (of megs), preservation bias, area of exposure and the huge number of people collecting in the US?

 

Speaking for New Zealand as I know it best. We have a fantastic sequence of Tertiary deposits. Why so few megs?

could it be that megs are as rare elsewhere but there are more people hunting or by area more exposure?

Probably not.... But perhaps the exposure could contribute. But I can't think of a place where one person could walk away with multiple megashark teeth in a single day in NZ. Perhaps if you were very lucky.

 

Is it a preservation bias or a true indication of population sizes?

i would think apart from some localities and since large predators like megasharks would have a huge range, I would argue preservation bias.

 

It seems that you need some sort of concentration process to form a "bone bed" where your chances of finding teeth increases. We have one Eocene/Oligocene unconformity with a higher concentration of teeth and bones, but still megashark teeth are rare.

I spent years at one site and C. Angustidens was less than 1% of what I found.

Our Miocene localities are like the Oregon coast. There must have been huge sedimentation rates and fossils are "diluted". You get massive deposits of siltstone that is probably due to intense mountain building processes at the time in NZ.

 

I don't want to hijack the thread, but an interesting question to ponder.

[paxhunter]

2 minutes ago, Doctor Mud said:

That's a great question Shell Seeker.

 

Is it population size (of megs), preservation bias, area of exposure and the huge number of people collecting in the US?

 

Speaking for New Zealand as I know it best. We have a fantastic sequence of Tertiary deposits. Why so few megs?

could it be that megs are as rare elsewhere but there are more people hunting or by area more exposure?

Probably not.... But perhaps the exposure could contribute. But I can't think of a place where one person could walk away with multiple megashark teeth in a single day in NZ. Perhaps if you were very lucky.

 

Is it a preservation bias or a true indication of population sizes?

i would think apart from some localities and since large predators like megasharks would have a huge range, I would argue preservation bias.

 

It seems that you need some sort of concentration process to form a "bone bed" where your chances of finding teeth increases. We have one Eocene/Oligocene unconformity with a higher concentration of teeth and bones, but still megashark teeth are rare.

I spent years at one site and C. Angustidens was less than 1% of what I found.

Our Miocene localities are like the Oregon coast. There must have been huge sedimentation rates and fossils are "diluted". You get massive deposits of siltstone that is probably due to intense mountain building processes at the time in NZ.

 

I don't want to hijack the thread, but an interesting question to ponder.

Feel free to hijack it is the whole point of the forum in my humble opinion an open place to discuss and learn its always great to hear from other people Thanks

 

[Doctor Mud]

5 minutes ago, paxhunter said:

While the land masses were generally in the same place as they are now there were differences some areas like the east coast of the united states were underwater and did not emerge until after the last ice age exposing the miocene deposits we enjoy here in maryland. The Salisbury embayment gives us a very wide date range to explore from 23million years ago to 3-5 million years old in the south in only 20miles we have 3 different formations to play in to the north in the Calvert formation we find a lot of transitional teeth ie chubutensis and further south in in the Choptank and St. Marys formation we find more of the big classic megalodon teeth. Plus so many other marine fossils are in the cliffs and some land mammals as well it is truly some of the most diverse deposits on the planet. So to wrap up without doing some research on your particular area my guess would be that Australia in particular was above water during the Miocene epoch hence no megs :-( And the best time to find large amounts of megs with any regularity is the winter months Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb, Mar, April, And early May. June July August and Sept are rough because of the higher water and wind directions that tend to pile sand up on our deposits of material making it more of a luck game than skill.

Thanks pax hunter,

 

we we were writing our last post at the same time apparently.

Winter months would be perfect for me. A chance to escape the 40 degree C plus heat!

The recent tectonic stability of Australia could explain the lack of tertiary deposits.

NZ is a different story and a bit of a puzzle for me (see my previous post).

 

I know of about a dozen C. Megalodon teeth from New Zealand that are in Museums and private collections.

C.angustidens is more common. I've never seen a chub from New Zealand. I read about an otodus, but never an C.auriculatus.

[paxhunter]

1 minute ago, Doctor Mud said:

Thanks pax hunter,

 

we we were writing our last post at the same time apparently.

Winter months would be perfect for me. A chance to escape the 40 degree C plus heat!

The recent tectonic stability of Australia could explain the lack of tertiary deposits.

NZ is a different story and a bit of a puzzle for me (see my previous post).

 

I know of about a dozen C. Megalodon teeth from New Zealand that are in Museums and private collections.

C.angustidens is more common. I've never seen a chub from New Zealand. I read about an otodus, but never an C.auriculatus.

In my collection i have otodus chubutensis and megalodon when it comes to big teeth and we also find all sorts of other sharks teeth from cow, thresher, hemipristis, makos, benedini, sandtiger and the list goes on and on i LOVE the cliffs im very luck to live within a stones throw of them

 

[Doctor Mud]

51 minutes ago, paxhunter said:

Calvert Cliff Megs rival anywhere on the planet in my opinion they might not be as big as other spots but the quality makes up for it by far, if you find yourself stateside let me know i will show you around the cliffs

 

I agree,

 

Big is not always better. My favourite Meg in my collection is a perfect 3 inch Lee Creek tooth. Size is impressive, but colour and preservation would trump size I reckon.

[paxhunter]

3 minutes ago, Doctor Mud said:

 

I agree,

 

Big is not always better. My favourite Meg in my collection is a perfect 3 inch Lee Creek tooth. Size is impressive, but colour and preservation would trump size I reckon.

I couldn't agree more

[Fossil-Hound]

When it comes to CC I found a half a Meg last February. Very large with sharp serrations. The best time to go is in the middle of the winter after a storm but there's a greater risk of the cliffs falling since they are not held up by active vegetation. In fact the falling formations help to find more big teeth as they become exposed. Fewer people are around in the winter. Collecting at CC in the winter is probably one of my most favorite activities. As for the formation if you start north you're dealing with the Calvert Formation and the farther south you go the younger the formations such as Choptank then St. Mary's. Megs are rare but there are rarer teeth. I just found a Bramble tooth (similar to cow) and those shark teeth are very rare because these sharks where deep sea shark and it was believed that CC was covered by a shallow sea at the time. Thresher shark teeth are also hard to come by and I don't think I've ever found one but will have to recheck my collection.

[Fossil-Hound]

13 hours ago, paxhunter said:

Thanks it is rare to find megs in the summer with all the sand its not normally till fall and winter when i do well and In the morning i was over by plum point and on the river in the afternoon up by hall creek and are you moving away

 

 

Moving to Utah soon for a new job. Really going to miss Maryland and CC but hopefully I'll get to go out one last time on Wednesday.