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It’s her biggest one and we always wondered what it is. But now I’m starting to get more into fossils

Hi all. I’m 27 and have been hunting for 6 months. I live in Ladson so i collect a lot in the Charleston area, but I’m from Aiken SC and that’s where my current passion is. Would love to hear from anyone who knows anything about the Aiken area or the formations therein, specifically the dry branch formation. Looking forward to great discussions, happy to be here!

Location: Abbey Woods, London, UK Epoch: late Palaeocene to early Eocene (54.5Ma) Geology: Lesnes Shell bed of Blackheath Member Date visited: 4 March 2024 As the visit to Tankerton proved a bust, I was eager to actually find some fossils and decided to try out Abbey Woods when the Monday dawned sunny and mild. Again, this was a new destination and I thought it best to scout it out before dragging the rest of my family along. I took public transport with a nice muddy backpack and hiking boots, so must’ve confused a fair number of people on the London tube. Thankfully, the new Elizabeth line terminates at Abbey Woods, so it was pretty easy to access. It’s a fair walk from the tube station to the park (.7mi) and there is very little on the high street (if you could even call it that), apart from a few corner shops to get a drink and a Greggs. You could seemingly take a bus to the park, but I didn’t see any during the time I was walking, so probably best to plan on a walk. The main entrance to the park is somewhat signposted, although you can’t really see it until you get close; it’s near the pedestrian overpass. The park itself is beautiful. I didn’t know what to expect, and was very pleasantly surprised. The ruins of the abbey are striking, and the trails are clearly signposted and lead up into a wilderness area that feels like you’re completely outside the city. There’s a café/information centre near the ruins with clean toilets and running water. The water will be KEY to this site. To reach the fenced-in fossil bed, you can either go up a gentle slope to the left of the main entrance or take a steep set of stairs from the café. I would recommend going with the steep stairs when hauling water, as it’s considerably closer to the café and, although steeper, a shorter distance to travel. I didn’t know how far away the water was, just that it existed on site, so didn’t bring the appropriate transportation gear; all I had was a collapsible bucket, so abandoned the idea of wet sieving on site. Instead, I put on my waterproof trousers and began to dig down into the dirt with my trowel. It is spring in the UK, so the dirt was wet. The recommendations online https://ukfossils.co.uk/2016/06/16/abbey-wood/ are to wait for a dry period, but who knows when that will be, so I went for it anyway. The dirt was easy to scoop and move about into my sieve. I found Group A dry sieving, and was quite pleased, as what I had seen online indicated that it would be very hard going indeed to find anything during this part of the process. That being said, I didn’t start finding anything until maybe 18 inches down, but then it was fairly regular for the remaining hour and a quarter that I was there. While sieving, I separated out the larger rocks and sticks and put the fine sieved dirt into a bag to carry home. You can remove 2k from the site; I wouldn’t have wanted to carry more than that in my backpack for over an hour on public transport anyway! Another group joined me about an hour into digging – a mum, her 7/8yo son and his friend. They had buckets, a plastic sieve, and plastic shovels and were getting quite frustrated. I gave them some pointers and ended up inviting them to share my hole that I had dug out so they could reach a deeper layer. The son became frustrated quickly and just played around, but his friend loved it once I started pulling out teeth (and gave one to him). He found a couple of bits that may have been teeth that I recommended he take home to wash, and right at the end the mum found a definite tooth – she was delighted! I was glad to help them enjoy the digging more and get some results; I expect the friend will be back with his family at some point. There is a definite technique to follow at Abbey Woods. I’m going again with my family and another two families (kids range in age from 4-6) in a couple of weeks and will bring the following: - metal digging implements (and plastic ones for the kids to play with) - waterproof trousers for kids definitely (and recommended for adults) and generally outdoor clothes - large buckets for wet sieving - milk jugs to carry the water up the hill - sieves (mine is 2.5mm, but I would recommend smaller as some of the teeth are teeny-tiny) - bags for taking home micromatrix post-sieve - spare bags for muddy clothes and tools - snacks and drinks and money/card? for the café There is a wonderful resource for identifying your finds: <http://www.trg.org/downloads/fossils of abbey wood.pdf> It is written simply for the general public/amateurs, has a clear key for the diagrams, and has high quality images. I used it to identify the majority of my finds - just a few questionable pieces remaining. See photos below. I hope this information has proved helpful to anyone reading! Maybe see you there next time. 1. Marsh Clam 2. Marsh creeper 3. Moon snail 4. Auger shell 5. Extinct clam 1 6. Clam sucker 7. Extinct clam 2 8. Freshwater snail 9. Ray/fish mouth parts? 10. Sand shark (Gluekmanotodus heinzelini) 11. Sand shark 12. Sand shark (Jaekelotodus robustus) 13. Sand shark (Palaeohypotodus rutoti) 14. larger Sand shark teeth 15. Fish teeth? 16. Trace fossils 17. Questionable pieces; the top tooth is another Jaekelotodus robustus I left out, I think. The bottom left looks to be a partially erupted tooth? And the bottom right is either from a mouth plate or a piece of bone - really small fragment and hard to tell. Please let me know any confirmations/corrections. Cheers!

Found these a few months back. My best teeth from 2023. Looking forward to more in 2024. Maryland finds, specifically about 15 miles north of Calvert cliffs

Hey guys! I found these black beauties and am trying to identify them. Any help appreciated! Thanks!

I got back out to the Calvert Cliffs to do some more hunting yesterday, the low tide wasn’t till noon so I got to the beach around 9am to begin my search. I had more beach than I was expecting which was a pleasant surprise but the wind made the water a little choppy and murky. With it being a weekday there was only one other person out on the beach walking ahead of me. I was careful not to walk in their footsteps, searching the spots they passed when I see a root poking out of the sand, I move the sand out of the way to unearth a beautiful 1.75” broad hastalis! A great start, I really didn’t need to find much else to make to the trip, and it was only the first find! I continue on and eventually the person ahead of me decided to turn back, leaving me a lot of unsearched beach ahead. I found some nice hemis and a dolphin tooth, then I spot what I thought was a chunk of bone rolling in the wash. I pick it up to reveal the corner chunk of a massive megalodon, it looks like it would have been at least 4”. Absolute heartbreaker, but it’s still neat to find and gets my hopes up for the future. Soon after my hopes were realized when I spot a gorgeous 2” megalodon/chubutensis wedged between some clay blocks, unmoved by the waves rolling over it. At this point I was at the end of the beach and ready to begin my walk back, already very happy with my finds so far, and the waves were mixing everything up so I still had hope for another good find. Not too long after turning around, I spot what looked like a large root of an odontocete tooth rolling in the wash, I scoop up and reveal what I believe a 1.8” squalodon tooth, unfortunately a good portion of the crown is broken off so I’m not sure. While the break on the crown is heartbreaking it’s still an amazing find and I was quite ecstatic. The day wasn’t done yet though, before I got back to the truck I found a nice shark vertebra, and a little beat up meg/chub. It was a great day out on the bay and even though I had some heartbreakers, I definitely had a couple trip makers! Thanks for reading y’all, till next time.

Me and my girlfriend got back out to the Calvert Cliffs to do some hunting again yesterday, a resident with beach access has started to allow me to park and walk down to a good stretch of beach, saving us from needed to kayak there for access.(Although I love kayaking the bay it’s nice to get a break sometimes) we got to the beach a little after sunrise to begin to search. The water was a little high but it was calm and relatively clear, and there was a really thick shell line on the beach, so I was hopeful for some good finds. First find of the day my girlfriend found a really nice lower cow shark tooth that had settled on top of the shell line. As we continued on, I was searching the water and shell line while dragging my scoop behind me. I lifted my scoop and looked in to see a lower symphyseal cow shark tooth! As I went to look a little closer it fell through the mesh on my scoop, I shouted and dove on top of it. It’s .53” wide and is missing most of the root but the blade is complete. A little further down the beach I found a nice epiphysis disk with a .7” diameter, strangely most of my complete epiphysis disks I’ve found have been within 20yrds of that spot. Things slowed down for a little but we were still finding a lot of nice sized Physogaleus teeth. We passed and chatted with a couple other groups of fossil hunters, thinking now our finds would thin out even more, I was proven wrong when a large 1.5” hemipristis and a micro megalodon wash out in front of me. As we neared some fresh cliff falls the water clarity got worse, but a wave at the right time gave me the water clarity I needed to spot a beautiful 1.83” megalodon/chubutensis out in the water. The walk back fossil finds were few and far between but we did spot a Belted Kingfisher and a Bald Eagle which can be just as nice sometimes. It was another great day out along the Calvert Cliffs. I’m thank for anytime I get to spend at the beach but, finds like today, bird sightings and chatting with other people passionate about the same thing really make me appreciate being able to do this. Until next time y’all, thanks for reading!

I think it’s a great white maybe? it’s labeled inside 1969 w some writing in another language.

Hi. I'm a final year undergraduate student doing my dissertation on sharks. There are a few teeth I found which I feel I should be able to identify given some features preserved, and I don't want to just leave them as indet. They were found at Walton-on-the-Naze, UK, from the lowermost London Clay Formation, Eocene (Ypresian) in age. All photos show teeth in the best view that I could capture with me camera/have most of the specimen in focus. Scale bar on the right = 1cm. For all teeth they are in lingual (left), labial (middle) and mesial (right) views where applicable. Apologies for the lateral photos being so blurry, didnt get the chance to run them through focus stacking Thanks in adavance. Also, if people want to ask me any questions on the disso feel free to.

Been a few years but finally back into finding fossils!

Hello I am looking at two megalodon teeth but concerned about whether the root has been rebuilt? I am worried the root is fake and this is making the tooth is larger than its actual cm and thus demanding higher prices. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

I hit the beach early this morning hoping for a nice low tide and calm, clear water. That wasn’t the case, the water was choppy and murky and the tide was a lot higher than I expected. None the less I treaded on and stumbled on a little 1.32” meg tumbling in the wash. Continuing I found a small handful of little teeth and a nice epiphysis disk with a 2” diameter before turning around. With the water being rough I was still hopeful something nice would wash out in front of me. Then I spot my biggest heartbreaker of the season, the tip of what would have been a large meg. The tip alone was 1.62” with a gorgeous brown color; comparing it with my 4” meg back home it looks like the tooth could have been of similar size. I begin checking through the debris of fresh falls before heading back to the truck and I’m glad I did. I spot a pretty 1.9” meg sitting on top of a debris pile. Definitely pulled the trip together and made the most of non-ideal conditions. But regardless if what I find I always enjoy a walk along the shoreline looking for prehistoric treasures. Thanks for reading y’all until next time!

Kinda new to this started searching last year, when I moved to one of the few places you can find good fossils in Sweden. Below is a few of my finds. cheers!

I was just going through my unread on the forum when I found the show us your rarest shark tooth thread. As I was scrolling through this thread I noticed at least two different species of Parotodus, which I found strange, as I was only aware of Parotodus Benedini. So what are the other species of the genus Parotodus and how do you distinguish between them?

Hello My name is Tim Martin. We recently moved to Ocean Isle Beach,NC 3 months ago and am interested in finding shark teeth as well as different shells while walking the beaches with my wife. Glad I stumbled upon this forum. Hope to look, learn and meet new people with same interests. I have posted a question in the ID part of the forum. Have a great day all.

Hello everyone, I am very happy I just took my first trip fossil hunting in Eastern UK, specifically in Tankerton an Herne Bay. Amateurs as we are, we were not sure what we were looking for, so did our best and grabbed the items that most caught our attention hoping they are fossils, also hoping that I could come to this forum and ask those with more experience about them. Sorry if the answers are too obvious! 1) In Herne Bay we found 6 shark teeth, I am pretty sure they are fossilised. One of them is a bit translucent and sharper, and I am not sure if that's from a contemporary shark, ir just happens to be a really well preserved fossil. 2) I also found an Oyster shell, it seems to me very "rocky", I want it to be a fossil but I don't know. 3) There is also this green item that looks like a partial beer coaster, but feels and looks like stone. Any ideas what that could be? 4) I think this one is a fossilised small snail shell, it has markings of concentric circles on the side, and has a shape that fits that of a snail, but that's about it. 5) We found many rocks with these features: light brown colour with patterns that remind me of a Cactus Lithops. Anyone know what these are? 6) Hopefully belemnite pieces, but honestly probably just rocks. 7) Found this rocky fragment with wave-like markings, I am much more confident about this one being a fossil than the other items besides the tooth. Ideas? 8) What I thought could be the point end of another snail shell. 9) We found these white and somewhat translucent rocks, anyone know which mineral they are? 10) And we also found these geodes with small crystals inside them. They do not wash out with water so I am sure the crystals are not salt haha, any ideas? Also, what looks like dirt in the picture is not dirt, I tried cleaning these rocks with water and my fingers and the brown stuff seems part of the minerals. Thanks a lot, and sorry for the long text!!

It was too cool and windy, for 2 hours of walking and looking for surface finds in a great wide open area 2-4-24; but I guess I heard that old siren's call again?

Got a surprise day off work on Tuesday so I decided to hit the cliffs to make the most of the day off. I got to the ramp around 10am to launch my kayak and headed to a beach I hadn’t been to in a little while. The trip started slow but I found a couple nice Hemipristis teeth to start getting my hopes up. I want finding to much in the wash and the water was to murky to find anything deep so I spent some time looking through debris around some fresh falls. Lo and behold a beautiful 1.75” Thecachampsa tooth is sitting right on top of one of the falls. It dried with some strange white staining that I wasn’t able to clean off, but none the less it’s still a great tooth. Continuing on I find a heartbreaking 2.3” megalodon that was broken almost in half (at least I got the larger half). Finishing up I got a few more nice Hemis and a handful of other nice smaller teeth. All in all in was a good day along the cliffs and it sure beat working. Thanks for reading, see y’all next time.

We’ve had a little more luck here in Qld Australia, our collection is growing. we think a few great white and Mako? What do you think? so excited to find these.

Hi group, my family and I are longtime shark tooth hunters. We’ve always gone to Venice and Sarasota. We’ve found great success using a shark tooth shovel and digging in shell piles a few feet into the water. We usually find hundreds of teeth this way. We’ve decided to try Amelia island this year and it seems that most people don’t use shark tooth shovels over there. I understand you can find teeth on the beach but are shark tooth shovels still useful to dig in the water? Is there any reason why this wouldn’t work as well as it has for us when we go to Venice?

Hello — I would love your help IDing these shark teeth: #1 — I think it symphyseal, perhaps P contortus. 10mm in length. From the Peace River of FL. #2 — Rather unsure about this one. Seems somewhat like a lemon shark tooth, but if I had to guess I would go with I retroflexus. 12mm long. From the Peace River of FL. #3 — New to me. Just under 3mm in length. From a creek in Summerville, SC. If I had to guess I would say a member of the Triakidae (hound sharks). As I understand it, this would be fairly unusual for SC, but this clade is attested for this locality in the literature https://bioone.org/journals/acta-palaeontologica-polonica/volume-53/issue-3/app.2008.0306/New-Fossil-Triakid-Sharks-from-the-Early-Eocene-of-Prémontré/10.4202/app.2008.0306.full. No idea about species or genus! Cheers!

I've often wondered what some of the fossil shark teeth in my collection would look like if they didn't have root damage, missing cusplets, etc. Many of these imperfect fossils are somewhat rarer and/or otherwise favorites of mine, so I've been hesitant to permanently alter them through restoration. Recently, I decided to go ahead and restore several of these teeth--but wanted to do so in a way that wouldn't be permanent. The technique I've adopted is to first paint the broken surfaces of the teeth that I want to restore with a couple of coats of liquid latex. Once the latex is dry, I then shape and build restored roots, cusplets, etc. out of epoxy putty on top of the intervening latex layer. The putty sticks well to the latex and can be shaped to match the tooth without directly touching or bonding with the fossil. In most cases, when the putty is dry, the restored pieces have been easy to detach with a simple tug, as the putty doesn't permanently bond to the latex (the latex layer itself is also then easily removable/peelable from the fossil). In a couple of cases, I have unfortunately caused a bit of damage to teeth in the process of removing the restored pieces. Once, because I inadvertently pushed the putty into an indentation in the root of the tooth and as a result it couldn't be cleanly pulled off/out. Another time, the tooth I was working on was more fragile than I realized and the force of pulling the putty off caused a fracture. Luckily, the damage wasn't too extensive in either case, and I've (hopefully) learned to be more careful. I had never attempted to restore teeth before but I found some very some helpful tips for doing so on TFF here and here. A few additional notes on materials and methods: The "white" (it's definitely more of a gray) epoxy putty I've been using is Apoxie Sculpt, which I ordered from an art supply store. I ordered the liquid latex online as well. For root surface texture, I've also used the liquid latex to create several small surface molds from different fossil teeth, which can be pressed into the epoxy putty before it hardens (as recommended in one of the TFF posts linked to above). I use an X-Acto knife for texture and shaping as well. I use fine sandpaper of varying grits, from 400 to 2000, to smooth the "enamel" portions of the restorations. I use acrylic paint for the colors--sienna, umber, tan, black, white, red, blue, yellow--and finish things off with a clear matte or clear gloss acrylic glaze to improve durability (the gloss glaze is for "enamel"). I use small amounts of non-permanent Museum Wax (ordered online) to attach the final restored pieces to the original fossils. Below are several of the results (the original teeth and the detached restored parts are on the left and the final teeth with their restored parts "attached" are on the right of these images). Otodus obliquus tooth from the Eocene of the Isle of Sheppey, Kent, UK -- restorations to the root and a missing cusplet: Cretodus sp. tooth from the Cretaceous of Texas, USA -- restoration to the cusp (I did a better job of color matching on the lingual than the labial side of this one): Cretodus sp. tooth from the Cretaceous of Texas, USA -- restoration to the root and a missing cusplet: Dwardius siversonii tooth from the Cretaceous of Stary Oskol, Russia -- restoration to the root: Otodus aksuaticus tooth from the Eocene of Maryland, USA -- restoration to the root and a missing cusplet: "Hubbell" Otodus megalodon tooth from the Mio-Pliocene of West Java, Indonesia -- restoration to the root and a small part of the cusp: Carcharodon carcharias tooth from the Mio-Pliocene of Florida, USA -- restoration to the tooth and a small part of the cusp:

Hi all, For a few months now, I occasionally go searching for shark/ray teeth in an old industrial area in Aruba. I found hundreds of smaller shark teeth (probably carcharhinus) and a handful of very cool & much larger teeth (likely otodus angustidens). This morning, I went walking the dogs there and stumbled upon a chunk of a much larger tooth! Could it be the megalodon? it could be a larger specimen of an O. Angustidens but the proportions are not quite the same… I'll let the experts judge for themselves. The (almost) complete O. Angustidens tooth in the middle is 2’1 inches (5,3 cm) long.

The child in me doesn’t like working on my birthday, so I like to take the day off to try to get out on the beach for a hunt. We had some crazy weather the days before with wind gusts up to 60mph! It had my hopes high to find myself a large tooth for my birthday. So yesterday me and my girlfriend got up early to kayak out on the bay to watch the sunrise before going to the cliff to start our hunt. It was a beautiful morning and the water was nice and calm, it’s hard to believe there was 6 foot waves not but a day and a half before. Once we land, after only about 15 minutes on the beach and I find an amazing 1.79” megalodon! And before I could catch up with my girlfriend to show her, I spot a really nice 1.72” hastalis tumbling in the water! We continue on with the finds slowing down after passing some fellow fossil hunters on the beach, but still finding some nice smaller teeth in the wash. I found another decent hastalis right as we turned around and a really nice shark vertebra before we got back to the kayaks. It was a great morning and I can’t think of a better way to spend my birthday. I may not have got that big tooth I’ve been hunting for, but I definitely can’t complain the the great haul I ended up with! Thanks for reading, see y’all next time!

Hey, As a little recap to the last post, a bit ago me and family were working on an excavation project for a house within Caldwell County in Central Texas and accidentally broke through the upper cretaceous layer (namely the Upper Taylor group) and found a bunch of fossils. This time around I'm going to post some shark teeth. 1. This is the largest shark tooth out of all of the ones I found from that area. 2. One of my top 10 coolest shark teeth I found there. It just looks so cool. Sadly I found it without the other cusp so that's a bit of a downer. 3. I have found multiple shark teeth looking similar to this one but I never managed to find a proper ID so I would appreciate the help. 4. Even better than Number 2. This is easily the top 5 coolest looking shark tooth I found. The design on the tooth just looks so cool. 5. The weirdest shark tooth I found. My best guess is that it might be a really young Squalicorax that lost its serrations over time. 6. This is one of the rarest shark teeth I found. I only found one other that looks like this. I'm struggling to ID the rest of the teeth that I got so if anyone has any pointers, I would really appreciate it. Thanks For the Help!