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On our recent trip to Cape May Nj we stayed bay side in Villas and I found some pretty cool finds! The first photos I’m pretty sure are coral fossils (based on browsing this site) but the last few photos I am stumped. Any help would be great! My problem may be I have to great an imagination when it comes to rocks!
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Found these on a beach of a bay in Sussex county Delaware from Spring 2022 to present. 6 specimens total. #1 was super hard to photograph, did my best. #5 thought it would be easy to ID, was surprised to find a shell like that in the bay, but maybe it's from a decoration??? #6 thought maybe it was metal or part of something man-made, but feels like maybe? it's petrified. I'm purely an amateur, so just speculation. Any help is much appreciated. Thanks.
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A few years ago, I found a fossilized something on the Beach at Cape Henlopen. It was embedded in quartz. It looked kinda like a belemnite, but the wrong material. I was told by Plax that it was much older than our cretaceous belemnites. I tucked it into a spot on the shelf and wondered about it. Since then I have seen a few posts here and there from folks in NJ finding nice little paleozoic pieces on their side of the bay as well. This summer, I made it a mission to explore the Delaware beaches and see what I could find and how far north they went. I began at the cape and worked my way north, one beach to a trip. Cape Henlopen's beach is rather lacking in pebbles this season, so not much to find, but I know they turn up! I have spotted them here and there in the intervening years. The next few trips were Bowers Beach. Oh, yeah! Some are impressions of brachiopods and crinoids are so tiny in big pebbles that is just isn't worth it to take them home and wonder where on that pitted rock I found something recognizable. Others are very distinct chunks of coral replaced with chert, some with crystal quartz in the gaps between structural elements. Each time, I came home with a couple of fistfuls of nice little pieces, mostly about 1" across. The next stop was the beach in Battery Park, in New Castle. This is not a nice bathing beach. It is on a heavily-industrialized section of the Delaware River. The beach is littered with slag, brick, glass and bits of other man-made "rock." But, the black slag definitely allows the brown chert to stand out more. Bingo! The prettiest horn coral I've found yet, plus a few other nice goodies. All told, I came home with about as much as I usually find at Bowers, but cutting my travel time from over an hour to just 20 minutes. *Insert Happy Dance Here!* The last stop was a rare little stretch of river bank in Claymont, a mile or so from the northern border. The stretch was pretty narrow and short. There were plenty of pebbles, but not much chert. Nothing distinctly fossilized. Oh, yeah, and on the way BACK, I found, facing into the woods and hidden by the vegetation, a "No Trespassing" sign. Now they tell me. Ah, well, now I know it isn't worth the trouble anyway. The Delaware Geological Survey, as far as I can find, has no public record of fossils at the beach. They note the Cretaceous at the C&D Canal, the Miocene in a farm field that got bulldozed for a highway, Pleistocene silicified wood in the fields and streams just south of the canal, and plant impressions from the canal down to the southern border. The corals and other marine impressions in the chert are Paleozoic, possibly Devonian or Silurian, but no one seems quite sure. They were part of the ancient sea bed when the Cretaceous stuff at the canal was still alive and can be found in the pebbles there, too, occasionally. I find it really neat and kind of surreal to think about all those fossils that were ancient when my ancient sea shells were still alive.
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From the album: Delaware Fossils
Rugose Coral Paleozoic Delaware River, New Castle, Delaware -
Calvert County, MD beaches, Matoaka Lodges, Miocene diversity, September 2020
Chris Carpenter posted a topic in Fossil Hunting Trips
Here is a brief report from one of our latest forays into Calvert County, MD. The well-known stretch of shoreline along the western Chesapeake Bay is loaded with Miocene fossils, with the Calvert, St. Mary's, and Choptank formations progressively exposed along a ~24 mile stretch of beach and cliffs. We found an Airbnb in Lusby, MD which was not too far from Matoaka Lodges, which seemed the best bet since the nearly 2 mile walk to the beaches at Calvert Cliffs State Park is impractical for our family at this time. Covid-19 and Maryland's onerous private land regulations can make it tough if not impossible to access some of the other municipal beaches along the coast. For example, Brownies Beach, Dares Beach, Cove Point, and Flag Pond are all restricted in some way to town or county residents only. Matoaka Lodges however will grant day-pass access for a small fee, and the beach is from my experience very diverse and productive in its fossils. We spent a total of 5 hours there, employing an 1/8" sieve and also simply walking the surf line. The largest tooth pictured here actually washed up at my feet as I was surreptitiously bending over at the same time. Most of the rest were found with the sieve. Most of these are shark or sting ray teeth and a few turtle shells plus some of the smaller items I could not identify. A local told me that porpoise teeth can be found there also. This lot comprises the smallest fossils found; in addition to these (mostly) teeth and shell fragments were found a large and diverse sample of vertebrate fragments, corals, miscellaneous other fossils (snails, mollusks, etc.) which I will post in the follow-up report to this one. Having spent some time at some of the other sites along Calvert Cliffs this summer, I would say based on the diversity, number of fossils, and time spent collecting, that Matoaka is definitely worth the return trip. -
This was found in Nova Scotia, Canada, along the Bay of Fundy. Fossils in the area were typical carboniferous flora and small arthropod track ways. This was somewhat remote from other fossiliferous layers though. I collected them thinking maybe fish scales, but with a closer look I wonder if they could be pieces of arthropod shell. Notice that they are recognizable mostly by their reflective nature.
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Beach Combing for Ancient Corals on the Delaware Bay
I_gotta_rock posted a topic in Fossil Hunting Trips
Just a short video of a quick trip to the beach last week to enjoy the spring sunshine! -
Hi! I found this near a marsh in the back bay of southern NJ. It is approx 1" x 3/4". Can anyone help ID it?
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This specimen and dozens like it were collected from matrix material deposited in the waters of the Chesapeake Bay by a landslide. It is one of only a few species that consistently survived intact in the matrix samples I collected. Most specimens were single, unbroken valves, but several had both valves together and intact. This specimen was donated to the Delaware Museum of Natural History. Formerly known as Corbula inequalis.
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From the album: Delaware Fossils
Rugose Coral Paleozoic Delaware River, New Castle, Delaware -
From the album: Delaware Fossils
Crinoid Stem Sections Largest is about 2 mm across. Delaware River, New Castle, Delaware -
From the album: Delaware Fossils
Rugose Coral Paleozoic Bowers Beach, Kent County, Delaware -
From the album: Delaware Fossils
Possibly Syringopora Paleozoic Cape Henlopen, Lewes, Delaware -
From the album: Delaware Fossils
Rugose Coral Paleozoic Lewes, Delaware -
From the album: Delaware Fossils
Found on the beach in New Castle, Delaware. Known Paleozoic fossil area. Identity unknown. -
From the album: Delaware Fossils
Rugose "Horn" Coral Paleozoic Bowers Beach, Kent County, Delaware -
From the album: Delaware Fossils
Tabulate coral Paleozoic Bowers Beach, Kent County, Delaware -
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The Delaware Bay is quite a mixed bag. Things wash up from various ages. We find paleozoic marine stuff. We find pleistocene petrified cyprus wood. This weekend we found a few pieces of coral in Lewes, DE. They are obviously way too new to be paleozoic. The only living reef around here is made up of tube worms because the water is too dang cold for coral. Anyone have any ideas how old this might be? Calvert Cliffs is on the other side of the peninsula and to the south. They contain Miocene corals, but the geography is very different. Anyone have a clue?
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I will be in Palo Alto CA this week and will have the afternoon on Tuesday to hunt fossils. I would love to find some nice sand dollars and shark teeth. If I find enough I will put some in an auction to support the forum. Any good suggestions? Thank you
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Hi, I understand my beachfinds are almost always going to be worn by the sea... but i think i find trying to id them part of the fun. This one has me stumped. Any ideas?
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I was wondering if it would be possible and what the benefits might be to form a fossil hunting group here in the panhandle? It might help us to get a better idea of what was actually here. I only know of a few papers and some book mentions that include the panhandle and most are from the 30's t0 50's and are mostly shells. We'd need a real paleontologist also.
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Headed out last Sunday to Bayfront Park. I got down there before the sun even came up and there were still people down there. I don't think its possible to go without running into some one down there. The water was really high and cloudy from all the rain we've had, so pickings were slim. I did manage to find a mako sticking out of some fallen formation out of the cliffs. The tooth is in great shape but the gums are a little beat up. What i really like about this mako is it really shows some wicked feeding damage from where the shark bit its own tooth. I wonder what it could be eating. I hope you enjoy. If you frequent Bayfront park hit me up I'd love to have someone to go with sometimes. Boneheadz
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