Search the Community

This is my image collection from samples of beach sand from Edisto Beach, SC. I hope to add more images and inforamtion to this thread over time, kind of as a way to archive my exploration here. Some background info: Microscope is Amscope M120 with a 1.3 mp digital cam, the mfg claims "the cam is about equal to a 40X eyepiece" (whatever THAT means...) With 4X and 10X objectives, this gives me 2 usable settings of 160X and 400X. Most images will be the 160X variety, the higher magnification not so great at 3-D objects. The best I can figure so far is at "160X" the field of view of the images is between 1mm and 1.4mm. Not all of the images are fossils, some are just cool things I found along the way. Mostly, I'm hunting forams, still learning how to ID them. If you recognize something go ahead and shout it out :-) The samples are a mix of pretty much everything from the oligocene to the present, megladon teeth are occasionally found on this beach along with thousands of smaller teeth, turtle fossils, fish, coral, sea shell, even mammal fossil bone. For this search I started with a wash to pan out any light weight organics, then washed through a fine kitchen strainer and cooked the sample dry in a toaster over. The material on the beach can range from super fined grained to shell banks with 4"+ shells and frags. At the scale of the strainer and microscope I have available small shark teeth and fish parts are mostly screened out, but they can be present in unfiltered sand. OK....enough with the boring stuff....how about some pretty pics?