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During the first part of our summer holiday we spent a few days at Cap-Blanc-Nez. The tides and weather weren’t optimal for fossil hunting and lots of tourism at the location didn’t help much either, so our finds were relatively limited. The last day however we found 1 spectacular piece. A little brown spot was reflecting light on one of the loose boulders on the beach. It was a ptychodus tooh peeking out. They are very rare there and this one allone was worth the trip. After the prep at home it only got better, the tooth was complete and of considerable size. Enjoy the pictures :

School starts next week and my 10 yr old kiddo and I are both trying to extend summer as much as possible. We decided to go on a hunt yesterday afternoon. His focus was on the ever shrinking pools within the creek for turtles, snakes, and frogs, and my focus is on finding a mosasaur. It’s frustrating because I’m finding all sorts of shark and fish material but I have yet to stumble upon marine reptile. There seems to be several types of rock that yields teeth within the creek. The rocks range from dense shell mass, crumbly bits of pulverized things, light shell hash and shale, dark shale, sandy shale mix, and sandstone. After a bit of prospecting on loose rocks in the creek bed, I went to my go-to rock. This one rock is the most productive rock ever. It’s a big slab that was previous covered in water. It moves each time it rains, and teeth erode out from the bottom. Yesterday I loped off a 2ft section of the slab and explored it. At one point I uncovered a nice tooth that I was trying to gently break free. In doing so, I uncovered several additional teeth. In total, I probably found 15 ptychodus and 30 shark teeth. I've also posted a picture of a previous find of two teeth stacked, and of the various teeth we've found in a couple of trips. Most of the teeth are in the matrix so it takes some patience to work them free. Luckily the material is soft and crumbly, and can be worked with fairly easily. I might shift my focus to Dallas and try to do a road-trip hunt to a few spots along I-35 in Ellis, Tarrant, and Collin County for mosasaur. I'll read the old geology publications, paleontology papers, geology apps, and google maps, and jot down addresses to hunt. Probably a lot getting skunked but maybe one will pan out and I'll get that mosasaur tooth I'm after. Feel free to send a direct message if you can point us in the direction of the elusive marine reptile, or if you'd like to meet up and do some hunting.

I have been hunting the Basal Atco member of the Austin group in Central Texas for about 7 years. Others say that it is the uppermost part of the Eagle Ford. I don't doubt that it is some type of erosional zone involving the two. I have found hundreds of fossils in it. Most of them are beautiful reddish brown color. Most of them have been damaged somewhat by paleo-erosion before they were left in their final state. Many Basal Atco fossils are very interesting to me, because I can't find them anywhere else. My first area to hunt back in 2015 was a lot of fun. An exposed bluff where a giant chunk of the overhanging bedrock limestone had fallen down into the creek. I'm glad I wasn't under that whenever it fell. But, it left behind a nice exposure of what I came to think represented the Basal Atco. Boy was I wrong. Over 100 Ptychodus and other shark's teeth from the same area within a 1 ft thickness of conglomerate like material. Since then I have been at multiple locations of the same Basal Atco with many different expressions of what that might look like from a soft shaley mudstone to a hard rock-like conglomerate to primarily white thin sandy limestone seams with only occasional fossils in the middle of the bedrock. Most of these Basal Atco exposures have no fossils WHATSOEVER! I have found only half again as many Ptychodus fossils in all the other Basal Atco sites combined. Maybe I'd have better luck hunting the gravel banks - which is not my forte. I found a new location that I was not aware of early this summer. It was kind of fun hunting it because it was different than all the rest. I pulled out a partial ammonite and knew that I was in the Basal Atco formation and that there might be more fossils in there. It was obvious that other people had probably been hunting it some before I had been there. I came a second time and walked the football field length of the seam. If you've ever hunted the Basal Atco, then you know you might find yourself under an overhang of a large bluff that could collapse on you at any moment. This one was not that bad! I have generally avoided the areas with the most extreme overhangs. Those where you feel like you have entered a cave-like area (like Mesa Verde) where the rock acts like a huge roof over your head - that (in my overly cautious mind) could fall at any moment. So my goal was to hopefully find a Ptychodus martini. I have developed long-term inflammation in my wrists and hands. So hammering with a big 3 lb hammer or geologic hammer to break open limestone rock is no longer a pleasant thing. In fact, it can be downright debilitating for the next few days. But I did it this one time and was rewarded with a few Ptychodus teeth out of a 7 ft length x 1ft wide triangular seam of sandy limestone. The largest Ptychodus was 18 mm wide and it initially appeared to be what I was seeking. But, upon further evaluation it was instead a nice Ptychodus latissimus. The latter species is perhaps my favorite from the Atco. Under the light it has a little bit of a rainbow sheen which doesn't come out in the photos. I don't know that it has pyrite as part of the preservation. I've seen and found Ptychodus that were completely pyritized from South Dakota and this was not like them. The first photo is initial shot of the Ptychodus latissimus in the rock. The second is of a similar limestone flaggy rock to the one I found these fossils in. The third is a shot of it in my display area partially still in the rock. The final picture is a shot of one found in North Dakota that is a Ptychodus marginalis that was completely pyritized. Mine is a little smaller. The last photo is a side view of the Ptychodus latissimus. It comes out of the rock but still has the root. You can see how low the crown is. My wife and I have continued our monthly fossil forays (her Christmas gift to me) finding at least one nice Ptychodus fossil on each outing. On the above featured hunt, she and one of my adult daughters were at home with a very unkind version of COVID19. So, my wife kindly invited me to "get some fresh air" and leave the house for a while. So I took her up on it and hunted several places on that hot day. Cheers!

I made a drive down to a creek in Grayson County yesterday morning. Grayson County has had several inches of rain in the last couple of weeks, and I wanted to see what that might have uncovered in one of my favorite spots. After my misadventure with sticker vines on my last visit to a creek in this area, I was armed with leg and arm chaps, but I didn't think I would need them for this spot, and sure enough, even though it's also more grown up than the last time I visited, the chaps stayed in my backpack. There was a lot more water in the creek than the last time I was here. The water covered part of the gravel bars still, and the parts of the gravel bars nearest the water were still wet, so very dark and harder to spot fossils on, but I still found plenty. I do love this spot. Here are some in situ photos.

I hadn't been out fossil hunting lately. We've been getting enough rain to make me wonder how high the water level in creeks would be, plus spring fishing is so good on Cedar Creek Lake, where I live, that on days where I don't spend a couple of hours on the bicycle, I've just been going fishing. But now we've had a couple of weeks without much rain, so I'd been wanting to make a trip back to Grayson County. I had a doctor appointment in Dallas Friday morning, so I decided I would leave from there and make the drive to Grayson County. It was 10:30 am before I reached this day's creek, rapidly approaching the heat of the day, so I knew this would be a short visit to the creek. It was hot and sunny Friday, and I got reminded just how much heat you feel from those gravel bars when you're on knees and elbows. By shortly after 1:00 pm, I was cooked and ready to make the drive home. But this part of the creek is so much more grown up than when I was last there, I had a tough time getting out of the creek without getting torn up by briars and tree limbs. I ended up looking like I had been on the short end of a fight with a wildcat. I was already carrying leg chaps, but just never stopped to put them on. I've found some old kevlar arm chaps too. I'm going to start making myself wear both when traversing the thick stuff from now on. 71 year old skin just seems to suffer a lot more damage in these situations than young skin does. But as always in Grayson County, I did find some fossils. Here are photos of some, just as they lay when I found them. Each of those last two photos have two teeth in them. It's not often that I find two teeth that close together.

I went back to Post Oak Creek yesterday, and hunted yet another part of the creek I hadn't seen before. The water is still really low, so there is less wading than usual although, with the temperature in the low '80's that afternoon, wading wouldn't have been a problem. I torqued my bad left knee first thing as I climbed down into the creek, and was hobbled the rest of the day. I found everything on the gravel bars yesterday, though I did look at some interesting outcrops too. Post Oak Creek is as fossiliferous as any place I've ever seen. I called it after around three and a half hours of hunting. I always manage to get dirty and muddy, crawling the gravel bars and climbing in and out of the creek, and I must have really looked like a homeless person, as I hobbled back toward where I parked, backpack on and walking stick in hand, because a woman in a white SUV stopped, got out of the vehicle, and asked me if I needed a coat. I said no, and she asked me if I was sure. I assured her I didn't need a coat. She looked unconvinced, and did not move her vehicle until after she watched me cross the road and climb into my brand new truck. Some in situ photos.

Spring in my stretch of Texas is brilliantly green, with lush, heavy foliage that reaches tall. The atmosphere is warm, with humid air that has weight of its own, and the open, bright blue skies are occasionally interrupted by fleeting storms. This season of sticky air and vibrant greenery have made me deeply nostalgic for when I was just starting to figure things out and really exert myself in the practice of fossil finding, just a year ago. I spent steamy days romping up and down isolated creeks, armed with just persistence and very little knowledge, making some of my most memorable first finds. Little has changed. I'm still a beginner in most respects, and It's only been a year yet I'm making it sound like it was a lifetime ago, lol. However, I still can't help but be proud of how far I've come in this short time, and with this weather I've been reminiscing about those beginnings (which I'm happy to say I'm still experiencing - I hope one day to look back at the solo adventures I'm doing now with the same fondness.) Friday I decided to re-live the feeling and visit a spot I hold great memories of. Last May, before I even found my first central texas shark tooth, I stumbled on a mosasaur tooth in a gravel bank here. It was my first "big" find, and I came back with a similar goal. The conditions were the same as that day in may, nearly a year ago. Steamy and green. I even put on my fishing shirt, out of tradition. Stomping the creek I had "Lady fingers" by Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass repeating in my head. Here were the keeper finds I made, in order, below. Nifty irregular echinoid, I'll be looking in Morgan's book on Texas echinoids, which recently arrived in the mail, for the ID here. Very curious Ptychodus tooth. The late cretaceous strata I was hunting on was campanian/santonian, and this looks like a Turonian species. Perhaps I may be on the scent of an unmapped Eagle Ford outcrop (I can dream...) Next up, some shark tooth blades I found on the same gravel bank: Next, a worn little vert with concave and convex ends - looks like the start of a spring mosasaur tradition here! On the walk back I made another find -Nerodia erythrogaster. Snakes and my interest in herpetology are what got me interested into paleontology in the first place, when finding out that Mosasaurs weren't dinosaurs, but squamates like those I was already interested in. Thus this hunt came to an end, and I was satisfied. The next day had something much greater in store. I spent the morning rock climbing and hanging out with friends who came back into town from college, and afterward met a friend (Bethany) well into the afternoon at another spot on the same creek. Our pace was slow, but she found a few cool Scapanorynchus teeth quickly. This spot is unfortunately known to a few hunters already, and has been seeing increasing competition, as evidenced by the many foot prints lining the banks. Fortunately for me, the many counties that make up central texas are famously known for artifacts, and so these creeks attract more artifact hunters than fossil hunters, as the creeks of north texas hold better potential in the fossils area. Artifact hunters have sharp eyes, but are more likely to miss a fossil than a fossil hunter. In the receding light, chatting lightly about mosasaurs, I saw a something I've seen in my dreams many times. Resting in front of me was my first large Ptychodus mortoni tooth, in all its glory. 99% of the time, I hunt solo, but now in front of Bethany I had to tone down the triumphant hallelujah's, a seemingly impossible task. Not that she would have cared if I yelled out anyway. We stared at the tooth as it sat, and I tried to take it all in and process the moment before I disturbed it. I was understandably on cloud nine, and had trouble focusing for the rest of the hunt. I must have taken it out of my pocket to look at it maybe 10 more times in that last 45 minutes. Despite that, I did notice something noteworthy one more time - an Atlatl point, lying plain on the gravel. And so, that was my weekend. One spent well in my books. On a side note, another relief was that the Cidarids I shipped to Dallas to get prepped finally made it, a week late and after being shipped to an incorrect address hundreds of miles away. THAT was stressful. The relief that came with it was the cherry on top to another memorable weekend...

Hello! I have always loved Ptychodus teeth. But where I hunt they are extremely rare. Are there any good sites in Europe that has Cretaceous Ptychodus and or other shark teeth? I have heard something about seine-maritime in France. Regards - Adriano.