Final Moments of 2023 - Double Waccamaw Hunt, Holden Beach, and A Triassic Surprise

[Echinoid Express]

Hello everyone! It's been awhile since I've had a chance to give a fossil hunting update, the Holidays took over in quite a hurry, and coupled together with taking on some new responsibilities, the shorter days, cooler weather and a scramble to get the end of the year work done, it was quite difficult to get everything organized! I'm hoping to be more efficient with my cleaning and preparation this year, and though I have some life hurdles to overcome I think this year could be even better than last one with my fossil hobbies. I'm hoping to add more additions to my echinoid album, and I'd like to make some albums for some of my other fossils sometime this year.

 

Not long after my last trip to the Waccamaw site I once again found myself out there collecting more specimens. I went with a slightly different group for the weekend, where we doubled up and went to the ever popular Holden Beach to look for some more Cretaceous goodies. And in addition, I  did get to check out a different Waccamaw site at a different time as well, which had slightly different specimens, and an array of unusual color preservation. I think it was another successful month, and I found a lot of really cool specimens. 

 

I even got an opportunity to obtain some neat fossils from a fellow collector and friend in the midst of everything, and I'd like to include some of that briefly as well. While we were wrapping up for the weekend, I ended up trading him some of my Virginian Ecphora shells for some really cool Triassic plant specimens from the Pekin Formation, as well as some grey and black shales from the Cumnock Formation. It's a positive update to my quest to obtain local Triassic fossils I can take on the road to display, and with these acquisitions I was able to do just that recently! I feel like they get overlooked at times, but there are some really cool fossils from the Triassic Basins. I did manage to acquire some other cool specimens as well, but I'll save them for the mailbox scores thread.

 

Here are some of those plant specimens and shales. Most are hard to identify, but there are some partial Otozamites fronds.

 

The shales were a gamble, and I ultimately did end up splitting some, while retaining the last two intact, as they contained visible coal, and are somewhat significant to my home area's history in regards to the Cumnock Formation and all the historical coal mining that occurred. However, I did manage to find this little guy in one shale. I made a post a while back, and my current idea is that it's some form of Metoposaurus tooth. It's badly fragmented, though I have been offered by a friend to try and repair it, which I may take him up on.

 

 

Although these second hand fossils were greatly appreciated and will serve well as display items, I also attempted to steak out a potential Triassic site right down the road earlier this week! Unfortunately, though it did indeed have Triassic geology, it was a conglomerate of Sanford Formation with a small bit of Pekin Formation mixed in, which did not immediately appear to contain much, at least on the surface. The old Triassic report mentioned it was mostly a mixture, so I wasn't too disappointed; it was still fun to check out a new area.

 

 

In addition to the hunt for a fossil site, the area was also home to a small copper mine that last operated in the very early 20th century. I had not been exploring there since I was a boy over 20 years ago, so it was interesting to check out again! I ended up collecting some malachite from the spoil piles before heading home, so I at least found a few things to keep on that trip. I'm really grateful the landowner was kind enough to let me check it out. I hope to return there again sometime during lighter hours to look for some copper ore fragments as well.

 

 

Now, onto the actual fossil tips! I'll start with Holden, as I have less to show off from there. It was fairly tame as far as crowds go, since the Holidays were kicking into gear. Despite a single day to collect, I think I did alright! I made a new friend during that part of the trip, and I was able to collect some nice modern mollusk shells as well, some of which could be used to compare to my Waccamaw finds. I did find an interesting sand dollar of some variety embedded in a stone, but I dropped it in the rapidly rising tide as I was collecting another specimen, so I ended up losing sight of it. 

 

 

To start, these are two Glycymeris americana valves, one from Holden, and the other from the Waccamaw site, as a comparison.

 

 

These are some of the Hardouinia mortonis echinoids I found that day. I had many more, but it was hard to get them all pictured!

 

 

On the topic of those echinoids, I found a few really good pathological specimens that day! This is the more extreme of them, with the side being somewhat compressed into the part, and the peristome off axis and off center. I'm not sure if this is something genetic, or if this was evidence of some kind of repaired biologic damage. It's probably my most pathological specimen to date.

 

 

This was another specimen with similarly placed deformities, but much less extreme.

 

 

And this one was a really unusual one, with an "elongated" periproct, giving it a more heavily sloped appearance compared to the standard ones.

 

 

Moving on, this was probably my favorite find from the Holden part of the trip. This is a partial Anomoeodus phaseolus mouth plate and jawbone, which is a fairly uncommon find. I had previously found two teeth attached together, but this one is by far my best one yet. I found some individual "teeth" from these reworked into the Waccamaw formation site as well, but they were very small.

 

 

I also found a few things I had not found myself since 2022, namely a nice, whole Mosasaur tooth, and a fragment of a Sphenodiscus lobatus ammonite.

 

 

I found a few shark teeth, but I was honestly so focused on other finds I didn't emphasize looking for them as much as I normally would. I gave a few that I picked up to my new friend I made while I was hunting, as well as a small mosasaur tooth.

 

 

This is an Enchodus jaw fragment with the base of a tooth I found, this might be the largest jaw fragment I found to date. I haven't found a tooth and jaw fragment attached together yet, but I'll keep looking!

 

 

A turtle shell fragment I found out there. This is one of the more defined ones I've found, and appears to be from the edge of the shell.

 

 

This was a cool steinkern I found, from what appears to be a Naticidae snail. This one is a bit heftier than ones I've found previously, and it almost seems to have some of the innermost shell preserved on one section, but this could be some other material.

 

 

This is one Exogyra costata I found on the beach. I did pick up a number of them, but there weren't as many good specimens this trip for some reason. I took a couple of pictures of the same shell under UV light as well.

 

 

And the last of my notable finds, this is a Striaticostatum harbisoni, a Peedee Formation  Wentletrap Snail that was preserved due to recrystalization! Next to it is a steinkern of another one, which is usually all that is preserved; this is the first one I've found like this. It's broken toward the base, but it lets people see the tiny crystals inside the shell that grew during the process. I also found a second partial one, but it's in a much more worn condition.

 

 

Now, onto the Waccamaw site finds! This site is slowly growing on me, as well as a greater appreciation for mollusks. It's becoming one of my favorite sites to visit. I've been utilizing a out a book that was published just last year titled Photographic Atlas of Waccamaw Formation Mollusca to identify my finds. It's a great resource for identifying the various mollusks of the formation, of which there are over 1000 different varieties! I found so much this time that I had to cut back on sharing them, though I do hope to do an album on everything when I get time. 

 

Starting off, here are some of the paired Lirophora varicosa athleta, AKA Imperial Venus Clams, I found.

 

 

Here are a couple of pathological valves I found, as well as a sponge damaged valve and a valve with an oddly placed gastropod drill hole.

 

 

Here is an intact Chama macerophylla, also known as the Leafy Jewelbox Clam. It's less common than the Arcinella cornuta Spiny Jewelbox Clams from what I've noticed.

 

 

This is a Neverita duplicata, also known as the Shark Eye Moon Snail with some particularly beautiful shell preservation.

 

 

This is a Naticarius plicatella, an extinct moon snail with an interesting spiral groove pattern along the whorl. Although the aperature (opening) is broken, this is my largest specimen of this snail found at the site to date.

 

 

Here are two paired bivalves, a Trachycardium emmonsi (Cockle Clam) and a species of Diplodon clam (Diplodonta acclinis?)

 

 

A Crepidula fornicata, also known as the Fornicating Slipper Snail. This one was unusually thick and large compared to the ones I normally find, around 5.715 cm (2.25 inches) long.

 

 

Another worn Crepidula fornicata with a couple of Septastrea marylandica coral colonies growing on it. There appears to have been a third between the two but it probably broke off when it was originally extracted from the earth.

 

 

Two valves from two different Ostrea lawrencei oysters that have a lot of small coral colonies and singular corals. This one is interesting because they were both attached to a relatively small scallop valve, as seen by the impression on their hinges.

 

 

A really cool Ostrea lawrencei that has a Septastrea marylandica colony over nearly the entire outer surface. I didn't realize that it was covered in coral until I washed it, as the amount of sand and dirt that covered it almost covered it completely! The uncovered inner surface was the only exposed part of the oyster when I collected it.

 

 

A large oyster, Ostrea compressirostra, that was found paired in the Waccamaw site, a fairly rare find. Unfortunately, the upper valve had a lot of bore damage on one side, but it's still a cool, paired find nonetheless!

 

 

A Pleuromeris decemcostata, a pretty cool, small species of clam. It almost has a beaded structure to its ribs. In addition, the same Pleuromeris decemcostata under UV light. It's hard to see in this picture, but some of the "beads" in the ribbing have a UV reaction, in a somewhat random order.The Waccamaw stuff has some decent UV reaction, but it's no where near the level of the Florida Pleistocene shells of a similar age.

 

 

A very small intact Arcinella cornuta, also known as the Florida Spiny Jewelbox. This is the smallest intact one I've found yet, at around 1.9 cm (.75 inches) across.

 

 

One of my favorite finds from the Waccamaw site part of the trip, a Pterorytis fluviana, a type of murex with very frilly spires. Usually the spires are broken down, but this one as fairly intact aside from a hole in the side!

 

 

A Radiolucina waccamawensis, an extinct hatchet clam. It measures about 7.62 mm (.3 inches ). These are pretty interesting little bivalves with a neat crossed structure to them.

 

 

Some Eupleura caudata, a small species of murex snail. These had some nice shell preservation as well!

 

 

A Neoterebra dislocata (Eastern Auger Snail) on the right, and what I believe is a Calliostoma tuomeyi (Calliostoma Top Snail) on the left. The Calliostoma Top Snails, like the Cone Snails and the Murexes, seem to vary a good bit and have very subtle differences, which makes it hard for me to identify.

 

 

Two different extinct Nassa Mud Snails (or Dog Whelks); a rare Ilyanassa porcina on the left, and a somewhat uncommon Ilyanassa scalaspira on the right.

 

 

A bryozoan-encrusted gastropod shell. I'm wondering if this is a variety of Bryolith (or Plagurized Gastropod), or if it it is simply a colony that covered an empty shell; either way it's really cool.

 

 

Two Waccamaw Formation Conasprella oniscus cone snails, with a UV light comparison showing the remnants of their color pattern. This pattern can be used to differentiate the different species found in the same place to some degree.

 

 

Here's a cool Arcopsis adamsi, a type of Ark Clam with an interesting beaded sculpture instead of the coarse ribs of the more common species.

 

 

Next, a case of miscellaneous micros: on the right are three Biflustra savartii, a species of "Erect Form" Bryozoans, on the bottom left is an interesting and unknown Archohelia coral branch, and the upper left is some unknown, extraordinarily fragile fossil of some sort. It was probably 30-40% larger before I tried moving it to this case; it had a fragility not unlike that of the ill-fated microfossil echinoid I found on the previous trip.

 

 

Another little case containing an assemblage of various paired microfossil bivalves from the Waccamaw site. The beaked Nuculana acuta (Pointed Nut Clam) are probably my favorite of the micro-sized bivalves.

 

 

Kalolophus gibbesii, a medium-sized clam related to the modern Kalolophus speciosus, also known as Gibb's Clam. I've found similar clams in Virginia, but this is the first one I found in the Waccamaw Site.

 

 

An Aurinia obtusa, a type of Volute Snail. This is the most common species from the Waccamaw, I've been told the other two are exceptionally rare. This is also the first mostly whole one I've found in the site.

 

 

Next is a large Mercenaria mercenaria valve, which I took pictures of to show the progression of cleaning it out for it's inner contents. About halfway through cleaning I discovered a partial Rhyncholampas sabistonensis echinoid, with part of the side plating and the entire oral surface. It's overall in poor condition, but serves as another good example of the rare things that can be found inside other shells. There were quite a number of other things as well, such as whole Lirophora varicosa athleta (Imperial Venus) Clams, barnacles, and more. However, a lot of stuff was attached with a tough sediment, which made extraction difficult. The last image in this series shows the contents found inside waiting to dry off.

 

 

And the last thing I wanted to share from the site is a juvenile gastropod of uncertain identity I'm thinking it's likely a Pliculofusus sparrowi (A type of gastropod related to the Tulip and Spindle Snails), but also somewhat resembles a juvenile Scaphella precursor (A rare species of Volute).

 

 

While that's all the Waccamaw stuff from the normal site, that's not all the Waccamaw Formation fossils I found last month! I had a chance to check out a different location of the formation at a different time, and while there were a lot of similar things, there were some things different about this other site as well. Oysters were much more common, I found a few species I hadn't seen before, some varieties of gastropod were larger, and there were a lot of really interesting mineralization colors as well.

 

There were a lot of red, yellow and orange colored shells, likely from iron oxides in the soil. There were also some interesting blue-grey colored shells, which I'm not too sure of the process that made them this way. Some were comparable to the blue shells found in the Bone Valley area of Florida.

 

 

Here's a really cool and large Anadara lienosa Ark Clam valve from the secondary Waccamaw site. This is the largest Ark Clam I've found from the formation yet. It has some of the unusual orange-yellow iron oxide coloration.

 

 

Here's a paired Arcinella cornuta (Florida Spiny Jewelbox) from the other Waccamaw site. This one came apart while I was cleaning it but I've got the two halves paired together still. I found some other paired specimens but they had a lot of spines missing.

 

 

A very big Mercenaria mercenaria (Hard Clam) valve that was in the portion that had the blue mineralization. The outer surface is heavily worn but it has a very dark grey-blue coloration to it.

 

 

A very hefty and thick Glycymeris americana (American Bittersweet) that has buried in the sediments containing a lot of iron oxides, and has a very cool yellow, orange and red marbled coloration.

 

 

Two Septastrea marylandica corals from the other Waccamaw site. Both have some yellow coloration, and one has splotches of red, all from the iron oxide present in the site.

 

 

Here's a Crepidula fornicata (Fornicating Slipper Snail) and two Neverita duplicata (Shark Eye Moon Snails) with some pretty cool blue-gray coloration. The rightmost is an especially pretty dark grey-blue!

 

Two worn Crepidula fornicata specimens (Fornicating Slipper Snails), with Septastrea marylandica coral colonies growing on them. They also both have bryozoan colonies and Polychaete worm tubes on them, as well as a lot of boring sponge damage; These were the home of a number of animals, even after their death.

 

 

An unusual paired oyster from the other Waccamaw site. Due to the larger quantity of oysters in that site, and paired ones like this could be found in a much higher frequency.

 

 

Here's what I believe might be a juvenile Triplofusus giganteus, also known as the Horse Conch. It's over 3.81 cm (1.5 inches) long.

 

 

A somewhat rare Trigonostoma elizabethae, an unusual type of Nutmeg Snail. This came from the other Waccamaw site, but I did find a larger specimen at the primary site that I forgot to take a picture of before storing it away. This one has some of the blue-gray coloration.

 

 

Two neat Ensis clams, also known as Razor Clams, from the secondary Waccamaw site. They're usually broken like this due to their thin, fragile structure. The top one may be a Ensis directus, and the bottom may be a Ensis megistus.

 

 

An assortment of microfossils from the other Waccamaw site with various mineralization colors. I'm hoping to find a new technique for extracting these, as my current method results in some of these getting broken.

 

 

And my last find from the site, An unusual bone of some variety; I almost want to think it's a turtle shell fragment, but I'm really not sure. It has some odd, rib-like structuring on the longer outer edges.

 

 

And that's all I've got for now! 2023 was a really fun year for collecting, but I feel like 2024 could potentially be even better. As I wrap this post up, I'll be getting ready for tomorrow, where I'll be displaying some of my finds from the last two years at a park for an event, after which I'll be heading back to Holden Beach once again for a weekend to unwind from work and hunt for fossils with a couple of friends (I'll save my modern echinoid hunt for another time). I might post an update on that here, or I might wait until I go to Aurora, NC fairly soon. Further out, I've got a trip planned for Virginia once again in the early summer (Super excited for this one!), another extended Holden Beach trip in the spring, and there's a chance I might be able to tag along with a small group to go hunt fossils in central / northern Texas around the time of the solar eclipse, with some stops in Oklahoma and Mississippi! It'll be the first time I've ventured west of the eastern coastal states, so it'll be interesting if I do end up going. It'd require a lot of time off of work, so I'm still working out the logistics of it.
 

[Ludwigia]

Thanks for the detailed report. Very good finds and you are also obviously very familiar with the fauna.

[FossilDAWG]

Nice report.  I didn't know Holden was still producing.

 

Don

[Echinoid Express]

5 hours ago, Ludwigia said:

Thanks for the detailed report. Very good finds and you are also obviously very familiar with the fauna.

 

Thank you! I'm still learning a lot about the formation, but I think I've got a good grasp on a good bit of it. The fun part about the Waccamaw stuff is that so many of the species are either still extant or they are immediate ancestors to modern species, so a lot of them have common names and are generally well understood in their biology.

 

3 hours ago, FossilDAWG said:

Nice report.  I didn't know Holden was still producing.

 

Don

 

It is, though it's a hit or miss depending on the tide and the crowd. A big part of it is that so many people are visiting that mid-day low tides are thoroughly collected; I've had my best luck during odd hours of the evening and early morning. Topsail beach was productive from 2015 to 2020, so I'm hoping it'll be productive for quite some time still. Some strong storms in December stirred up a lot of the stuff in the new sand again, so I've got my fingers crossed it'll be a good weekend!

[jpc]

Lots of fun stuff there.  A couple of questions.... what age is the Waccamaw?  And, many of those shells look fairly fossily, except the moon snails... how do you differentiate between Waccamaw Moon Snails and modern ones?  I assume there are modern ones on these beaches as well. 

  

[Echinoid Express]

9 hours ago, jpc said:

Lots of fun stuff there.  A couple of questions.... what age is the Waccamaw?  And, many of those shells look fairly fossily, except the moon snails... how do you differentiate between Waccamaw Moon Snails and modern ones?  I assume there are modern ones on these beaches as well. 

  

 

The sites are Lower Waccamaw Formation, which is early Pleistocene, around 2.4 Ma. The main site I visit with others is separate from Holden beach, and is part of a former inland marl pit, while the other one was something similar in a different area. In these cases, they're undeniably Waccamaw fossils, being so far from the shoreline. However, the formation does extend into the beaches as well, and I have been told that they do indeed wash up there sometimes. In those cases, I honestly don't know how you would accurately differentiate fossil extant species from their modern counterparts, aside from maybe a lack of original color (which isn't always reliable).

 

As for why the moon snails and olive snails look so shiny, it's in part due to their mantle enveloping their whole shell while they were alive, which causes their shells to be very glossy, even after burial it seems. The most glossy of them in the site were heavily covered in sediments, and not all of them have this shine to them; I usually select the better ones I collected to photograph. Modern beach ones tend to be more glossy than other gastropods as well. These are some examples of shell surface variance from my November trip.

 

 

 

On another topic, I did some initial hunting at Holden Beach earlier, and if I continue to have great hunting like this for the entire weekend I'll have to post a report as soon as possible! This is a sneak peek from today, a whole, small Sphenodiscus lobatus ammonite steinkern with some visible sutures. It broke after collecting due to the fragility of the sediment it is composed of, but I did run to the store for some emergency adhesive to stabilize it. It has a visible breaking point, but it's not too noticable from some angles. There is a lot of Peedee Formation sediment clumps out there right now from all the December storms, so I'm hoping we will run across more stuff like this. Some other stuff included a paired Exogyra, a Prehepatus harrisi claw with both dactyls intact, and more.

 

 

[FossilDAWG]

I don't think that is a Sphenodiscus.  Sphenodiscus is very flattened, with a sharp keel.  Your ammonite seems to have a rounded venter with ribs and nodes.  Also what can be seen of the sutures is not sphenodiscid as far as I can tell.  I'm not sure what it actually is, that may have to wait until it is cleaned up some more.  Nice find!

 

I'd like to see the Prehepatus if that's possible.

 

Don

[Echinoid Express]

39 minutes ago, FossilDAWG said:

I don't think that is a Sphenodiscus.  Sphenodiscus is very flattened, with a sharp keel.  Your ammonite seems to have a rounded venter with ribs and nodes.  Also what can be seen of the sutures is not sphenodiscid as far as I can tell.  I'm not sure what it actually is, that may have to wait until it is cleaned up some more.  Nice find!

 

I'd like to see the Prehepatus if that's possible.

 

Don

 

I didn't think about it being something else, but then again Prehepatus wasn't noted in North Carolina as far as I am aware until the beach work that took place, and the Hardouinia mortonis of the exposure have been said to resemble the Mississippi forms more so than those found in North Carolina previously, so it's possible. I'm definitely far from being an expert on them! These are two larger chunks I found today with some suture patterns visible, they all generally look like this when visible from what I've found.

 

 

 

And here is the claw, along with a second claw of a similar size that was less than 10 feet away. I've found them with dactyls and fingers before, but this is the most complete yet, though the tips are indeed broken after another glance. I saw one that a woman found with the complete pincer and the next segment of the leg quite some time back, but I'd have to go back and dig up where her picture is at.

 

 

[Andúril Flame of the West]

Yet another fantastic trip and a wonderful variety of finds. I have a soft spot for the Newark fossils and don't think we see them nearly enough on this forum. When I saw your fossil ID post on the vertebrate tooth you certainly had me  . I do wonder if it could potentially have scientific significance...

 

 

[Echinoid Express]

18 hours ago, Andúril Flame of the West said:

Yet another fantastic trip and a wonderful variety of finds. I have a soft spot for the Newark fossils and don't think we see them nearly enough on this forum. When I saw your fossil ID post on the vertebrate tooth you certainly had me  . I do wonder if it could potentially have scientific significance...

 

 

 

I've wondered that myself, though I only wish it wasn't in such a fragmented condition. I still fear some of it was lost prior to my splitting of the shale or in the shale I broke apart, but I tried to save everything that could contain more pieces. I might try to find out if anyone in the NCMNS has a lot of expertise on Triassic vertebrates. I believe they recently did a TV program on a Triassic dinosaur or other reptile they were digging out close to home. I do wish I could look for more, but the area is pretty much off limits, and most of the material was buried decades ago for safety reasons.

[Darktooth]

Wow! You certainly came away with alot of good stuff. The amount of echinoids boggles my mind.

[Andúril Flame of the West]

I recently acquired Dr. Weems’ new book, The  Age of Dinosaurs in Virginia and Nearby States. I would certainly recommend it to any who are interested in the Triassic strata of the Mid-Atlantic region, particularly Maryland and Virginia. The book tells the story of this region by each subdivision of the Mesozoic represented by fossiliferous sedimentary strata and gives a good selection of vertebrate highlights from each stage.

 

In the late Carnian section of the book, Dr. Weems does mention the Cumnock Formation - though he treats it as a member of the Lockatong formation (not sure if this is widely accepted among stratigraphers) - and briefly describes some of its more notable vertebrate fauna. He mentions that a single metoposaurid temnospondyl amphibian, Dictyocephalus elegans, is described from the Cumnock. A cursory google search revealed that it is not well known and that the genus was nearly considered dubious, which means that it may be impossible to find photographs of material for comparison.

 

Based on this, perhaps it would be justified to label your tooth as cf. Dictyocephalus elegans? Of course, it is likely impossible to know for sure and a label of Metoposauridae indet. might be more accurate. Given that only one Metoposaurid is described from the Cumnock, I would be willing to wager that this specimen could have scientific significance. 

[Echinoid Express]

On 2/20/2024 at 11:52 PM, Andúril Flame of the West said:

I recently acquired Dr. Weems’ new book, The  Age of Dinosaurs in Virginia and Nearby States. I would certainly recommend it to any who are interested in the Triassic strata of the Mid-Atlantic region, particularly Maryland and Virginia. The book tells the story of this region by each subdivision of the Mesozoic represented by fossiliferous sedimentary strata and gives a good selection of vertebrate highlights from each stage.

 

In the late Carnian section of the book, Dr. Weems does mention the Cumnock Formation - though he treats it as a member of the Lockatong formation (not sure if this is widely accepted among stratigraphers) - and briefly describes some of its more notable vertebrate fauna. He mentions that a single metoposaurid temnospondyl amphibian, Dictyocephalus elegans, is described from the Cumnock. A cursory google search revealed that it is not well known and that the genus was nearly considered dubious, which means that it may be impossible to find photographs of material for comparison.

 

Based on this, perhaps it would be justified to label your tooth as cf. Dictyocephalus elegans? Of course, it is likely impossible to know for sure and a label of Metoposauridae indet. might be more accurate. Given that only one Metoposaurid is described from the Cumnock, I would be willing to wager that this specimen could have scientific significance. 

 

Very interesting, I'll have to pick that book up! I'll definitely keep the name alongside it for the time being, my only resource I had on hand simply did not give them any name beyond Metoposaurus sp.. I'm definitely going to run it by the NCMNS during a club meeting next month, I don't know of anyone working on the Triassic of the area in our museum specifically, but as I said there are probably a couple of people who aren't too out of the loop on the Triassic vertebrates of the region. If it's something that could potentially be used for paleontological benefit I'll be more than happy to oblige! If not in NCMNS, I'll try to reach out to VMNH, since there seems to be a bit of Triassic research going on there as well.

 

On 2/4/2024 at 6:55 PM, Darktooth said:

Wow! You certainly came away with alot of good stuff. The amount of echinoids boggles my mind.

 

It's almost absurd how many of them were deposited in this particular part of the formation! I still pick up just about anything fair quality or better like a madman, but I usually only end up keeping the nicer quality specimens. They're really fun to use as gifts and the likes, even when they are in a rough state! It's interesting comparing it to the other Peedee sites with different marine habitats such as Green's Mill Run, where there are tons of belemnites but hardly any echinoids. I can definitely see a reduction in the overall quantity on a day-to-day basis since the work was first done in late 2021 / early 2022, but even with that in mind there are still hundreds of them washing out every day, and on days of rough weather it goes up even more. Just based off what I've gathered online, I imagine they were once as plentiful as the modern sand dollar Mellita isometra, and probably filled a very similar ecological role before dying out from changing sea level(?).