A Quick Trip to Green's Mill Run with a Few Surprise Finds (And a Very Brief Aurora, NC Visit)

[Echinoid Express]

Hello everyone! I've been swamped with work, preliminary home building plans and trying to get my collection more organized, but I still managed to pull of a small hunt at Green's Mill Run in this weekend, as well as a short trip to Aurora back in February. I hadn't really made any strong plans for either trip, but a series of different events eventually let to me heading to the area, and the timing worked out in my favor both times. 

 

The Aurora visit in February was a quick one; I got up one Saturday morning with nothing much planned for the day, but when I looked into my surplus storage trailer and saw all the excess Hardouinia echinoids and Exogyra oysters that needed to be donated, followed by receiving word there was some special things going on that morning that could have been a decent opportunity to represent the fossil club I am in, I figured it was a good day to visit. After I made my donation and spoke with some folks, I spent the rest of the morning and afternoon digging through one of the piles that was poised to be relocated soon with a local friend. I ended up finding a few nice things! This is a group shot with most of the things I found that day.

 

 

Only a couple of really big highlights, I was able to find quite a few Trivia gastropods! These are some of the coolest fossil gastropods from the mine spoils that I've found there, and they're really ornate. I was told the last batch of material had a lot of them in it, so I was glad to have found some before they moved it on.

 

 

And the other really cool find, a Scaphella gastropod with some trace color patterning! I've only found a handful of these gastropods as well, and the fact that it had some preservation like this was really neat. It's not at the Florida level of preservation, but it's really nice regardless.

 

 

 

Moving on to the present, I had previously made a few short attempts to locate a modern echinoid that is almost exclusively found in North Carolina, Rhynobrissus cuneus. However, none of them bore any fruit, and with the cost of fuel and lack of time making it difficult to continue taking detours on my way back from other trips, I figured it wouldn't hurt to see if I could attempt to locate someone that wouldn't mind swapping some things for a specimen. Fortune was kind to me, and a very nice lady was willing to part with one she found in exchange for some of my spare finds in my collection! It also included spines, which was more than I was hoping for. After talking a bit, we decided to meet "in the middle" at Greenville, NC to swap the specimen. Knowing I'd be in the vicinity of the site, I packed my creek gear and hit the road for a very rainy hour and a half drive. These are a couple of photos of said specimen, alongside a copy of the official description of the species that the USNM (AKA the NMNH) printed to give out to various institutions.

 

 

 

After wrapping up, I immediately went to my preferred Belemnite hunting spot in GMR. However, I failed to realize how much rain had fallen not just that morning, but the night before! It was just shy of 6 foot on the Tar River, and the water was considerably high and rough in that particular par of the creek, which is narrow and steep. I was a bit disappointed in the turn of events, but rather than call it quits I decided to go to the other spot I have hunted at with friends, which was wider and much more shallow. I can safely say I have now learned my lesson with the height of the river's impact on the site, it was still quite rough in that area too! Still, since I was there, I gave it my best shot and got to work on some areas without strong currents. Ultimately, it wasn't a bad visit! I found a few surprisingly nice things, as well as a few finds that I did not expect.

 

 

Unfortunately, this particular part of the creek is not very good for any sort of mollusk fossils, including my favorite belemnites! They are a bit rarer, and are highly eroded, but I still was able to find one decent quality specimen. The bivalves and gastropods are also more scarce and weathered in this area, so I ended up with fewer invertebrates than I was hoping for. My preferred spot has a higher concentration of Peedee Formation finds, and there are some nice belemnites that have come out of a small 2-meter area.

 

 

 

However, this spot is really good for vertebrate material! I found quite a few cool things there, and there are plenty of large bone chunks to be found, such as these.

 

 

On to my shark teeth, these are all my Squalicorax teeth! These are some of my favorite shark teeth to find, and most of the ones I've found at this Peedee Formation site are much smaller than the ones I found on Holden Beach.

 

 

Here are some unsorted teeth I found. I'm still learning shark teeth, so unfortunately a lot of my finds are currently lumped together like this. GMR teeth tend to be pretty worn down, so it makes it hard to identify a lot of the specimens I pick up.

 

 

These are some miscellaneous things I found; the bottom left is a ray tooth, which I don't find quite as often there. The other two on the bottom are probably Enchodus teeth, the middle one is either a heavily worn tooth of sorts or bone fragment, and I have no idea what the top specimens are, though they looked interesting enough to hold on to.

 

 

On to some of the more exciting shark teeth I found! these are pretty worn down Otodus teeth, but I always enjoy picking them up even in rough condition.

 

 

This was a fairly large but worn Isurus (Mako) tooth of some variety, about 3.05 cm (1.2 inches) long. It's got a thick root but is somewhat flat, with the edges of the blade flattening out to almost a shelf of sorts where the serrations would be in other teeth.

 

 

This is my first Hemipristis serra (Snaggletooth) tooth from the site that wasn't a small chunk, and it's one of the largest I've found anywhere! It's missing the root unfortunately, but is still about 2.41 cm (.95 inches) long without it. If it had the root I'd imagine it would have been at least 3 cm (1.18 inches) long.

 

 

And speaking of large teeth, this is the largest Galeocerdo cuvier (Tiger Shark) I've found there, at about 2.79 cm (1.1 inches) crown width and about the same slant. It was a suprise to find to say the least, I nearly dumped it back into the creek because I didn't notice it at first! It doesn't beat my largest Holden Beach specimen (3.2 cm or 1.26 inch slant), but it's a big tooth with nice color.

 

 

And for the most interesting tooth, some sort of Lamnidae shark that is missing a root, but appears to be possibly pathological! It's about 3.75 cm (1.475 inches) long as is, but it'd probably be at least 4.445 cm (1.75 inches) long if it had a root. Lacking the root makes it hard to say what it might have been, but it's definitely one of the largest teeth I've found in the creek thus far, and one of the most interesting.

 

 

 

And lastly, this is the find that kind of caught me off guard the most: It appears to be, just based off of appearances, a specimen of Skolithos linearis. Not the most exciting trace fossil visually, but it's really interesting to me! These trace fossils were a surprise bonus to my fossil hunts in Surry County, Virginia, and I wasn't really expecting to see something of the sort here. The ones found on eroded cobbles in Virginia along the James River are said to be from the Cambrian Chilhowee Group (563-516 ma), but I'm not really sure what the age of these here would be. From the best I can tell online, they seem to have occurred throughout multiple periods of time in multiple places due to different organisms, but these look strikingly similar to the ones I saw in Virginia, albeit with the cobbles more eroded.

 

I took a picture of the larger one next to a Virginian specimen to compare, and I highlighted the burrows with a red circle on the GMR specimen, as they are very hard to see in pictures. The longer circles are of "side section" specimens, and the smaller ones are from the ends of some running through the center of the rock from one edge to the other. The smaller cobble's specimen is a bit more obvious to see, so I didn't circle it. I haven't been able to locate any information on these fossils occurring in the area anywhere online on a superficial level, so if anyone has any insight into it, please let me know! I'd love to know if these are indeed what I am thinking they are, and what age they could possibly be if so. I might make a post on the ID forum some other time if I can borrow a camera that can take better pictures of the specimen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anyway, that's all for me! I've got a family trip to Holden coming up shortly, and I may have some interesting opportunities to collect some different NC fossils coming up this spring; I don't have a lot of info on it, but it seems promising. I've also got a return trip to Virginia planned before the end of spring, and I can hardly wait for it!

 

 

[SPrice]

" I've got a family trip to Holden coming up shortly, "

 

My annual trip to Holden Beach will be the second week of June this summer.  Looking forward to be back in NC, eat at Provisions, walk the beach and relax. I might try to squeeze in a fossil hunt besides the beach dredging finds. 

[Echinoid Express]

31 minutes ago, SPrice said:

" I've got a family trip to Holden coming up shortly, "

 

My annual trip to Holden Beach will be the second week of June this summer.  Looking forward to be back in NC, eat at Provisions, walk the beach and relax. I might try to squeeze in a fossil hunt besides the beach dredging finds. 

 

I love Holden Beach, it's been a family tradition too go there long before I was born! I'm with you on Provisions, my coworker talked me into trying it out last year, and I'm in love with their conch fritters, haha. I might be in that part of the state around that time, but probably not very close to Holden. GMR and Aurora are great but far out, as is Topsail Beach. One of the closest public spots to fossil hunt besides Holden I can recall would be a chain of 1800's dredge islands in the mouth of the Cape Fear River they call Shark Tooth Island. I've never been but I'd like to check it out one day, there are a lot of Castle Hayne Formation echinoids there, including the interesting Eurhodia genus.

[Al Dente]

5 hours ago, Echinoid Express said:

Moving on to the present, I had previously made a few short attempts to locate a modern echinoid that is almost exclusively found in North Carolina, Rhynobrissus cuneus. However, none of them bore any fruit, and with the cost of fuel and lack of time making it difficult to continue taking detours on my way back from other trips, I figured it wouldn't hurt to see if I could attempt to locate someone that wouldn't mind swapping some things for a specimen. Fortune was kind to me, and a very nice lady was willing to part with one she found in exchange for some of my spare finds in my collection! It also included spines, which was more than I was hoping for. After talking a bit, we decided to meet "in the middle" at Greenville, NC to swap the specimen. Knowing I'd be in the vicinity of the site, I packed my creek gear and hit the road for a very rainy hour and a half drive. These are a couple of photos of said specimen, alongside a copy of the official description of the species that the USNM (AKA the NMNH) printed to give out to various institutions.

Did she give you collection date and location? In November 2017, many were washed up at Buxton. A few were relatively whole but many hundreds were broken to pieces washing in and out with the waves.

[Praefectus]

Wow, nice finds!

[Family Fun]

20 hours ago, SPrice said:

" I've got a family trip to Holden coming up shortly, "

 

My annual trip to Holden Beach will be the second week of June this summer.  Looking forward to be back in NC, eat at Provisions, walk the beach and relax. I might try to squeeze in a fossil hunt besides the beach dredging finds. 

Love a good meal from Provisions.  

[Echinoid Express]

15 hours ago, Al Dente said:

Did she give you collection date and location? In November 2017, many were washed up at Buxton. A few were relatively whole but many hundreds were broken to pieces washing in and out with the waves.

 

I originally helped her identify it on a Facebook group before she saw I was seeking the species, she found it around Fort Macon just two weeks ago. I've kept tabs on where they've been found on that group since I started my echinoid collection, they seem to be the most common from around the Bogue Banks, up to Hatteras Island where Buxton is at, though I have seen finds of this species from as far north as Rodanthe, and as far south as Holden Beach. I originally learned about this rare species while I was looking into modern irregular echinoids of the region, as there are a lot of extinct varieties in the Carolinas. One other species that is sometimes found in the area is Moira atropos (A puffball heart urchin of the Schizasteridae family), but I believe it has a very wide distribution along the east coast of North America, unlike the Rhynobrissus cuneus, which is pretty much restricted to North Carolina in the USA. However, there was an abstract about some individuals of Rhynobrissus cuneus found in the Mexican state of Veracruz (Alejandra Martínez-Melo, 2014), which suggests it has a wider, patchy distribution, which I find really interesting! 

[Family Fun]

1 hour ago, Echinoid Express said:

 

I originally helped her identify it on a Facebook group before she saw I was seeking the species, she found it around Fort Macon just two weeks ago. I've kept tabs on where they've been found on that group since I started my echinoid collection, they seem to be the most common from around the Bogue Banks, up to Hatteras Island where Buxton is at, though I have seen finds of this species from as far north as Rodanthe, and as far south as Holden Beach. I originally learned about this rare species while I was looking into modern irregular echinoids of the region, as there are a lot of extinct varieties in the Carolinas. One other species that is sometimes found in the area is Moira atropos (A puffball heart urchin of the Schizasteridae family), but I believe it has a very wide distribution along the east coast of North America, unlike the Rhynobrissus cuneus, which is pretty much restricted to North Carolina in the USA. However, there was an abstract about some individuals of Rhynobrissus cuneus found in the Mexican state of Veracruz (Alejandra Martínez-Melo, 2014), which suggests it has a wider, patchy distribution, which I find really interesting! 

I hear and see many posts about Holden, does any of it hold true for Oak Island just north?  My daughter has a house there that I’m hoping to live at during the warm months so are the prospects just as good there?  Or should I plan a quick kayak trip over to Holden?

[Al Dente]

18 hours ago, Echinoid Express said:

One other species that is sometimes found in the area is Moira atropos (A puffball heart urchin of the Schizasteridae family), but I believe it has a very wide distribution along the east coast of North America, unlike the Rhynobrissus cuneus, which is pretty much restricted to North Carolina in the USA.

I found a fairly complete Moira several years ago at the Hatteras to Ocracoke ferry on the Ocracoke side. Here's a photo of some Rhynobrissus at Buxton along the strand line. You can see several fragments along with the mostly whole specimens.

 

 

[Echinoid Express]

3 hours ago, Al Dente said:

I found a fairly complete Moira several years ago at the Hatteras to Ocracoke ferry on the Ocracoke side. Here's a photo of some Rhynobrissus at Buxton along the strand line. You can see several fragments along with the mostly whole specimens.

 

 

Those are really cool! There was a woman around Avon who had found 20-30 whole specimens without spines recently, I wonder if it was from a similar scenario that caused those to wash up. I've heard from some others that they've seemingly become more frequently reported over the last few years, I wonder if it's due to an environmental change, or if it's simply due to a large number of people sharing sightings / collected specimens through social media than in the past. Either way, they're really interesting! I'm hoping I can find some additional intact NC Spatangoid fossils in the future to showcase alongside my modern specimen; I did obtain quite a few Hemipatagus carolinensis second hand, but so far I've only managed to find whole Cassiduloids and Clypeasteroids in my fossil hunting journeys. I did manage to find a fragment of a fossil Spatangoid ambulacrum on Holden last year, but I have no idea of telling what species it could have come from.

[Coco]

@Al Dente do you know the species of these Rhynobrissus ?

 

Coco

[Al Dente]

45 minutes ago, Coco said:

do you know the species of these Rhynobrissus ?

 

Yes. Rhynobrissus cuneus.

[hemipristis]

Love the trivias!   They're like potato chips: can't stop picking them up

[Echinoid Express]

23 hours ago, hemipristis said:

Love the trivias!   They're like potato chips: can't stop picking them up

 

Indeed, I just wish they were more common in the formations I hunt in! There is one other species present in the spoil material at Aurora, but it is much rarer and I have only found around five specimens of this species. There are also several varieties listed as occuring in the Pleistocene Waccamaw Formation, but I have yet to find even a partial specimen at the site I hunt.

[bthemoose]

On 3/24/2024 at 11:01 PM, Echinoid Express said:

And for the most interesting tooth, some sort of Lamnidae shark that is missing a root, but appears to be possibly pathological! It's about 3.75 cm (1.475 inches) long as is, but it'd probably be at least 4.445 cm (1.75 inches) long if it had a root. Lacking the root makes it hard to say what it might have been, but it's definitely one of the largest teeth I've found in the creek thus far, and one of the most interesting.

 

 

 

With the size and width of the blade, I think this one is identifiable as a Carcharodon sp. tooth from a Mio-Pliocene layer. I think it's probably C. hastalis (predecessor to great white), though if there's evidence of worn down serrations it would be C. carcharias (great white). I don't see an obvious pathology from the photos, though perhaps it looks different from other angles/in hand.

[Echinoid Express]

On 3/31/2024 at 11:39 AM, bthemoose said:

 

With the size and width of the blade, I think this one is identifiable as a Carcharodon sp. tooth from a Mio-Pliocene layer. I think it's probably C. hastalis (predecessor to great white), though if there's evidence of worn down serrations it would be C. carcharias (great white). I don't see an obvious pathology from the photos, though perhaps it looks different from other angles/in hand.

 

I figured it was a species of Carcharodon, but my knowledge of shark teeth is very weak aside from some of the more basic ones. I did see one spot that had some questionable serrations, but I'm undecided if it's that or chipping wear on the blade. A lot of the teeth I've found in the creek bed of GMR seem to be in a pretty rugged condition.

 

I did take some additional photos for a friend who is good with shark teeth sometime last week, I tried to get a better shot of the edge I was uncertain on. Fortunately, I discovered my USB microscope's light is really nice for taking pictures with! The overall shape just seems a little warped, and there is a small "pinched" area on one side of the blade.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Andúril Flame of the West]

Congrats on the productive trips! Those Squalicorax have me .

The Skolithos are particularly interesting and I enjoy running across them on occasion when hunting the Aquia of Maryland. I believe that you are correct and that these are weathered clasts that originated from Cambrian deposits farther inland. In my hunts I have encountered a number of interesting specimens including some that preserve the mold of the trace itself.

 

 

 

Again, congratulations on your successful hunts and I look forward to seeing your future exploits into the Triassic! 

[Echinoid Express]

On 4/16/2024 at 11:02 AM, Andúril Flame of the West said:

Congrats on the productive trips! Those Squalicorax have me .

The Skolithos are particularly interesting and I enjoy running across them on occasion when hunting the Aquia of Maryland. I believe that you are correct and that these are weathered clasts that originated from Cambrian deposits farther inland. In my hunts I have encountered a number of interesting specimens including some that preserve the mold of the trace itself.

 

 

 

Again, congratulations on your successful hunts and I look forward to seeing your future exploits into the Triassic! 

 

Thank you! I do enjoy the Squalicorax teeth, they're really interesting to me! I can't seem to find the much larger sizes of them there, they're dwarfed by the large ones I collect at Holden Beach, though I do find the smaller sizes at Holden as well. Speaking of Holden, I'm just about wrapped up with our family trip there, and I've got some exciting new fossils I found! I may wait a bit on sharing them though, as I have some additional collecting trips to other sites coming up next week, and I am waiting to hear back from an expert on some of the things I found this trip.

 

I spoke to the gentleman who puts together the Virginia trip I've been going to where we find the Skolithos, and he thinks they are weathered clasts from the Cambrian mountain deposits as well, so I'm a little more comfortable labeling them as such for the time being. I was questioning it a bit due to the fact I've seen similar burrowing in the Peedee matrix chunks I've found at Holden, but the Cretaceous ones are either larger and in a less solid material, or something completely different altogether, which ties into my recent special finds. Next time I visit GMR I'll have to make a point of checking out the cobbles in the creek for more, it'd be nice to find some that have the three-dimensional mold condition. I do find them in Virginia that way occasionally, though it's less common than the eroded, "two-dimensional" ones.

 

I haven't given up on Triassic stuff yet! I've befriended some swell folks in the area I live that may be able to assist me in my endeavors, so we'll see how it goes over time. I haven't forgotten to get in touch with the museums on that tooth either, though I'll admit I kind of delayed it a bit in order to have it be part pf a display of the Triassic fossils I did very recently!