Second Trip to Calvert Cliffs

[Rock-Guy-17]

About a month ago I used my hotel points from work and dragged a few friends down to Maryland for the weekend with the promise of beer and maybe some good shark teeth. We did one day at Flag Ponds and another at Matoaka Cabins, which is what I did last year as well. I still can't say one place is better than the other. My friends who are not fossil collectors had more luck finding teeth in general at Flag Ponds, but I think the quality of finds were slightly better overall at Matoaka. It really all comes down to luck if you are going to any of the public spots. 

 

 

Day one was flag ponds

 

I tried experimenting with some hunting methods: sifting, searching the wave-line, digging up sand, and searching below the water line with a clear bin. Using the bin method, a bit more than knee deep I was able to find a nice Mako. This was the best one found at Flag Ponds by our group. A few other nice ones were found by shoveling up sand and letting the waves sort it out for us, these were not found by me. 

 

Second day was Matoaka Cabins, it was a clear and calm day.

 

Using the same bin method, even on the clear day, I was not able to find a tooth below the water line. There were far too many grey-black shells that appeared similar. We had the most success just walking along the beach, sifting especially was a bust. Another very nice Mako was found by a friend as we were on our way out just tumbling against the cliffs in the waves. Pictured below under my thumb. These were some of the best finds from the whole group. 

 

Here are my best finds next to a ruler. A bit puzzled by the tooth at the 3 inch mark. Has the shape of a meg, but far too small. 

[Newbie_1971]

Why wouldn't it be a meg?

[Rock-Guy-17]

13 minutes ago, Newbie_1971 said:

Why wouldn't it be a meg?

Just because it is so small. I'm not sure how small they can get generally. 

[Shellseeker]

52 minutes ago, Rock-Guy-17 said:

Just because it is so small. I'm not sure how small they can get generally. 

MUCH smaller than the ones I show you here...

 

[Praefectus]

Nice finds!

[Frightmares]

That one definitely looks like a small meg! Nice finds!

[Elmo]

That looks like you had a pretty good time out there and walked away with some beautiful finds! 
I’ve found Flag Ponds and Matoaka Cabins to be pretty equal in most finds. The only real difference I notice is there’s a wider variety of shells and more complete shells at Matoaka because of 99% of the place being cliff side and fresh wash out happening all the time. Both are also pretty good for giving up coral too. 
 

[AlwaysISOSharkTeeth412]

I’m heading to Matoaka in the morning. Might stop at Flag Ponds and fill a couple buckets of matrix afterward. Hope I find a few as nice as those!

[automech]

I like that bin idea. I use an underwater viewer like this:

It's worked well for me. I'm planning to build another type using a 6 or 8 inch diameter tube that's 4 or 5 feet long so I don't have to bend over so much.