Prospecting New Spots Over The Last Few Weeks

[delenda]

I can't say that I have much to show in the way of fossils from the last few weeks, but I have found some fairly promising spots that I've turned up from searching old archeological dig records in Google Scholar, as well as hours of looking at records of the distribution of Miocene layers on a bunch of different sites.

A couple of weeks ago I headed over to Pope's Creek, Maryland (not Virginia) to walk the beach at low tide. To the north of where I parked, there was 40-50 foot cliffs but no exposed fossil layers. All I saw were a handful of broken Chesapectens about 10 feet out in the water. I walked back to the south where the cliffs were higher. It looked like a really promising spot--there were huge layers of gravel about 30 feet up the cliff, from pebbles the size of a grape up to cobbles that were four or five inches across.

Problem is, that made the beach pebbly all up and down, making it really difficult to spot any fossils because everything small slipped between the cobbles.

I didn't find much, though there were several huge oyster middens that had slid down the cliff face every 100 yards or so.

By the time I got about a mile up, there was the fossil-bearing layer I had expected. The best looking thing I saw was what appeared to be a large whale vertebrae sticking out of the cliff, but since it was firmly lodged in the cliff I didn't mess with it. It was really tough going on part of the beach, since recent slides had dumped large stands of trees onto the beach. When I got back to the car and was pretty scratched up and sore.

This weekend I stopped off at another spot that looked promising, the Sliding Hill area north of Richmond. I read on a Virginia geologist's blog that there are lots of Miocene (Eastover) exposures in the area that sit on top of much older granite. I spent a few minutes checking it out, including some local creeks that look promising. Access may be a little tough, but I think there are some spots I can get admittance to on some of the local creeks that cut through Miocene formations. Hope to come back with better reports once the weather warms.

[Bullsnake]

Nice report. Thanks!

I assume the middens are man-made. Any potential to find artifacts in them?

[Auspex]

Nosing around the Miocene Chesapeake Embayment will get you fossils; guaranteed!

The biggest challenge is, as you note, access.

[squalicorax]

Looks like a nice day regardless. Above freezing is perfect collecting weather

[jimsherri]

Great pics... pebbles, pebbles.. sometimes you have to stop and all most sit down and look at the ground and you will see the teeth it might be part of the root or just a small part sticking out under the pebbles..that you can see... there's teeth to be found at that spot....