wrollings Posted December 23, 2013 Share Posted December 23, 2013 My wife, son and myself just returned from spending a couple of hours at one of the creeks behind our house. Found numerous shark teeth and shark tooth fragments. I found what I think is a Squalodon tooth, along with several fragments that may be Squalodon as well. I also found a lower jaw (with three teeth) from some sort of mammal. Not a bad haul for two hours. Pics to come! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Badgerfan Posted December 23, 2013 Share Posted December 23, 2013 Sweet!! Summerville and the surrounding area's are goldmines. Its so nice to "pick" a creek or a ditch and find teeth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrieder79 Posted December 23, 2013 Share Posted December 23, 2013 Oh, man. It must be sooo cool to be able to just walk over to a nearby creek to do some hunting. If I lived in summerville I'd definitely lose my job within a few months. Luck is the most important skill of a fossil diver. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cowsharks Posted December 23, 2013 Share Posted December 23, 2013 can't wait to see pics .... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hokiehunter Posted December 24, 2013 Share Posted December 24, 2013 Get those pics up. Would love to see the Squalodon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Angus Stydens Posted December 24, 2013 Share Posted December 24, 2013 Yep, Summerville can be a fossil collector's paradise. I have been living here and collecting since 1980 and have many fond memories of some really great finds, especially back in the early 1980's when all the housing developments were being built on Old Trolley road and the Oakbrook area. Every time they built a new development (Irongate, Brandymill, Quail Arbor 5, etc.) they dug a nice deep ditch around the perimeter or at least along one side of the development, and connected the ditch to the nearest drainage point, like a creek that drains into the Ashley River. The first really good site I worked was in Irongate, way back in 1980. There were multiple ditches dug across and around the entire development, and all of them produced some spectacular fossils. More shark teeth than you could imagine, a few whale skulls, partial turtles, some superb bird bones, and the one and only partial femur of a seal I ever found. There were so few collectors back then that I could wait for several days after a heavy rain and when I hit the ditches and spoil mounds, there would be no footprints of anyone who got there before me. Try to find a site like that today! There was such a big building boom going on back then that I often had three or four very rich sites to choose from at one time. After a good rain, it would take days to hit them all. I used to dig in the Chandler Bridge formation and the Pleistocene layers above it, looking for angustidens and megalodon teeth. I have dug out a whole lotta nice megs (land finds) out of the ten mile hill formation and the wando formation. Unfortunately, back in the mid nineties, the Army Corp of Engineers decided that ditch digging in Summerville and other coastal areas that dumped silt into the Ashley River (and then into the Charleston Harbor) had to come to an end. They figured this would cut down on the silting of the harbor and reduce the need to dredge so much. Practically overnight, the fantastic collecting that was the norm in Summerville came to a grinding halt. With no ditch digging, the collecting sites dropped by probably 90%, and to make things worse, old ditches could not be widened or deepened when the vegetation was cleared out. This "re-digging" was invaluable to collectors since it was almost like collecting a site all over again. What a terrible shame it was to lose the collecting site from the good 'ole days. Ah well, I had better stop before I wax nostalgic and probably start repeating my collecting stories... Uh-oh, too late for that... Angus Stydens www.earthrelics.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wrollings Posted December 24, 2013 Author Share Posted December 24, 2013 I am trying to upload pics, but for some reason I am unable to do it right now (from both my PC and phone). I have posted a thread in the Help and Suggestions forum. Not sure what's going on, because I was able to upload in the last week or so. Hopefully it gets figured out, because I have a few things I need help with identifying. Angus-I am a police officer with Summerville, and unfortunately there is a statute prohibiting digging in the Sawbranch Canal...however, surface collecting is perfectly fine. I have not found anything spectacular in the canal in over two years, that's why I have a couple little secret creeks on the other side of town. I wish they would still let us hunt in the sand pits that are off of Dorchester Road, I found quite a bit of good stuff in there a few years back. Anyway, I'm still trying to upload the pics! Happy hunting! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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