South Carolina Coast Fossils And Modern Finds.

[Darren Garrison]

I initially joined this forum for a fossil ID question (which seems to have stumped everyone so far) but I thought I might as well attempt to make a contribution, however small.

I live in South Carolina, not casually close to any good fossil locations, but I do make the occasional visit to the SC coast and find a few, unspectacular fossils. Most of my beach finds are recent species, but I suspect that many if not most people interested in paleobiology are interested in modern biology, too.

I’ve built up a few beachcombing habits over my many years of visiting the beach that may be useful to readers here. The first trick is not to search in the intertidal area where most people look—I search in the upper part of the beach where the sand is bone dry. (Even right at the edge of the blacktop for the hotel’s parking lots, if it isn’t covered with sea oats.) I use a small hand trowel and a kitchen strainer, scoop sand into the strainer, sift, let the sand particles fall through and shelly debris are left behind. I collect those shelly debris in zip-lock bags to take home and sort later. (I sometime collect gallons of debris in a single beach trip.) This is especially productive after a beach reclamation project, when huge pumps are set up hundreds of feet off-shore that suck up seafloor sand and pipe it back up onto the beach. (You’ll probably get a lot of curious but friendly questions from casual beachgoer passers-by while you are doing this—and might swap tips with another occasional more serious beachcomber.)

At home, I spread a handful or so of debris at a time on a flat tray, hold it near my face, and do a lot of staring and pushing debris around. What I find in the debris:

1 A few shark teeth and the occasional other identifiable fossil

2 Lots of other tiny black, tumble-polished fossil bits that are utterly anonymous

3 Fossil coral

(these are the strictly on-topic items for this forum.)

4 A type of small bryozoan colony that grows on a single grain of sand or tiny shell debris.

5 Univalve and bivalve shells, ranging from big enough to see while walking along the beach down to so tiny that they barely avoided falling through the holes in the strainer.

These “good” categories are a minority component of what is mostly badly broken shell fragments, small rocks, and sand grains large enough to not fall through the strainer. To do the sorting takes lots of time, patience, and good eyesight. But you are rewarded by finding things that you can be assured that the very large majority of beachgoers would never notice right under their feet.

I also have a significant number of large whelks, but my method for finding them—climbing over the boulders covering waste water pipes dumping into the ocean (often very wet, mossy boulders with waves breaking against them) and using a knife to dig out shells wedged between the rocks—is probably not a method you should emulate, what with the risk of falling and shattering your skull.

These are my SC beach shark teeth finds. (I know they would photograph better without the bags, but that would be too much of a hassle.)

My rarest find, I think.

My one identifiable mammal find - the crown of a tapir molar.

The most impressive of my unimpressive animal fossil finds.

Fossil coral.

my better finds are with modern stuff.

Bryozoan colonies.

Tiny olive shells and relatives.

Lettered olives with much or all of their pigment intact.

A few large but bleached olives.

Many hundreds of bleached olives, with yard stick and scalecat.

A bunch of small channeled whelks, kmobbed whelks, and lightning whelks.

A bunch of large channeled whelks, kmobbed whelks, and lightning whelks. No scale object, but largest are on the order of 8 to 10 inches long.

"Shark's eye" shells.

Cowries.

Augers.

Some "one-offs" - shells that I have only ever found one sample of, and some of which may have no business as far north as South Carolina. (I have found two badly eroded, possibly fossil "lips" from adult helments.)

Edited July 31, 2015 by Darren Garrison

[sseth]

What a fantastic collection. Thanks for sharing.

[calhounensis]

Your mammal tooth belongs to a tapir, not peccary.

[Troodon]

Nice haul. Looks like beachcombing is fun and rewarding

[izak_]

Wow! I love the teeth, bones and the corals. Keep it up

Izak

[Al Dente]

I like your bryozoan colonies. I find a lot of Pleistocene and some modern of the same type here in North Carolina.

[ZiggieCie]

Welcome to the Forum and a great tour of your collection.

[Darren Garrison]

Your mammal tooth belongs to a tapir, not peccary.

Fixed. In my defense, it sure resembles some pecary molar photos I've seen.

[masonboro37]

I enjoyed seeing your finds! The bryozoan especially! The last picture has some beauties. Thank you for sharing!

[Darren Garrison]

I was searching through some old photos and found a forgotten image of the sand grain bryozoans I had made years ago on my flatbed scanner. Since the bryozoans seem to be liked, I thought that I'd add it.

[PaleoWilliam]

Nice finds!