# Anyone else like fossils?



## Rick (Jul 23, 2010)

Being a science person I have always been interested in fossils. Growing up in the midwest U.S. we sometimes found some nice ones. Sadly, I was a kid at the time and have no idea where those fossils ended up at.

Recently my wife showed me a local museum in a tiny town not far from here that has mostly local fossils. We went down and checked it out. The town was TINY, but the museum was very nice. They had some great stuff in there. Most of their fossils come from the giant phosphate mine near the town. The sad part is that few people are allowed into the mine to look for fossils. The museum gets several large loads of the refuse dirt from the mine. They allow people to sift through this material for fossils. This dirt is almost more fossils than dirt. Mostly shells and coral though.

Here is my first visit. Just sharks teeth. Some nice ones but all were small (half inch or so). Not bad for an hours work:







Here is my second visit. I stayed much longer this time. Several species of shark are represented here. Also during this trip I found my best one to date. . A decent sized mako tooth that is in the left upper corner of the pic. It is a few inches long:






Close up of it. It is perfect. I have large hands:






There are a lot of other stuff besides fossil shark teeth. In the next pic there are crab claws, dolphin teeth, tube worms, sting ray mouth plates, sea urchin spines, unknown fish teeth, couple nice shells, fish and shark vertebrae, and bone fragments.






Someone let me know about a creek that runs through town here that is pretty decent for fossils. I went down there yesterday. Sadly this creek has a lot of trash in it. I was amazed at the amount of glass I shoveled out of there. Even three feet down I was still bring up glass. I made some decent finds. These teeth are much more worn from being in the water. Nearly every tooth was also broken. I found a couple big teeth but the roots were broken. At the bottom is a piece of quartz that was perfectly round and smooth. Also a piece of petrified wood. They say there are whale bones and prehistoric horse teeth here but I didn't find any:






Here is a close up of a crab claw on top and two dolphin teeth. I have since found a few more dolphin teeth.






I am looking at getting to a few more places to search for fossils around here. Seems in this state we mostly have marine fossils. Makes sense though since I am close to the coast.


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## lancaster1313 (Jul 23, 2010)

Very cool! I used to collect sharks teeth when I was young. I used to wrap some of the good ones and make jewelry. I still pick up any teeth and bones that my daughter or I find lying around. I can't believe how many you found so quickly. Looks like your eyes work for more than just mantids. :lol:


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## LauraMG (Jul 23, 2010)

Wow! Great finds! I took my son to the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History the other day and we got to look at fossils all day long! He wasn't too into it, but I thought it was interesting. Pretty much everything they have was locally found, but I can't ever seem to find anything besides shells when I go digging! I dig the tube worms and the urchins! Very interesting Rick!


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## Tomato (Jul 23, 2010)

Any idea how old? The dolphin teeth keep things squarely in the Cenozoic, but do you know if the shark teeth were associated with the dolphin? If not, they could be much much older.

-Tomato


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## Rick (Jul 23, 2010)

Tomato said:


> Any idea how old? The dolphin teeth keep things squarely in the Cenozoic, but do you know if the shark teeth were associated with the dolphin? If not, they could be much much older.
> 
> -Tomato


Here is some info from the museum website about the deposits. www.aurorafossilmuseum.com

Pungo River Formation

Brown (1958) first formally described phosphorite deposits in Beaufort County, N. C. He designated the phosphorite unit as being middle Miocene in age on the basis of foraminifera from the upper part of the unit that are correlative with foraminifera from the middle Miocene Calvert Formation of Maryland. Kimrey (1964) proposed the name, Pungo River Formation, for the phosphorite unit. The name is derived from the Pungo River near Belhaven, North Carolina. The formation is not known to outcrop so a core hole drilled near Belhaven in northeastern Beaufort County was used to designate the type section.

The Pungo River Formation is primarily composed of inter-bedded phosphatic sands, and clays, limestones and dolostones. Riggs (1983) noted that individual lithologic horizons in the formation can be traced laterally and correlated based on grain size and percent P2O5 content.

The Pungo River Formation unconformably lies above the Castle Hayne Limestone of Eocene age and is unconformably overlain by the Pliocene Yorktown Formation. The contact with the overlying Yorktown Formation as observed in cores, is sometimes gradational due to the reworked phosphatic material at the base of the Yorktown Formation.

The thickness of the formation ranges from a thin edge in the western part of Beaufort County to more than 120 feet in eastern Beaufort County. The top of the formation dips generally to the east at a rate of about 10 feet per mile.

The Pungo River Formation contains inter-bedded phosphatic sands, phosphatic/calcareous/diatomaceous clays, dolosilts and indurated limestones and dolostones.

The phosphatic sands of the formation are comprised of fine to medium-grained phosphate (francolite mineral species of the apatite family) and quartz with varying percentages of silt and clay sized material along with phosphatized fossil fragments. The phosphatic sand grains are typically smooth, glossy, black to brown in color, and spheroidal to ovate in shape. Surfaces of individual grains commonly show concentric rings or bandings. Pebble-sized phosphate grains (+10 mesh) normally comprise less than 5 percent volume of the phosphatic sand matrix. The quartz occurs typically as clear, flat sided, angular to subrounded grains. Accessory minerals in the phosphatic sands include calcite, garnet and ilmenite. The more clayey phosphatic sands often contain weathered shell material.

The clays are principally phosphatic and diatomaceous clays; there are some calcareous clays in the formation. The clays (-200 mesh) comprise about 20 percent volume of the phosphatic sand matrix. The phosphatic clays are often high in dolomite content and are olive drab green in color. Often, after drying, they appear fissile. The diatomaceous clays are light gray-green in color, they are composed of up to 90 percent diatom shells and fragments in a silt to clay sized groundmass. The calcareous clays are usually light green to light gray to white in color.

The primary Pungo River formational sequence consists of dolosit, coquinoid limestone, phosphatic sandy clay, dolstone and phosphatic doloclaystone.

The capping unit in the formation locally overlies the indurated limestone is discontinuous unit of bryozoan dolosilt hash known as the Chartreuse Bed named so for it’s greenish yellow color. Occasionally diatomaceous clays are inter-bedded with the coquinas and calcareous clays. The principle phosphatic ore matrix of sandy clay lies above dolmitic sandstone and phosphatic doloclaystone at the base of the formation.

Indurated zones in the formation include several rock types: phosphatic limestones, silty claystones, coquinas and dolostone. The phosphatic limestones are usually white to dark gray in color. Typically, they are highly inter-bedded dense vuggy limestones that contain varying amounts of marly phosphatic clay, quartz sand and pebble phosphate. They contain casts and molds of shell material. Locally, this rock is composed entirely of cast and moldic limestone. The dolomitic sandstones at the base of the phosphatic ore matrix that are well indurated are very competent rocks. These indurated rocks grade both laterally and vertically into poorly indurated rocks so that competent zones usually have a limited lateral extent.

The silty claystones, derived from cementation of the phosphatic clays, are usually light to dark gray in color. Usually, their occurrence is localized and they grade both laterally and vertically in the phosphorite. Typically, they are friable, but locally are well cemented and competent. The occurrence of coquina limestones in the section is confined to Beaufort County on the south side of the Pamlico River. The coquinas, creamy white to light gray in color, are composed of shell fragments, whole shells, and re-crystallized calcite; very locally, they contain significant amounts of pebble and cobble sized phosphate. They vary in degree of induration from very poorly cemented to well cemented, competent rocks. The coquinas are inter-bedded with calcareous clays that are white to light gray. The Pungo River Formation was deposited during a transgressive - regressive cycle of the sea into a northeast-south-west trending basin. Southeast of Beaufort County, in the deeper part of the basin, available drilling data indicates that the formation is comprised mainly of clay.


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## Woodbox (Jul 23, 2010)

I like fossils. I collect ammonite and have a few pieces of amber, w/ and w/out inclusions and both finished and rough examples.


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## idolomantis (Jul 24, 2010)

I love fossils and looking for them. I have various amonites, trilobites etc, but also some fossils I can't even identefy, they are small and look odd but clearkt are fossils. I'll see if I can make a picture but since my macro lens works.. odd.. to say the least it's pretty much a pain.


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## Ghostie (Jul 24, 2010)

I've always thought Trilobites were cool but I don't have any fossils.

Nice collection.


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## Rick (Aug 1, 2010)

Went back to the creek near the house. Lots of nice stuff including Native American artifacts found there. FOund a large tooth but sadly it was broken. Also found a nice fossilized shell and a piece of bone.


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## spencervirt (Aug 20, 2010)

I used to collect fossils. I'm a bit of a science person myself. I have a raptor tooth, a T-rex tooth, some poo, and several trilobites. I bought a trilobite once for 400 dollars that arrived wih broken antennae! I ended up getting a refund and getting to keep the trilobite.


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## Rick (Aug 21, 2010)

GhostMantis said:


> I used to collect fossils. I'm a bit of a science person myself. I have a raptor tooth, a T-rex tooth, some poo, and several trilobites. I bought a trilobite once for 400 dollars that arrived wih broken antennae! I ended up getting a refund and getting to keep the trilobite.


I'd be suspect about the dino teeth. On the fossil forum there are always people who find what they think are dino teeth and they always turn out to be something else.

I've been out about 50 times looking since I made this thread. Last trip I found a horse tooth and a sperm whale tooth. I didn't know what the whale tooth was until I posted it on the fossil forum.


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## hibiscusmile (Aug 21, 2010)

Some of those since u have a lot, could be made into necklaces Rick, the kind young people wear with the black cords!  Probably bring in some dough at the local colleges or ebay.


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