More teeth, and sometimes it's good to be pathetic

We continued on our quest to find more fossilized shark teeth. It's really just a good excuse to get outside and walk along the beaches, but I am really intrigued by this whole fossil thing. We're finding more and more of them, but all the ones we find are very small. My wife and I both keep thinking we'll find some bigger teeth sooner or later, but so far - just little stuff.

The interesting factor with this new "sport" has to do with the tides. The generally accepted principal is to go out on a falling tide, about halfway between high and low tide. We've been finding more, though, on high tides. Go figure. This past time out was a high tide so we had only a small section of beach to explore (the water goes tight against the cliffs at high tide and, unless you wear waders or the water is warm, you are stuck with a small piece of beach)


sand tiger shark (l), snaggletooth shark (r)



Fossilized porpoise tooth



Crushing plates (skutes) from Eagle Ray

All fossils are 13 - 15 million years old


Still, we were finding s lot of fossilized Sand Tiger Shark teeth and Gray Shark teeth on the short stretch of beach. We did, however, find our first fossilized porpoise tooth - pretty cool, actually. A local fossil guy came by and asked how we were doing - we replied with the usual "finding a few small ones". He reached in his pocket and gave my wife a "small" megalodon tooth he had just found about 50' away! "Small" was his verbage - not ours. I would have been doing backflips down the beach if I had this. He showed us pictures of one twice as big he found the week before.


Megalodon tooth. This one is not a "great" find (to the hard core fossil folks) because it is small, the point of the tooth isn't perfect, and a section of the serations on one side are missing. I think it's pretty darn cool, though.



Our best finds of the day


I guess that's what keeps you coming back. And why being a pathetic fossil hunter sometimes pays off.