Late Cretaceous
May 29, 2010 - Cretaceous Fossils, Union Co, MS
This month's trip was to northern Mississippi, where we collected in the Coon Creek formation. The area was once a bay in the Gulf of Mexico. This is a Late Cretaceous site, where we found numerous turritella (most in an extremely fragile condition), and even more crab and lobster parts, mostly looking like they had exploded, though several intact "bellies" and a couple of claws were found. The finds of the day had to be the mosasaur tooth found by Don H., and the fragment of a duck-billed dinosaur (hadrosaur) tooth found by David. This site is being studied by George Phillips, paleontologist at the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science, who will be reviewing our finds for anything of scientific interest. The hadrosaur tooth fragment has already been sent to him for inclusion in his research.
Don C. had this to say about his collecting efforts for the day: "I'm very happy with my haul of crabs and shrimp (7 different genera and species in all), plus I got quite a few gastropods and bivalves, a squashed nautilus, a good piece of an ammonite with sutures, an Enchodus fang, and a small shark tooth. I brought home a bag of clay to sift and I'm still finding all manner of micro goodies too."
The diehards of the group had an evening of BBQ at a local restaurant, and as everyone headed home, two additional sites were scouted, neither of which appeared promising.
August 29, 2009 - Late Cretaceous, Perry County, Alabama
This month BPS members went to Perry County, in south Alabama, and collected in a creek where it has been said, this is the furtherest north that cretaceous material is found. It has been a while since we collected at this site, and kudzu and other grassy plants had grown over the road, making it a challenge to find our way to the site this time.
As Vicki searched for the elusive "easy way down" for over an hour, the others slid down the steep embankments to reach the fossils found in the creek. The fossils consisted mostly of various varieties of shark teeth. A few mosasaur teeth, gastropods and ammonite parts were also found. One of our visitors even found an arrowhead.
Photos courtesy Vicki Lais
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James Lamb recording the finds of the day, including their locations, in his ever-present log book. This day, and our finds, will be preserved for posterity.
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Leisa has found a tiny pearl and broken shark vertebra. A few pearls like this have been found in the south, but they are very rare.
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Badly worn shark teeth and a carina (medial plate) from a lepadomorph barnacle (the pointy item second from the bottom.)
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Shark teeth found by Claire, Scapanorhynchus texanus and Cretoxyrhina mantelli.
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Very detailed shark coprolite specimens were found by several people.
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Another shark vertebra found by Claire. NO, we weren't LETTING her find them, she was tuned in to all kinds of fossils on this trip! She was even finding fossils where several of us had scoured the area and found nothing.
