Visitor
Cretaceous
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
June 13-14, 2009 - Cretaceous and Tertiary Fossils, Butler Co, AL
This month the group traveled to Butler County, Alabama, to a sandy creek which runs through early Tertiary and late Cretaceous material. The weather was overcast on Saturday, making collecting very pleasant. A number of members camped out for the weekend. Sunday the sun was out, and it made us grateful for the cloud cover on Saturday!
The sandy beaches and gravel areas yielded up shark teeth, ray teeth, some nautiloid sections, and recent mammal material which was sometimes as fasinating as the fossils.
We had quite a few young people on the trip who enjoyed both the fossil collecting and swimming, splashing and running in the shallow creek. There is an area of soft clay, and some enterprising young men fashioned bowls from it.
More about the artifacts found on the trip.
--Photos courtesy Claire Smith and Vicki Lais.
July 11, 2009 - Cretaceous Fossils, Greene Co, AL
BPS members and guests headed down to Greene county, Alabama for our July trip. This site is a creek covered with pea gravel - making screening for shark teeth and other fossils quite difficult. However, most found it fairly easy to spot the fossils lying on top of the gravel. Numerous shark teeth were found, a couple of mosasaur teeth, several ptychodus teeth, a gar vertebra and tooth, crocodilian bone, clams, oysters, and bryozoan. Vicki found a tooth so tiny (about 1/8 inch), that when she put it on her finger to get a closeup, it rolled off. The next 45 minutes was spent digging through the gravel in an ever widening circle, trying to find the tiny tooth again. As we finally gave up, she rolled the gravel around again, and there it was! It went in a medicine bottle for safekeeping, until a photo could be taken in a "safe" location! It has been identified as a gar tooth, which is more rare than mosasaur teeth in this area.
--Photos courtesy Vicki Lais
