Work has been interfering with both my cycling and fossil hunting time lately. I managed a day off today and started the day with a 30 mile bike ride. But there’s a creek in Ellis County I’ve been wanting to hunt, and I really wanted to get my first look at it while the water is low. With Hurricane Laura bearing down on the coast, I decided to make that hunting trip today, not being at all sure how much longer the water will be this low.

It’s an Eagle Ford outcrop I went to in this creek. With my late start, it was 11:00 before my hike down the creek got me to the outcrop. I left at 2:00, so only had three hours for my first time exploring it. The temperature was in the 90’s and the humidity was high, so it was definitely stifling hot. It did cloud up at times, and actually rained for a few minutes. But it was mostly just sunny and hot.

The outcrop is the typical blue-gray clay you find with Eagle Ford. Click the photos to be able to zoom in and get a closer look.

I didn’t find anything in the blue-gray clay, but in small tan color layers between blue-gray layers, there were lots of fossils.

I’d read that there are teeth to be found in Eagle Ford outcrops, but in my few visits to Eagle Ford, I hadn’t found any. Today, I definitely did find teeth. I guess you just have to find the right layer in Eagle Ford. Zoom in and see how many teeth you can see in the matrix in this photo.

The top three rows of teeth in this photo are all Ptychodus teeth. Many are so small, they don’t look like anything unless you get a really close up look. They all have the tooth shape, and the ridges that tell you what it is. I actually found more of them than other teeth. On the bottom row are a couple of fish fins, shark verts, and something that looks like a claw.

And there are lots of other teeth, along with other fossils, that I still need to remove from matrix.

And more matrix, along with larger shark verts. Today’s creek is closer to home that any other place I have found teeth. I had a smile on my face as I headed for home. I live near Cedar Creek Lake and normally root for rain so the lake stays full, but today was enough to make me want more low water.
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Some of the matrix though, doesn’t seem fazed by hot water. It may take something more to soften it. I haven’t even started on those two biggest pieces of matrix yet. It makes me wish I had brought home more pieces of matrix.

Update: August 29th. Here are the teeth and verts that came out of the matrix. Altogether, I identified 73 Ptychodus teeth from this trip, though many of them were so tiny they would need to be displayed under a magnifying glass. It’s a safe bet that I tossed some tiny ones too, not realizing what they were. Some had the familiar hump with the ridges, others were just flat with ridges.

I had a job in Dallas this morning (retirement still hasn’t quite taken), but finished very early, so I decided to stop by a spot that was on my list, that was only five miles or so from where I was working. Wearing jeans and a work shirt, and with a forecast high of 99 degrees today, I knew I wouldn’t be staying long, but I was close to the spot, and it wasn’t nearly as long a hike from where I’d park as I usually end up with, so I figured I’d take a look.

This is an Eagle Ford outcrop. It’s in the middle of DFW, so not exactly secret and off the beaten path, so I wasn’t sure if I would find anything or not. I spent an hour checking the outcrop and nearby gravel bars, then headed for home. If I’m identifying this piece correctly, it’s a burrow with a small ammonite fragment attached. Not too exotic, but it was so cool looking, I had to take it home. It almost looks like a cow skull with a small crown. Click the photos to be able to zoom in and get a closer look.

Then there was this larger ammonite half. It looks like a Placenticeras Cumminsi. It’s in pretty rough shape, but the shell is very much there, albeit with lots of cracks. I don’t seem to find many ammonites with the shell so obvious as this one.

Here are a couple of smaller ammonite fragments, with some shell fragments underneath. The two shell fragments on the right also appear to be from ammonites. The one on the left appears to be from a bivalve or oyster. I don’t know what the second from the left is, but it has the same color and texture as the Placenticeras Cumminsi ammonite.

This gastropod and these oysters appear to have come from the sand above the Eagle Ford outcrop rather than the outcrop itself, although the bottom two do have the same blue-gray color as the outcrop.