I hunted for the second day in a row yesterday. This was a creek in the middle of Dallas-Fort Worth. I’d wanted to make a trip to this creek for a while, plus had some errands in the city, so made the drive for both yesterday. After the long and arduous hike the day before, this was supposed to be short and easy. I was seriously mistaken about that. The creek banks were just too steep to get into the creek. I ended up walking quite a ways, and even then, went down a bank so steep that I tied a rope and left it to get myself back up the bank. I was thinking that if rain got anywhere near me, I’d better clear out quick, or I’d never make it back up that bank.

This is an Eagle Ford creek. It was a really great looking outcrop in this creek, but I couldn’t get it to yield much. And the shower the night before had the gravel bars wet enough that they were tough hunting too. But I did bring home a few pieces. Click the photos to be able to zoom in and get a closer look. This ammonite was trying to crumble.

This little fish vert was pretty flattened.

This matrix is so hard the tooth isn’t wanting to come out. Maybe I’ll just leave it there.

This little piece attached to the matrix looks a lot different than all the other shell fragments I saw. Part of a crab, maybe?

This gastropod looked like it had tumbled on the rocks a lot.

And then there was this. In case I didn’t recognize this side of it at all,

I was really baffled by the pattern on this side of it.

Here’s an end view of it. The experts over at The Fossil Forum identified it as a lobster. I hadn’t seen anything like it before.

I have enjoyed the dry spell we’ve been having lately in Texas. It’s given me a chance to check out some new fossil sites while the water is low. I’ve been getting out hunting one day each week. But rain is coming to Texas. The forecast for the next three days calls for rain every day. I had two new creeks in opposite directions that I really wanted to check out while the water is low. What to do. I made the decision any retired person should make: I hunted each creek on consecutive days this week.

I drove to creek one Tuesday. It’s in central Texas. The outcrop is Wolfe City formation. As I hiked my way up to the main outcrop, I walked some great looking gravel bars, so I stopped and searched them on knee pads. The only thing I found were these three Hamulus worm tubes. Click the photos to be able to zoom in and get a closer look.

With not much luck on the gravel bars, I stopped at the best looking outcrop, and started searching it up and down. The fossils were there, but as so often happens, only in a very small layer of the matrix. It’s a great looking outcrop, with several flat steps, where the matrix gets harder. This bottom one was the only one that had fossils. At low water was the right time to hunt this creek. If the water level had been a couple of feet higher, I wouldn’t have been able to search the right layer. Here’s what that lower level looked like.

When I spotted this bone sticking out of the matrix, I wondered how big it was.

I very carefully excavated around it, and was disappointed when it turned out to only be a small bone.

There were teeth sticking out of the matrix as well.

And then there was this bone. It’s from the jaw of an Enchodus. Enchodus is an extinct fish that had two very large fangs. You can see the base of one of those fangs on this bone, but the tooth is broken off.

Here are the teeth I found. Most teeth from this site are in really rough shape, broken and with no roots.

This little Serratolamna shark tooth was my favorite of the day.

Individual photos of some of the other teeth.

Tuesday morning, I made a fossil hunting trip back to the Ellis County creek where I’ve found so many teeth. I had been making a short hike across the pastures of two land owners to get to this creek, but the last time I asked permission, one of the land owners refused me, saying he had made a deal to give exclusive rights to another fossil hunting family. I can still get to the creek, but now it’s a very long hike for me. So, I waited until the hottest part of summer was gone to try that long hike.

When I reached the small section of the creek where I’d been finding most of the teeth, this is what I saw. Click the photos to be able to zoom in and get a closer look.

There was about a 35 foot long stretch where the matrix had been dug into rubble like this. I’ve always made it a practice to not chisel out more matrix than what I can thoroughly go through right then, or take home in my backpack. Obviously, that’s not the technique of the fossil hunters I share the creek with. I didn’t see how this much matrix could have been looked at thoroughly even in a couple of days, so I just started the day by looking at what they had dug up, and wondering if they left anything. I had my answer pretty quickly, when I spotted this.

Those two teeth were sizeable enough that I knew that if they hadn’t been spotted by the previous hunters, there would be plenty to be found in the rubble, and whatever I left would all be washed away in the next major rain, so I spent much of my time in the creek going through the rubble. But this was the lowest I’d ever seen the water level in the creek. There was no flow at all. So, I left myself a couple of hours to explore the gravel bars, and check further down the creek than I’d been before. It wasn’t the kind of easy pickings I’d had in the creek in previous trips, but I still found plenty to keep me entertained. It took me a couple of days to get through all the matrix I brought home, and as always with this creek, I was amazed at the number of small Ptychodus teeth I found in matrix that I brought home for other reasons. Here are the teeth I brought home. Most were retrieved from matrix.

The matrix from this creek is usually very hard. Some of it has to be soaked in vinegar to manage to pick anything out of it. There are micro teeth to be found among the other teeth, but they are almost always broken, and very hard to remove from this matrix at all. I brought this matrix home for the tooth you can see on the right, but notice the two micro teeth on the left.

Here are some individual photos of some of the teeth. This first one looks like a mosasaur tooth to me.

Here are some of the nicer Ptychodus teeth. Most Ptychodus teeth I find in this creek are pretty small, but this first one is pretty nice sized.

Other teeth.

And finally, these bone bits. It’s funny how often I find bits in this same general, peculiar shape. I always think they’re teeth, but on closer exam, they look like bone bits, and they don’t usually come out of this hard matrix in one piece, since they aren’t as hard as shark teeth. Someone in The Fossil Forum thought they might be Enchodus jaw fragments.

I’ve learned a lot about fossil hunting in the last almost year and a half, but my last trip to an East Texas creek less than an hour from home had me dealing with something I hadn’t been exposed to before: very tiny fossils, properly called microfossils. It was my first hunting trip to a Kincaid Formation spot, and the Kincaid is known for producing micro shark teeth. Sure enough, the matrix I brought home had lots of those teeth. I ended up finding 83 teeth from that trip and the matrix I brought home from it. Most of those teeth were micro teeth. It’s very likely that previous trips have produced very small fossils. In fact, I’m pretty certain I culled some Ptychodus teeth in the past, when they were too small to be recognized for certain by me. But those were exceptions. The majority of my fossils on those trips weren’t too small to be recognized by the naked eye. That’s what made this trip different. Microfossils were the majority of what I found.

I had bought a magnifying lamp some time back. It was mainly for lure making and fishing rod building. But it also works very well when you’re looking for microfossils in matrix. It doesn’t enlarge things enough for you really get a good look at micro teeth, but it at least makes them big enough that you can recognize them as such. Taking photos of microfossils with a smart phone doesn’t accomplish much. Even taking a photo through the magnifying lamp’s magnifying glass still wouldn’t look like much. It took me a couple of days to get through all the matrix from the last trip. But after the first hour of going through it on the first morning, it was obvious that if I intended to enjoy looking at and sharing photographs of most of the fossils from this trip, I would need a setup specifically for that. It was research time.

It didn’t take long to find what I needed: a digital microscope. Digital microscopes are just like regular microscopes, except that instead of looking through an eyepiece to see the magnified object, that object is displayed on a monitor. There are lots of inexpensive digital microscopes that plug into a usb port on a PC, and use that PC’s monitor as a display. And or course, saving that display as a photograph is a basic function of the microscope. This was all a revelation to me. I hadn’t had a microscope in front of me since high school in the 1960. I picked out a digital microscope on Amazon for $39.95, ordered, and it was delivered the very next day.

My Amazon digital microscope.

Installation of the microscope was as simple as assembling and setting up, downloading software to go with it, and plugging it in to the usb port. Once I got a good look at my micro teeth through the microscope, I discovered they needed some cleaning to get rid of pieces of matrix still clinging to them. A soak in a combination of water, hydrogen peroxide, and Calgon water softener did a nice jot of cleaning them. I also found that many of the teeth were broken, and that very few still had the roots. Identifying shark teeth without the root is pretty tough. I probably need to try to be more gentle with removal from the matrix next time to see if I can get more complete teeth. I suspect that many have already lost the roots before leaving the matrix, though. I didn’t get photos of nearly all of the 83 teeth, but I did try to get enough photos to show most tooth shapes of what I’d found. The teeth photograph a little darker than I’d like. I think I need to find a ruler that’s more of a gray color rather than white, to help with that.

Here is the smallest tooth I photographed.

Those lines are millimeters, so this tooth is less than a millimeter wide, and 1 1/2 millimeters long. That is one tiny tooth. It looks like a speck to the naked eye, and is barely recognizeable as a tooth with my magnifying lamp. But in a digital microscope photo, there it is, in all its toothy glory. For those who don’t do metric, a millimeter is just a little more than 1/32 of an inch.

Here is a collection of teeth photos from the trip. The microscope has no zoom; you just have to move it further from the target object to zoom out enough to photograph a larger object. I never moved the microscope for any of these photos, so some of the larger teeth barely fit in the photo.

I especially like these two. They both have all the root. Beautiful micro teeth, indeed.

And here’s a photo of the Ptychodus tooth. It was large enough that I did have to move the microscope back enough to fit it all into the photo.

I made a fossil hunting trip to a creek in East Texas yesterday and brought home a nice collection of very small teeth. It was the first time I’ve ever had success finding fossils less than an hour drive from home, and I was pretty pleased about that. This was a Kincaid Formation outcrop. The teeth came from a shell hash that was on top of some very hard limestone. Some of the matrix which contained the teeth was the same gray as the limestone, and some of it was a tan color.

I looked at a lot of identical looking matrix which had nothing but shell fragments in it, but once I found teeth, there were more teeth nearby. I had to chisel into the matrix to find teeth, so as I searched for teeth, I just kept tossing matrix pieces into my backpack to take home. So now I have a bunch of matrix to go through. I’m looking forward to doing that in my air conditioned house rather than outside in yesterday’s 98 degree temperatures. LOL. I made an early day of it after it got so hot, heading home before 1:00 in the afternoon. I’ll update this post after I’ve gone through all the matrix.

Here are some matrix pieces I brought home. The upper two are the same gray as the limestone they were on top of. But there was also some tan matrix mixed in, like those two bottom pieces. Both had teeth in them. Click the photos to be able to zoom in and get a closer look.

Two teeth in the matrix on this rock. The top one was still attached to the matrix, but the bottom one was loose inside a hole that it looked like someone chiseled. So much for my secret spot.

Some of the matrix I brought home had teeth that weren’t too hard to spot.

Here are the 20 teeth I’ve found so far. I’m going to have to do some research to identify some of them. The Kincaid Formation and Paleocene period are both new to me. The surprise of the day was a single small Ptychodus tooth I found. Since Kincaid is 66 to 56 mya, and Ptychodus supposedly went extinct 85 mya, I didn’t expect to see any today. But this one was in the same matrix the other teeth came from. It appears I found a tooth from one of the last of the Mohicans. It didn’t take too long after I posted about this in The Fossil Forum yesterday for someone to suggest that I had likely found the Ptychodus tooth elsewhere and accidentally mixed it in with yesterday’s teeth, but I don’t think so. I have collected no other matrix that breaks apart as easily as this, and I broke the Ptychodus tooth out of a piece of matrix after I got home. It will be interesting to see if I find any other Ptychodus teeth in the rest of the matrix.

If I thought last week’s teeth were small, then these teeth are REALLY small. But I had a blast finding them.

And I have lots more matrix to go through. I’ll check back and update this post after I’ve been through it. Thankfully, it’s nowhere near as hard as most matrix I seem to bring home.

09/03/21 Update: I’ve made it through quite a bit of the matrix. As advertised for Kincaid, this matrix has lots of micro teeth. Between my new prescription eyeglasses and my magnifying lamp I bought, I can see them much better than I ever would have been able to before. So I’m researching the care and feeding of microfossils. I have ordered a digital microscope. Hopefully when it arrives, I’ll be able to post some decent photos of these teeth. I’m beginning to see the attraction of microfossils. What looks like nothing more than a speck to the naked eye is a beautiful tooth under that magnifying lamp.

09/04/21 Update: I’ve gotten in my digital microscope and started taking photos of the teeth. Here is one of the smallest, no more than a speck to the naked eye.

And here is one that reminds me of how many are broken and how many need to be cleaned up. I guess I need to research cleaning recommendations for teeth this small. And I need a new ruler, without so many scratches, no doubt.

09/05/21 Update: I made a cleaning solution of water, hydrogen peroxide, and Calgon and soaked the teeth for an hour. Here is that same tooth afterward. Guess it’s time to make myself a gallery.