I made a trip to a creek in Dallas County yesterday morning. This is an Eagle Ford outcrop. I had visited this creek once before in 2020. I only found a couple of things, but one was an ammonite I was really impressed with. I had found it in the edge of the water, and wondered if this might be a better site to hunt under low water conditions. With the drought we’re having right now, those low water conditions are here, so it seemed like a good time to revisit the spot. It’s not a large outcrop, so I didn’t worry about getting there too early. I just hunted a couple of hours, then headed home before the worst heat of the day.

The fossils aren’t hard to spot in today’s in situ photos.

Here is what I brought home, minus one small ammonite that was soaking to aid in matrix removal.

This largest ammonite is in pretty rough shape.

This ammonite with the smooth outside looks a lot like the big ammonite I found here on my first visit. I was guessing that one to be a placenticeras cumminsi.

Most of this one is there.

These two pieces almost look like they could have come from the same ammonite. Both would have been pretty large if complete.

This one looked pretty good on this side. On the other side, not so much.

These two had very different ridges than the others. I haven’t had time to try and identify them yet.

I’m still working on removing the matrix from this small one. One of the things I really like about the ammonites from this site is that they all seem to have lots of shell left. So many ammonites I find elsewhere are just rock, with no shell left at all. And to think there are this many ammonites to be found at a small site in the middle of DFW, within the Dallas city limits. You just never know until you look.

This piece has lots of shell too. An oyster, I’m thinking, but I’m not sure which one.

And then there’s this. It looks like it was just a round hollow tube shaped thin shell before the matrix distorted it. I posted in The Fossil Forum to get an ID. It’s a sciponoceras gracile, a kind of chamber-less baculite.

I’ve been itching to get out hunting, but it’s been over 100 degrees every day, and everything is really dried out. I noticed though that, unlike my part of Texas, Grayson County actually got some rain the last couple of weeks. I wasn’t sure if it was enough to expose much new stuff, but I decided to take a day and go look in one of my favorite spots there. I got up very early yesterday and was in the creek by 7:30 am. I started hiking out of the creek before 11:30. It was getting pretty hot by then, plus I’d had my quota of crawling on my knees for the day. I got the impression that the rain didn’t get over the gravel bars enough to expose much new stuff, but I still managed to find some good teeth. You don’t find big teeth when the gravel bars are this picked over, but if you’re looking close enough to see them, there are still some beautiful smaller teeth to be found, and so it was on this day.

Some in situ photos. The tooth in that last photo is half under a rock, but if you look closely, it’s there. Click the photos to zoom in for a closer look.

Here is what I brought home. Sure enough, only one large tooth, but some very nice smaller ones. There was only one very small Ptychodus tooth today.

Here is that big tooth, my favorite find of the day. It’s the tooth in that first in situ photo. It was so weathered I almost didn’t spot it, and even after washing, was still pretty faded. A soak in some paraloid solution has brought back quite a bit of the color though. I’m thinking I’m going to put this one in one of my coin display holders.

This looks like a small mosasaur tooth.

Here are individual photos of some of the other teeth from the trip.

And, as so often happens on these Grayson County trips, I found a piece I can’t identify. Here are photos of both sides of it, plus a side view of it in my hand. The Fossil Forum experts think it’s a small piece of a fish fin or tail.