I made a trip to a different spot on the North Sulfur River yesterday morning. I had been to this spot one time last year, but an unforecast rain shower showed up and turned the river into such a muddy mess that I turned around and left without finding anything. With a 100 degree high forecast for today, I didn’t figure rain would be a problem.

I found some of the usual things you expect to find at NSR, Hamulus worm tubes, a gastropod, a perfectly preserved complete bivalve, some interesting bones, and lots of bacculites. The only bacculite I brought home was the one in this photo, with the great suture lines.

I thought these two bones were especially interesting. They look like mosasaur bones to me, but I can’t tell from what part of the mosasaur. Here are views of both sides of each of them.

But yesterday was the day for verts. And each time I found one, it was bigger than the last. First, I found this little shark vert. It’s in pretty rough shape, but still put a smile on my face when I spotted it.

Then I found this mosasaur vert.

Then I spotted this fish vert. This is the largest fish vert I’ve found.

But if I thought that was going to be the biggest vert of the day, I was seriously mistaken. As I was on my way to leave the river, I spotted this. It’s a mosasaur vert. A really big mosasaur vert. How gigantic did that mosasaur have to be? I’m aware that mosasaurs grew to some pretty huge sizes, but I had no idea there were any this big that had roamed north Texas. Here are several views. It’s over 10 cm in diameter (that’s 4 inches in Texan measurement), and even taller than that. This view of it in my hand seems to do the best job of showing just how big it is.


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I drove down to the North Sulfur River Friday morning. It was my first trip to the new temporary fossil park. This part of the river was my favorite even before the new park. But it looked very different in 2020 than it does now. It’s a muddy mess right now. There were clean washed gravel bars everywhere in 2020, but now the gravel bars are all covered with dried mud and clay pieces. I wondered if the diggers and sifters had the better plan Friday, but I didn’t bring my sifter, so I made a long hike away from the bridge, and spent my time searching gravel bars. With so many clay pieces covering everything, it was harder to spot fossils, but I still had what I thought was a great day. I’m going back and bringing my girlfriend tomorrow morning, for her first fossil hunting trip ever. She has always been fascinated by the stuff I bring home, and will finally get the chance to try it out herself. We almost certainly won’t hike as far as I did Friday, and after a holiday weekend of fossil hunters picking over the gravel bars, it seems unlikely that we’ll find nearly as much as I did Friday, but we’ll see.

Some in situ photos from the day. Click on a photo to zoom in for a better look.

Here is what I brought home.

Because of the conditions, I spent more time than usual on elbows and kneepads, and got myself quite a collection of Hamulus worm tubes. I’m not sure anyone else bothers picking these up, but I’ve always thought they looked cool, and put them in the backpack when I find them.

This enchodus fang is the most complete one I’ve ever found.

Here are the other teeth from the day. I’d never found four teeth on the same day at NSR before, but like I mentioned, I did spend more time on kneepads than usual.

I couldn’t resist picking up this rock. It has two embedded bacculites that perfectly show the two types of bacculites most commonly found at NSR.

Here are the ammonite pieces from the day.

And I was thrilled to find this mosasaur vert.

But I stumbled across the find of the day just a few steps from that vert, this piece of mosasaur jaw. It’s partially embedded in rock, likely what kept it together in this large a piece. That last photo makes it look like there was a row of smaller teeth behind the big teeth. I haven’t seen this in any other mosasaur jaw photos.

I hadn’t been out fossil hunting lately. We’ve been getting enough rain to make me wonder how high the water level in creeks would be, plus spring fishing is so good on Cedar Creek Lake, where I live, that on days where I don’t spend a couple of hours on the bicycle, I’ve just been going fishing. But now we’ve had a couple of weeks without much rain, so I’d been wanting to make a trip back to Grayson County. I had a doctor appointment in Dallas Friday morning, so I decided I would leave from there and make the drive to Grayson County.

It was 10:30 am before I reached this day’s creek, rapidly approaching the heat of the day, so I knew this would be a short visit to the creek. It was hot and sunny Friday, and I got reminded just how much heat you feel from those gravel bars when you’re on knees and elbows. By shortly after 1:00 pm, I was cooked and ready to make the drive home. But this part of the creek is so much more grown up than when I was last there, I had a tough time getting out of the creek without getting torn up by briars and tree limbs. I ended up looking like I had been on the short end of a fight with a wildcat. I was already carrying leg chaps, but just never stopped to put them on. I’ve found some old kevlar arm chaps too. I’m going to start making myself wear both when traversing the thick stuff from now on. 71 year old skin just seems to suffer a lot more damage in these situations than young skin does.

But as always in Grayson County, I did find some fossils. Here are photos of some, just as they lay when I found them. Each of those last two photos have two teeth in them. It’s not often that I find two teeth that close together. Click the images to be able to zoom in for a closer look.

Here is what I brought home on Friday. One of those teeth is so small, I don’t know how my old eyes spotted it. It makes you wonder just how many micro teeth there are in these creeks.

One of the things I really like about the creeks in this area is that there’s always the possibility of finding a very large tooth (very large for Texas, that is), and Friday, I found this beauty. If I ever stop getting excited about finding a tooth this size, I’ll know it’s time to find a new hobby.

The day produced only two Ptychodus teeth. Here they are.

And as usually happens on these trips, I got reminded of my beginner status by a piece I couldn’t identify. The first side of this piece just looks like a round black rock, but the flat second side has quite a distinctive pattern on it. The Fossil Forum identified this as a Pycnodus fish jaw plate. It’s always fun and exciting to find something new and different.


Here is a piece of a sawfish rostral tooth. I’ve never found a complete one.

Some other teeth from the day.

I made another trip to a Grayson County creek yesterday. I had visited this spot once before. It was muddy and the water was a bit higher, but I still don’t think we’ve had enough rain to really wash out a lot of new fossils. Here are some teeth as they lay. Click on the images to be able to zoom in for a closer look.

Here is what I brought home. The larger teeth are all pretty broken.

But I did find this fish vert. It always makes my day when I find a larger one.

My favorite tooth of the day.

Here are the other teeth I liked.

I’ve been wanting to check out some of the construction sites in Eagle Ford areas in north Texas, but most of those are well north of Dallas. I’m 60 miles southeast of Dallas, so I’m not often willing to drive that far to scout sites, most of which probably won’t have anything anyway. But yesterday, I had a doctor’s appointment in Dallas, plus needed to make a shopping stop in north Dallas, so I decided to do a little scouting further north. It was to be just scouting, and I wasn’t dressed for any actual fossil hunting. I had on shorts and sandals, and didn’t even bring my hat. But, don’t you know it, I brought home fossils.

One of the construction sites was on a hillside, so the grading done to level it went deeper there, and I stopped to walk a little of it. I found a rock that just looked like a piece of concrete, but I’ve learned that some of the Eagle Ford fossiferous matrix looks a lot like concrete, so I routinely waste a lot of time picking up concrete pieces. There were no visible fossils in this rock, but when I turned it over, it looked like gray sandstone on the other side. That told me it wasn’t concrete, and every time I saw another rock that looked like it, I picked it up. Sure enough, one of the rocks had a small tooth so close to the surface, I was able to pluck it off the rock with my fingernail. Here is that tooth.

Of course, I’m aware that not all material at construction sites actually comes from that site, but the spot where I found these rocks looked to have been graded, but nothing else, so I really think these rocks are from this spot, uncovered by the grading. I ended up picking up five rocks, and carrying them home. I soaked them in warm water, to clean them and see how much that might soften them. They remain very hard, so removing fossils from them isn’t going to be very easy. I’ll add to the post later, to show what I extracted from them, but here are the rocks.

This side view of the biggest rock does the best job of showing their makeup. You can see the dark gray sandstone on the bottom, the brown sandstone in the middle, and the concrete-looking harder matrix on the top.

This view of the top of that same rock shows several teeth, above and below 170 on the ruler, above 140, and above 20. All of the teeth I see in these rocks are very small, more similar to the teeth I found in the Kincaid formation in East Texas than what I’ve found in Eagle Ford. And the matrix the teeth are in is attached to different rock than I’ve usually seen in Eagle Ford. Perhaps these photos will tell some of the experts in The Fossil Forum what part of Eagle Ford I was in.

Here are the other rocks. You can see several teeth in this one. The biggest is just to the right of the ruler.

One tooth visible on this one, above 90.

Nice teeth visible on this one above 100 and below 160.

Nothing I can definitively say is a tooth visible on this one, but I suspect they’re there. I’ll post more after I’ve retrieved some teeth from these rocks. Not sure how easy that’s going to be.

I took off Monday morning and drove to Sherman to hunt a Grayson County creek again. With the drought we’ve had, all the creeks there were getting pretty picked over. But, much of the county had had 1.5 inches of rain in the past 14 days, and I wanted to see if that was enough to wash much new material into the creek. The spot where I visited is one of my favorites. It’s too short a hike from the access point to escape a lot of hunting, but it usually holds quite a few fossils anyway.

It was obvious from walking the creek bed that the water from the rains had gotten above the lowest gravel beds, but it looked more like a gentle wash, and I got the impression that while the water may have helped uncover a few fossils, it wasn’t enough to really wash in more fossils. We need more of a floor for that, it seems. But, as always, I did find some cool fossils. Here are a few, as they lay on the gravel bars. Click the photos to be able to zoom in for a closer look.

Even without new material washed in the creek, I was able to find over 100 teeth. It’s amazing, the number of fossils the creeks in this area produce.

Here is the biggest of the five Ptychodus teeth I found. A real beauty, I think it’s my favorite of the day.

I think this is the prettiest of the other teeth.

Here are the other teeth I took individual photos of.

Yesterday morning I drove to Grayson County and hunted yet another new spot in a creek. This one did not disappoint. With the extended drought (though parts of Grayson County did get a half inch of rain later in the day yesterday), I keep wondering how these creeks aren’t picked clean, but I’m still finding fossils. Here are a few as they lay. Click on the individual photos to be able to zoom in for a closer look.

Here is what a picked up. There are 124 teeth, but no Ptychodus teeth. It’s funny how hit or miss finding Ptychodus teeth seems to be in these creeks.

I think this a piece of a sawfish rostral tooth. I also found one of these my last trip, but didn’t recognize what it was.

I think this little guy is my favorite tooth from the day. I uploaded the other individual tooth photos from the day into this album.

And then there’s this rock. Here are views of both sides. I had to ask in The Fossil Forum what this was. It’s branching bryozoan, that attach themselves to oysters, it turns out.

I’ve had so much fun hunting teeth in Post Oak Creek that I decided to try some of the other creeks in Grayson County. Last week’s visit to another creek didn’t produce much, but today’s new spot had lots of interesting finds. Like Post Oak Creek, this one is Austin Chalk on maps, near the Eagle Ford boundary. Here are a few finds as they lay. There are two teeth in photo 2. Photo 4 requires a close look. Click on the individual photos to be able to zoom in for a closer look.

Here is what I brought home.

Here are the six Ptychodus teeth I found.

Here is a closer look at the lower right Ptychodus tooth in the last photo. It looks so much different than any Ptychodus tooth I’ve seen. It has the classic crown and ridges, but it’s much flatter than any Ptychodus tooth I’ve seen, and the root looks more like other shark tooth roots than Ptychodus tooth roots. After cleaning it up and looking at it closer, I’ve come to the conclusion that it just looks this way because so much of the root is broken off. The second photo below shows an end view of it, and that side view of it in my hand does the best job of showing how flat it it.

Here are the two biggest teeth of the day. That first one would have really been big if everything wasn’t broken.

Here are the other teeth I saw fit to take individual photos of.

I’ve been having so much fun exploring Post Oak Creek in recent weeks that I decided to try another creek in the area Monday morning. The gravel bars in the creek looked much like those in Post Oak Creek, with lots of fossilized shell pieces everywhere, but in a hour of hunting, I didn’t find a single tooth. So, I decided to pull the plug on that, and drove on over to one of the spots on Post Oak Creek where I’ve been hunting. I was late enough arriving that I didn’t have a lot of time to hunt, and just limited myself to three gravel bars I could reach without too much hiking.

The water level in the creek is still very low. There were lots of tracks and evidence of digging, so I knew it was very picked over. We really need a good rain to bring some new fossils to the gravel bars. But I still managed to find some teeth. Here are some in situ photos for today’s “Find the fossil” game.

Here is what I brought home.

These were the only two Ptychodus teeth of the day.

It took me a little while to figure out what this was. It’s the middle section of a broken gastropod.

There were no spectacular teeth from this trip. Here are the ones I thought worthy of an individual photo.

I made another trip to Post Oak Creek Thursday morning. I explored a new spot on the creek for the first time. We had some rain and snow in the area last week, but I don’t expect it was enough to raise the creek level too much, or wash out much new stuff, but it definitely had everything muddy Thursday. I was surprised that, on this 70 something degree day, there were still spots of snow in shady parts of the creek, over a week after our only snow of the year.

It was obvious that there weren’t as many teeth in this segment of the creek, and I didn’t find any larger teeth. But like other parts of the creek, there were teeth, along with other interesting stuff, to be found. Some in situ photos.

Here is what I brought home Thursday. The bison tooth that joined all the fossils looked like it had been in the creek a long time.

These are the only two Ptychodus teeth I found.

Here is the prettiest tooth of the day. There are so many broken teeth in Post Oak Creek, finding one in this kind of shape will bring a smile to your face. It’s a Scapanorynchus raphiodon anterior tooth.

Here are the other teeth I took photos of individually.

And there always seems to be interesting bones to be found here too. This one looks to me like the upper part of an Enchodus fang.

This one looks like it came from a joint of some kind. A mosasaur, maybe.

And then there’s this. I have no idea what it is. It has such a distinctive shape. I’ve asked in The Fossil Forum to see if anyone recognizes it.

And finally, my favorite find of the day. I’ve only found one other fish vert this large. If you’ve cleaned as many fish as I have, you can appreciate just how large the fish was that this belonged to. It’s enough to make you take a moment to marvel at the amazing creatures who occupied our space all those years ago.