I made a drive to explore a new creek in Hill County Friday morning. It ended up being some of the toughest hiking in a creek bottom I’ve done. This is another Eagle Ford outcrop, and in satellite photos, the blue-gray shale went from the sides of the creek walls all the way to the bottom of the creek bed, just like the Ellis County creek I visited last week. In real life on Friday, the creek bed was full of mud, and it covered much of the lower walls of the creek too. I’ve never seen such a difference in a reasonably recent satellite photo and actual appearance.

To make matters worse, it rained Thursday. I didn’t think the showers had reached that far west, but I was mistaken. It didn’t raise the water too much, but it made the creek bottom a muddy mess. I’ve never before gotten this muddy hiking a creek, and it really wore me down, slogging through that.

With the mud that high, there was no finding any fossiliferous layers of matrix anywhere in the creek walls, but there were plenty of broken pieces of it, along with shale pieces, in the bottom of the creek. So, I spent my time looking for individual fossils on the gravel bars (more like mud bars). But the rain had turned the shale really dark, and that along with the dark brown mud, made spotting fossils really tough. I picked up lots of likely looking pieces of matrix too, and I did find a few things.

Here are the only teeth I found that weren’t seriously encased in matrix. I really should stop picking up modern bison teeth, but can never seem to resist them. Click the photos to be able to zoom in and get a closer look.

Here are all but one of the other teeth I found. They are buried in matrix, and it’s not matrix that softened at all after two days in water. I’m trying vinegar now. It may come down to just using a dental pick to retrieve what I can see on the surface of these matrix pieces.

There were lots of small ammonite imprints in matrix, but I never found any intact ammonites. The one in the matrix on the right looks like there’s still shell left.

I had no idea what this was. Experts in The Fossil Forum identified it as part of the hinge from an Inoceramid.

Just before time to leave, I spotted this.

And here it is out of the matrix. It looks like a Cretodus Crassidens.

I have been wanting to make it back to the Ellis County creek where I found so many teeth, but by the time I could do it, it had rained enough to raise the creek quite a bit. The water level has just now dropped again. I was working near Ellis County this morning, and when I finished very early, it seemed the perfect time to go back. Rain is forecast for this evening and the next couple of days that will likely bring the creek up again.

Below is what I found that was either loose, or easily removed from matrix. Click the photos to be able to zoom in and get a closer look.

Here is a view of both sides of the tooth of the day.

Once again, most of the Ptychodus teeth I found were tiny, but I did find this decent sized one. I brought home plenty of matrix, so I’ll have some more fun hunting teeth after this trip.

Update: September 15th. And, a week later, here is what came out of the matrix I brought home. If you add these teeth to what I had already posted, that’s a total of 88 Ptychodus teeth and 102 other teeth from this trip. To someone like me, who never seemed to find many teeth in the past, that’s pretty amazing. As I posted in my report on my first trip to this creek, the teeth all came from a very thin layer of very fossiliferous matrix between layers of the blue-gray shale. That sounds typical of Eagle Ford, but what surprised me more is that something like 80 percent of the teeth came from two very small (like two foot by two foot) areas, and everywhere else in the fossil layer, teeth were few and far between. I also never found a single tooth anywhere in the bottom of the creek on the gravel bars.

I have to confess to not spending a lot of time looking there, since I was finding so many in the matrix, but at Post Oak Creek, the vast majority of what I’ve found was on the gravel bars, with only a few teeth found in sand that I had shoveled into a bucket and taken home, and no teeth at all found in the matrix at the creek. I guess you have to learn the ins and outs of every spot you explore, if you want to find much.

At the end of my second trip to this new creek, I left with the feeling that erosion from high water is really needed to uncover more matrix, if I want to find lots of teeth again, so maybe it’s time for me to go back to exploring new spots for a while, and come back to this creek at a later date. I’m new enough at this that I have very few really good hunting spots, but this one is definitely on that list now.

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.

I seem to be having a slow week at work, and didn’t have much at home demanding attention, so I decided to spend a day fossil hunting yesterday. I got up with intentions of checking out a new spot on the NSR, but when I looked at weather radar, there were showers in that area. The parts of NSR that I have seen are pretty tough to get into and out of when things are wet, so I changed my mind and made a drive to Post Oak Creek. One trip this spring was the only time I’d been there, and I didn’t know what to expect in mid summer, but it is one of the most fossiliferous places I’ve ever seen, so I was sure a trip there would be fun.

And just like my first trip there, I found teeth. I’ve found very few teeth of any kind in all the other places I’ve fossil hunted, so I really enjoyed my time crawling on knee pads, looking for teeth. I considered bringing my sifter, but decided I would just stick to searching the sand bars. It was a dark day for the most part, with light rain on and off, so not the best day for trying to spot tiny teeth on the sand bars, but I did find enough to really enjoy myself, and the clouds did help keep the heat from getting too bad.

The really small tooth in the upper left corner was the only Ptychodus tooth I found yesterday. Lots of the teeth are broken, damage from tumbling on the rocks, I guess. I always marvel at how sharp many of them are. Click the photos to be able to zoom in and get a closer look.

The number of bivalve and oyster fossils at POC just amazes me. They’re everywhere. I always have to pick up a few of the most beautiful ones. Look at the striking pattern on both sides of this bivalve.

This little bone caught my eye. It looks like a femur from some kind of small creature. The thought in The Fossil Forum is that it’s from a turtle.

It was finding an ammonite segment on a fishing trip back in 2013 that reminded me how fascinating I find fossils. So, when I started researching where to go fossil hunting back in April, the Lake Texoma area quickly became high on my list, because it has large ammonites, both on the lower lake, and on the Red River above the lake. But the water level remained too high all spring and early summer. Even now, it is likely too high to find much on the lower lake. But the river flow and level has finally decreased enough that I decided to make a trip to it yesterday, to hunt a Duck Creek outcropping on a bluff. This was one of those trips that turned into more of an adventure than I bargained for. The hike from where I had to park was a lot longer and more arduous than I anticipated (it always looks easy on a satellite image, doesn’t it?), and it ended up being one of those situations where I just couldn’t come back the way I went in. So, I ended up getting lost, and hiking a much further distance on the return, with a heavy backpack.

I should have taken a moment to mark on gps where I parked the van, and didn’t do it. I won’t make that mistake again. Even when you don’t have wifi or cell coverage (and I didn’t), gps works, and I’ll use it better from now on. I wouldn’t have been able to make anything close to a straight line hike back to the van, but would have done a lot better than I did. When you end up making an unexpectedly long hike with a heavy backpack on a humid ninety something degree day in July in Oklahoma, you run out of water. That iced tea in my lunch ice chest in the van was very welcome when I finally got back to it. This is a great fossil hunting spot, but I think I’m putting it on my list of spots for milder weather times of the year.

Once I reached the bluff, I couldn’t believe how many large ammonite fragments there were. Every five steps I took, I saw another, and took over thirty photos in short order. Here are a few representative photos. Keep in mind that chisel is 12 inches (30 cm) long. Click the photos to be able to zoom in and get a closer look.

I excavated a few of the half embedded large ammonites. I was thinking that if I found a very large complete ammonite, that would be the one thing that would go into my backpack for the return hike. Even one of these would make for quite a challenge to get back with. I kept thinking I would find a complete one, but I didn’t. This is as close as I got. I already have so many ammonite fragments at home, I just didn’t want to carry heavy ones that weren’t part of a complete ammonite.

I did manage to find a couple of smaller ammonites that, embedded in lots of matrix, look like they might be complete. I decided these were the two I would take home. I recently purchased an air scribe, so I’ll see how I do at removing the matrix. I have some gastropods I’m going to practice on first. These two ammonites still need some chisel work first, and I thought about chiseling more on them on site to get them lighter to carry, but I decided I’d rather do it at home, where I can take my time, and am better armed with glue if needed. Once I got them home and cleaned better, I can see that it’s just marl covering the larger one. That shouldn’t be too tough to remove. But it’s lots of solid limestone on the smaller one. That’s going to be a chore.

These are the only smaller things I kept. I seem to have a tougher time than most finding any echinoids, so I was tickled to find these two. The top of that echinoid on the right was completely covered with limestone to the point where I almost didn’t recognize it as an echinoid. But I did recognize it; my eyes must be getting better. A vinegar soak and scrub brush work confirmed what it is.

The fossil on the lower left appears to be part of a coral. I don’t know what the lower right one is. It’s shaped like a broken tooth, but the wrong color for a tooth. I was tempted to dismiss it as a burrow fragment (there were lots of those around), but it just looks so much like a tooth. There were plenty of Gryphaea and small bivalves, but I didn’t gather any of those.

With so many large ammonites everywhere, I reallly had trouble training my eyes to look for small stuff. I love ammonites, and the kid-in-the-candy-store syndrome was hard to overcome to make myself look for the other fossils I knew were there. Perhaps I’ll get better with experience. And I limited my time at the bluff, knowing the hike back was going to be tough, and might take a long time. If I come back when it’s cooler outside, I can stay longer and spend more time looking for the small treasures.

I had done 40 mile bike rides each of the two previous afternoons in the heat of the day, and this kind of hike right behind those was definitely overdoing things for this old fart. Duly noted.

My lesson about marking my vehicle location on GPS wasn’t my last lesson from this trip. The next one came from the Dallas Paleontological Society. I had joined DPS in April, when I first started researching fossil hunting in this area. Their meetings are too far away for me to attend, and all their fossil hunting trips are on Saturdays, which doesn’t work for me, but even considering those two things, it still seemed worthwhile to join. I would be supporting the nearest thing to a local club, there were lots of experts there I might be able to confer with if needed, and they did have a wealth of online resources on their web site I could use when I research.

But shortly after this Texoma trip, I got a nasty email from them. They told me that not only was this one of their secret fossil hunting spots which I couldn’t have gotten to without trespassing (an ouright lie), but they also had a trip coming up to this spot in a couple of weeks, and they didn’t allow members to go hunting their spots just before a club trip. They asked me to change my post in The Fossil Forum to make the location of my hunt less easy to figure out, and gave me a stern warning about hunting before a club trip, telling me I would be tossed out of the club if I did it again. Believe it or not, after waiting for months for the water level to recede enough to hunt this spot, I now had a club telling me where and when I could and couldn’t fossil hunt.

I complied with the request to change my post in The Fossil Forum by contacting a moderator and getting him to change the post. Then, I promptly resigned my DPS membership. I’ll no doubt miss their online resources at times when I’m researching, but I’ll live with that. Having a club telling me when and where I can hunt will always be completely unacceptable to me. Good riddance, DPS.

I am working again these days, but on Wednesday, I got off early enough that I made a trip to a creek in northern Hill County. Its limestone walls are full of fossils, but the limestone is very hard. It is obvious that I need to get better at chiseling fossils out of limestone. I could get lots of practice in this creek. Macrostrat shows the area where I was as being right on the border of the Fredericksburg and Washita Groups.

The first thing I noticed about this creek was how many Gryphaea (devil’s toenail) oysters there were. Most are pretty small, but they are everywhere. There are more of them in the creek than all other fossils combined, including lots of limestone pieces just full of small ones like the one in this photo. Click the photos to be able to zoom in and get a closer look.

Getting a large ammonite out of the limestone in this creek is really tough. I may need to bring a bigger hammer next time.

This ammonite fragment was one of the few fossils I found that was loose, not embedded in the limestone. As straight as the fragment is, I’m thinking it must be from a heteromorphic ammonite. I wish I could have found the rest of it. I notice that some of the rock in it is the gray limestone the creek walls are full of, but some of the inside of it more closely matches the tan loose rocks that were everywhere between the topsoil and the gray limestone. It made me wonder if it came from where these two different rock layers meet.

And of course I picked up some gastropods, most with varying amounts of limestone attached. I figure when I get around to trying to use a dremel or air scribe to remove limestone from fossils, these will be good practice pieces.

There were fossilized burrows like these all over the place in the limestone in this creek. I thought they looked really cool.

I made a hike down the North Sulfur River bottom today, and as usual, there were fun things to be found. There are shell fragments everywhere in the shale at NSR, but most of them aren’t from ammonites like this one. Click the photos to be able to zoom in and get a closer look.

This ammonite imprint in the shale actually had two pieces nearby which fit together nicely.

I found this almost complete ammonite in a creek wall, but it sure is trying to fall apart.

And a beautiful fish tooth, even if it’s broken. It’s from an Enchodus.

The most common fossils at this part of NSR are baculites and barbed wire. They’re both everywhere. I left all the barbed wire, but kept these two baculites.

I keep telling myself I’m not going to make that long hike down the river bottom with another heavy Egogyra Ponderosa oyster in my backpack, but then I find a beauty like this.

I walked the North Sulfur River yesterday. I was surprised at how low the water is. There had been a 3 1/2 foot rise at the gauge downstream just a couple of days earlier, but it’s obvious there has been no rain at the FM2990 bridge. There is not much water flow at all. No fresh water made me wonder how picked over it would be, but there always seems to be interesting things to be seen at NSR, so down into the river bed I went.

I found these two ammonite fragments lying, half buried in sand, exactly in the position in this photo. If they are halves of the same ammonite, there is some material missing between them. These are the largest ammonite fragments I’ve found at NSR. Click the photos to be able to zoom in and get a closer look.

More ammonite pieces.

A lamniform shark vert.

And the bones. Most are mosasaur bones, but the thought in The Fossil Forum was that the bone in the lower right and in the bottom photo is part of a fish skull, a Xiphactinus, to be exact.

I made my first trip to Post Oak Creek today. There had been rain in the forecast for yesterday, so I hoped for some newly washed out fossils, but Sherman got no rain. So, I knew things would be pretty picked over, but I decided to go anyway, and just hike a bit further down the creek than I normally might, to see if I could find a few teeth anyway.

I stayed about three hours. The knee pads I bought yesterday were definitely a good investment. These old fart eyes need to be close to the sand bars to get within reading glass distance of those small teeth. I had also made a sifter, and carried out half a bucket of sand to go through at home. I had fun. That creek is an amazing fossil place. Click the photos to be able to zoom in and get a closer look.

You really can’t appreciate just how large of an area on the banks, and creek walls in places, that are covered with fossilized shell filled rocks, until you see it. I brought home this one rock to remind myself of what the place looked like, as well as try to explain it to others.

There are truly fossil fragments everywhere on those sand bars. I was mainly looking for teeth, so I tended to ignore all the other stuff, but I couldn’t resist picking up these two small gastropods.

Up until now, I had hardly found any shark teeth, so it was fun picking up teeth today. The tooth in that last photo is a Ptychodus tooth.