I spent yesterday morning at the North Sulfur River. I had never made a trip to the upper part of the river, and decided to do that yesterday. I spent all morning walking (and crawling) the river, but found nothing. When I try out a new spot, I’ve made it a practice to find a nearby second spot to look at, in case the first one doesn’t pan out at all. Sherman isn’t too long a drive to the west of this upper river spot, so I designated a new section of Post Oak Creek that second spot, and drove there after I left the river.

I wasn’t too optimistic about what I might find in this new section of Post Oak Creek. The conditions and cirmcumstances seemed all wrong. I didn’t arrive there until after noon. Post Oak Creek is a long enough drive from home that I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay long. Plus, it’s been quite a while since there was a good rain here. Post Oak Creek gets very picked over when there isn’t new water uncovering stuff. But I figured if I found anything at all under these conditions, that would let me know this is a good spot, and I should return after a good rain.

I also had the thought that if I didn’t find much on gravel bars, I would spend some time searching matrix here. I had never done that at all at Post Oak Creek. I hiked down the creek and hunted a single gravel bar. I never made it past that gravel bar, and ended up finding much more than I expected, and only briefly looked at matrix there. For those so inclined, here’s today’s version of “Find the fossil”. Click the photos to be able to zoom in and get a closer look.

I actually took 14 in situ photos, but culled to these 8 to post.

Here is what I brought home. I shouldn’t pick up so many broken teeth, but I can never seem to resist a fossilized tooth.

Here is the first of the two largest teeth. These are among the largest teeth I’ve found in my short time fossil hunting.

And here is the other larger tooth. Neither of these teeth is in perfect condition. But, considering how many teeth I’ve found this year that were so small they required a microscope to photograph, I was still thrilled about finding these two.

Lots of cracks in this one, but it’s in one piece, with the root intact. A real beauty, I think.

The only Ptychodus tooth of the day.

Half the root missing, but still a pretty tooth.

Other teeth from the day.

This looks to me more like a crinoid segment than anything else, though I’ve never found crinoids in this area before. The thought in The Fossil Forum is that it really is a crinoid segment, and came from further west, brought in with construction material.

This is plainly a bone, but I can’t tell what it’s from. Perhaps someone in The Fossil Forum will recognize it.

This bone is as brown as any fossilized bone, but the porous part of it hasn’t become completely filled in yet, so I assumed it must be a modern bone. It seemed like a good candidate to take home and do the flame test on. A flame didn’t produce any smell, but I did eventually get smoke.

And this is obviously a modern bone, but it was so interesting looking I picked it up anyway. I had no idea what it was. It was ID’d in The Fossil Forum as pharyngeal teeth from some kind of fish.

With my short time at the end of the day looking at matrix, I found these two teeth. I also spotted a couple of gastropods in giant rocks, but freeing them would have taken more chiseling than I was willing to tackle that late.

I made another trip yesterday morning to the Navarro County creek I visited a couple of times in the last few weeks. I had found everything I brought home last time on gravel bars, but ran out of time, and never got to search some good looking gravel bars downstream. Those gravel bars are actually a shorter hike than the ones I found fossils on, so I’ve been wanting to come back. I ended up being very disappointed in those new gravel bars. I found nothing. I finally hiked on up the creek to the gravel bars where I’d found stuff last trip, and hunted them again.

The day didn’t produce a lot. Most teeth were just broken pieces. Here is what I brought home. Click the photos to be able to zoom in and get a closer look.

Here are a couple of in situ photos.

Here is the tooth in that first in situ photo, no roots left at all.

And the tooth from the second in situ photo, with just one root.

Here’s the largest tooth of the day. No roots, plus the tip broken off.

This bacculite looks a lot like those you find at NSR, except tumbled a lot more.

I so rarely find complete, or almost complete ammonites, so it seems ironic that in this creek, where all the teeth are broken into pieces, I find this guy.

And then there’s this. Here are three views. That’s a Tic Tac I used to prop it up in the first photo. The last photo is a view of the back side. It kind of looks like a piece of jaw bone with two teeth, one of them very tiny, on it. It may be Enchodus.

I made a trip to a Navarro County creek Thursday morning. This is the same creek I visited a few weeks ago, but I was a little bit further downstream Thursday. It was still a Wolfe City formation area. It ended up being one of those days where I spent more time hiking and exploring than I should have. I was looking for likely outcrops in this creek, and just didn’t find any. I eventually started checking the unlikely looking ones closely, but never did find any fossils that way. I finally spent some time crawling gravel bars, and found a few things there. I’m still a relative newbie at this, but in my limited experience, I’ve had better luck finding fossils in good shape in outcrops than on gravel bars. This day was no exception; what I found on the gravel bars was in rough shape.

The best gravel bar was less than a half mile downstream from the outcrop where I found everything last time I was in this creek, but it was obvious that Thursday’s teeth didn’t come from that outcrop. All of the teeth from that outcrop were black; Thursday’s teeth were brown. I found myself wondering where the outcrop was where they came from, if it was covered with mud and would show up again next flood, or if I had just missed it in my searching. I didn’t leave myself much time for crawling gravel bars Thursday. I want to hunt this area again. Thursday’s haul was pretty sparse, and in rough shape. Click the photos to be able to zoom in and get a closer look.

Here are a couple of in situ photos. You’ll have to look very closely to see the fossil in that first photo. Hint: it’s really close to the glove.

Here’s the tooth from the second in situ photo. When I saw that in situ view, I thought I had found a beautiful tooth, half buried in gravel. It turned out the half of the tooth I was seeing was all there was. It had split in two.

This tooth from the first in situ photo is in better shape than anything else from the trip. A pretty little tooth.

This appears to be a piece of an Enchodus fang.

This Squalicorax tooth isn’t just broken, it’s also worn to the point that there aren’t any serrations left.

This smaller Squalicorax tooth is also broken, but still has serrations.

Not enough left of this long and slender tooth to tell what it is.

This one has obviously done some serious tumbling on the rocks

One root missing from this one.

I thought this was a broken part of a large tooth, but the view of the break in that second photo makes it look more like a bone.

I thought this was a bone. Here are views of both sides.

But someone over at The Fossil Forum recognized it as a piece of a mammal tooth. Looking at this end view, that’s obviously correct.

This smaller fish vert shows the effects of tumbling on the gravel. The larger one is covered with so much matrix that I almost didn’t recognize what it was.

Last Monday, I had a dentist appointment in the morning in Dallas. I left afterward and drove a few miles west to check out a new creek. This part of the creek is mapped as Eagle Ford, but the few fossils I found all appear to have come from a red zone in the outcrop that I’ve never seen in an Eagle Ford area before, only Ozan. But in this part of DFW, Austin Chalk is between Eagle Ford and Ozan, and they are miles apart. Experts in The Fossil Forum inform me that this is the Britton part of Eagle Ford.

Here are the ammonite pieces I found. Click the photos to be able to zoom in and get a closer look.

And these two bacculite pieces.

I liked this ammonite imprint in this rock.

This imprint is a heteromorph ammonite.

While this is clearly a fossil, I had no idea what it was. It turns out it is fossilized crustacean droppings, used to line a burrow.

I live near the western edge of Henderson County in Texas. It’s a fairly flat area with few outcrops of any kind exposed, and even when they are, they aren’t very fossiliferous. The county just west of me is Navarro County, and it does actually have some formations that hold fossils. But I haven’t had much luck finding anything in Navarro County. I keep looking, since it’s so close. I did a long hike down a Navarro County creek yesterday. For most of the day, it looked like another of those trips where I just don’t find anything. But one thing I’ve learned about fossil hunting is that even after hours of unproductive searching, it only takes one small spot to make you end up bringing home some cool stuff. Yesterday, I eventually found that small spot.

The area I hunted is Wolfe City formation. I just didn’t have any luck finding anything in the gravel bars in the creek, or in the outcrops themselves. But I did stumble on an outcrop that had some fossils in the mud just below it. For those who enjoy “Find the fossil”, here are some in situ photos. That pick is small. The handle is about 55 mm long. Click the photos to be able to zoom in and get a closer look.

And here is what I brought home. Excuse the quality of my photos today. It is very dark with serious rain outside, so I did the best I could for lighting indoors.

There were some interesting bone bits. These first four all look like Enchodus jaw pieces to me, including part of a fang.

This is an interesting bone bit, but I’m not sure what it’s from. I took a photo of each side.

These two small fish verts are the same size.

And the teeth. I love these first two teeth. These are the smallest Lamniform teeth I’ve ever found with the cusplets intact. I didn’t realize it until I got it under the microscope, but this first tooth actually has double cusplets on both sides.

Most of the Squalicorax teeth I found yesterday were broken, but there were a few in better shape. I do believe this first one is the biggest Squalicorax I’ve found.

Yesterday’s Lamniform teeth weren’t very large. Here are the biggest of the bunch.

This tooth looked very unusual to me, as large as the cusplets are, compared to the main cusp.

Other teeth. This first one is the smallest tooth of the day.

On Tuesday, I made a trip back to the East Texas creek where I had found micro teeth last month. This creek is a Kincaid Formation outcrop. I had found the one and only productive area there just before I had to leave last time, so wanted to explore it better. Rain threatened the entire time I was there Tuesday, but it didn’t really rain hard until I had gotten back home.

Unlike my last time here, I found very little soft matrix on top of the limestone this time. At first, I wondered if it was just because our dry spell lately had hardened everything, but the more I explored, the more I came to realize that most of the softer matrix had just already been chiseled off. It’s a reminder of how hard it is to find spots that aren’t over hunted here in Texas. I didn’t find many teeth at all this time, but brought home some suspicious matrix from where I did find a few teeth. I just finished going through that matrix, and sure enough, it did have a few more teeth in it. Here is what I got from the trip, including what I found in the matrix. Click the photos to be able to zoom in and get a closer look.

There were shell fragments everywhere in the matrix, but this looked very different from most. It looks like it might be from a crab.

Here are some individual tooth photos.












>

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.