Long Time, No Bay

Well, it had been months since my last visit to the Miocene beaches of Calvert County. In fact, it was all the back in July with Fossilguy and Paleoscan that I was last able to sample some of the fossil treasures of my favorite beach. I visited my favorite site at first light and again at the end of the day but not much to speak of. I did find my nicest crocodile tooth from that particular site today. I only have three complete ones from that beach. Seems that the closer you get to the younger St. Mary’s formation the more common they become so a croc tooth from the Calvert is a infrequent and cool find. A decent mako, a porpoise tooth and few hemmies rounded out the finds from that site.
The second spot on my day trip was a beach that either is feast or famine. You either found something really sweet at this place or you can get skunked - rarely a trip in between. I literally was one of at least a dozen folks on the beach today but as soon as I got in front of an eroding section of cliff and looked into the boulder strewn wash zone I spotted a Meg. Good shape (2&3/8”) but a little dinged up. I ended up walking all of the way to the other end (about 2 miles) and had just turned around and found the second Meg (2.5” and worn, but a meg is a meg) in the rock strewn roll ball of a large tree on the clay beach. The cool thing was I had just stopped to talk with a guy on a kayak and his wife. They were taking pictures of the beautiful bay scenery, made even prettier by the fall foliage. They were concentrating on pictures of the iron stained cracks in the clay and shrimp burrow casts when I found the tooth. I offered to have them pose the tooth in with their pictures and they accepted. Got talking with them and turns out the fellow’s name is Mr. Folk and is a professional geologist. He had even coauthored a paper on the cliffs several years before I became fully immersed in the hobby. Pretty cool!!! Not much to speak of for the walk back – a porpoise tooth, nice mako, catfish spine and a hunk of sting ray barb.
Not a bad trip - two Megs and a croc tooth are a good day at the bay in my book!!