Squatina teeth are very rare in the Pungo formation. In over 15 years of collecting Lee Creek I may have gotten 3 or 4, and at Brownie's Beach I have gotten that many in a day. They seem to prefer warm water and I think that may be part of the reason they are uncommon. It could be that they were in the Chesapeake only seasonally, and the Pungo was supposedly laid down near an upwelling cold current that brought up nutrients from deep water and contributed to the formation of the phosphate deposit. Something even more rare at Lee Creek is Nebrius. I have only seen one of these from the Pungo. Another thing that may help account for the lack of Squatina teeth is their feeding mode. When one takes a fish it uses it's mouth like a vacuum cleaner and sucks in it's intended meal. It's possible that loose teeth get sucked in as well and dissolved in the stomach. Even if only the root dissolves the remaining blade would almost never be found by conventional collecting methods.

This past Spring I brought home several buckets of raw dirt out of the mine.  I have found a couple hundred tiny little teeth from both sharks and rays, but only one broken/worn angel shark tooth.  I'm fairly certain its the only one I have.  I remember a few years ago reading one of the elasmo.com trip reports for Lee Creek and in it was the mention of someone finding an angel shark tooth.  I remembered thinking - what's the big deal, but figured with it being late in the collecting season at LC, pickin's were getting slimmer and slimmer, so even the mention of any kind of shark tooth was interesting reading.  Since I was always so focused on finding the bigger teeth there, I just assumed that finds of the smaller typically more common (at least in other locales) shark teeth just didn't get reported on.  I remember also reading about someone who found a partial dentition of angel shark teeth consisting of something like 20 or more teeth.  This many associated teeth from any shark would be an awesome find, but for a shark that seems to be rare at LC, the find must have been especially sweet. 

While going through the LC dirt I brought home, I found two sharks I had never found before from LC - my first Cookie Cutter (Isistius) and Dogfish shark (Squalus).  Both are in really good condition too.  I was really hoping to find a complete/perfect bramble shark tooth, but only managed to find a couple of pieces.  I still have a gallon or two to go through so who knows what's in there!

Daryl.

Even people who do the "Pungo Crawl" in Lee Creek don't find Squatina teeth very often. I have spent many hours on my hands and knees picking teeth out of the Pungo formation by the hundreds and I have found more Echinorhynus teeth than Squatina teeth, and those of us who look for the Bramble shark teeth know how rare they are. The Pungo formation just doesn't have many Angel shark teeth to find. It seems the Angel sharks didn't like the neighborhood around Aurora.

Ah yes, the golden pond.  I remember reading your posts DW on this awesome place.  It's great that you were abe to enjoy it while it lasted.  I was fortunate enough to know someone who could bring me as a "guest" to the Muddy Creek spot (Eocene) in Virginia.  It was a veritable fossil fest every time I went because I not only found some really awesome teeth while sifting, but the many more tinier treasures that I found in the buckets full of material that I brought home for sifting/searching later.  The biggest tooth to be found at this spot was the Otodus, which were fairly rare.  After that you had to be content with sand tigers if size was important.  But for me, I really developed a great interest in the small teeth, both sharks and rays.  What was so neat was learning that some of the species of sharks were only found in a few places in the USA, and Muddy Creek was one of them. Most (90%) of my Muddy Creek collection fits inside those small jewel cup container/riker mount cases.  For some teeth you need a 10x Loupe for viewing.  It was also neat when the book came out on the site.  However, a couple years ago or more the site was closed after the land owner(s) sold the land to a developer I think.  One of my friends was so interested in this site that he considered purchasing some of it, but it was way out of his price range.  We had dreams of renting a backhoe and scooping out tons of material that we would sift somehow, and in one or two buckets from the tractor we would have more fossils than I found in 3 years of collecting there.  Oh well, it's nice to fantasize.

Daryl.