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December 3, 2008

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Shark Teeth

Green's Mill Ru...

Green's Mill Run review.

3/10/2005 3:08:47 AM

legacyForum

725 posts

Green's Mill Run review.

Hi. I just found this forum today and after reading some of the postings I thought I'd add my own. It seems that Green's Mill Run is fairly well known as a pre or post Lee Creek detour. I haven't been to Green's Mill Run(or Lee Creek)in a few years, but it was a favorite collecting spot for quite a while. I recently donated a lot of Green's Mill material to the Smithsonian when a researcher contacted me about a Tertiary terrestrial fauna study of the area. It turns out I had a few types that they didn't know were there. I had some very productive days in the creek. Some of the highlights were: two almost identical 4.5" serrated megs in the same hole, a deep pocket of fossils with 89 Carcharodon carcharias in various conditions up to 2 7/8" and a gallon of other teeth, a small pocket with 5 nice large mosasaur teeth, and A fairly large hole loaded with whale bone and fossil mammal material.The creek was loaded with C. carcharias , possibly the most prolific site in the U.S. for the species. I counted any tooth that was more than 50% complete, and I quit counting when I reached 1000. Unfortunately the really high grade teeth were a small percentage of the total. I may have only gotten 100 or so nice C.c."s. When I first collected there, a hard days digging would net between 30 and 40 C.c.'s. On my last trip I think I found less than 10. Here is an incomplete list of some of the fossils I found.
TERRESTRIAL ANIMALS: Gompothere, 2 or 3 species of horse, camel, tapir, peccary, deer, capybara, bison, and turtle.
MARINE MAMMALS: Baleen whale, at least 2 species of sperm whale, several porpoise species, seal, and walrus.
MARINE REPTILES: Plesiosaur, 2 or 3 species of mosasaur, crocodile, and several types of turtle.
LARGER SHARKS: Scapanorhynchus, 3 species of Squalicorax, Otodus obliqua, C. auriculatis, C. chubutensus, C. megalodon, Paratodus benideni, C. carcharias, Galeocerdo cuvier, Galeocerdo contortus, Notorhynchus primigenius, Trigonotodus sp. (giant thresher), Isurus retroflexus, I. hastalis, I. xiphodon, I. oxyrhinchus, different sand sharks, and several smaller shark species as well as various types of fish and rays.
The material found is Cretaceous, Eocene, Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene. The formation above the Cretaceous is a lag deposit primarily composed of Pliocene and Pleistocene material. There is also a Pleistocene peat that shows up occasionally. Although the teeth originally came out of the lag deposit, the layer is not as productive as you would think. In several years of collecting I only found a dozen or so teeth sticking out of the formation itself. I am going to try to get there at least once this year. Lack of free time has been a big reason for not making the four hour drive to Greenville from northern Virginia. My job has been getting in the way of doing things for a few years. Working 6 and 7 days a week left little time for anything else. I decided to figure out a way to get some free time to actually live instead of just being alive. The solution was simple...I quit my job and I'm taking at least a year off to catch up on time lost. I have shovels, screens, two sets of dive gear and 18 tanks, tent, Jeep, and by May I'll have a boat in the water. Watch out fossils...here I come!!!!!!! HAPPY COLLECTING!

3/10/2005 10:05:46 AM

legacyForum

725 posts

RE: Green's Mill Run review.

What side of the road did you collect? Downside or upside from the bridge? I have been several times and have only found small sharks teeth and usually not that many.

3/10/2005 1:17:04 PM

legacyForum

725 posts

RE: Green's Mill Run review.

I collected many areas of the creek. There is at least a half mile of collectable stream bed there. Many of the areas are covered by two or more feet of sand most of the time, but the areas with exposed gravel change after every flood. There is one area at the park that should be productive. It is a deep hole, when it's not filled with sand, that has a rocky layer exposed at the down-stream end. Toward the up-stream end of the hole is a large pipe sticking out of the wall on the opposite stream bed. There is a buried pipe or tree trunk just up from the pipe, as I recall. Digging on the up-stream side of the pipe/tree should net someone some nice teeth. It will take some work to get through the road gravels that have collected there from when they rebuilt the bridge, I figure two or three hours of digging and screening junk before you get to the "good stuff" It's been a few years since I worked that spot, but I got several dozen C. carcharias up to 2 3/4" including a glossy black monster with white "snowflakes" scattered about the blade. I also found a couple of mosasaur teeth and large sperm whale teeth. One of the reasons I found so much is my willingness to go deep. Most people that were collecting the creek wouldn't go much deeper than their knees, I went chest deep in spots. It's really hard to dig the deep spots but the rewards make up for not being able to walk upright for a week. In the area of the log there are holes that are at least waist deep. A long handled shovel is a must. I almost forgot to mention that the hole is owned by a very large snapping turtle with a carapace over a foot long.

3/10/2005 5:26:33 PM

legacyForum

725 posts

RE: Green's Mill Run review.

No wonder I never have found anything there - I never have taken a shovel. I did notice on the upstream side of the bridge that there were two BIG dogs. I really don't want to dig in chest high water where there is a snapping turtle!
I'll be going to Lee creek in early April and will give this place a try again...

3/15/2005 12:40:48 PM

ditchweezil

342 posts

Question about the layers at Greensmill Run

I just went to Greensmill Run for the first time last Sunday and it was pretty fun. I'll put up what I found in a couple of days. But I have a question about the hard "Oyster Layer" there. What age is that? It has gravel, shark teeth, and shells in it. Near the baseball field, it is on the bottom of the creek. Near the bridge under Elm street, there is a big wide exposure of it next to some manmade "steps" into the creek. At least I assumed it was the same formation by the bridge as down near the ballfield. Thanks! dw

3/16/2005 2:44:31 AM

legacyForum

725 posts

RE: Green's Mill Run review.

The majority of the material in the upper productive section of the creek is a shell lag made up of two or more formations. There are a lot of scallops and clams as well as some oysters and a diverse, if sparce, gastropod fauna. The bed exposed around the ball field is composed primarily of shell from the Pliocene Yorktown formation and the Pleistocene James City formation. Several feet below this shell bed is a Cretaceous oyster bed of Exogyra with the occasional golden colored beleminite. It is exposed in the bottom of the deep hole by the ball field and a couple of places downstream. If you go far enough up-stream, the entire bottom becomes shell and vertebrate remains all but disappear.

3/16/2005 10:54:06 PM

legacyForum

725 posts

RE: Green's Mill Run review.

Ron, How big is this deep hole? I seemed to remember that the bridge by the ballfield to the elm st bridge all was several feet deep - and snakey too. I found most of the sharks teeth just upstream from the elm st bridge. Where do you suggest might be most productive area?

3/18/2005 3:49:18 AM

legacyForum

725 posts

RE: Green's Mill Run review.

I would say that the best area is from just below the park upstream to where the concrete bench is high on the left bank. It's been a while since I was there, so the bench may not be there anymore. I think your best bet is to dig to the bottom of the deep holes to get the best material. Have fun.

3/27/2005 12:47:21 PM

legacyForum

725 posts

RE: Green's Mill Run review.

Ditchweezil, where did you have the most luck?...Upstream or downstream of the elm st bridge?

3/28/2005 8:33:32 PM

ditchweezil

342 posts

RE: Green's Mill Run review.

When we first got there we started at the end of the ballfield the farthest from elm street we could get. we didn't have waders so we had to hit areas knee deep or less. we found a really shallow area pretty close to where we started looking and we hunted there for about an hour and a half. there is some hard clay or marl with shells in it on the bottom, and there are large chunks of it loose on the bottom. this is where i found my first, best crow and all of the larger bellemnoids. da fossz, at one point, picked up a shell (~3 inches across) and identified it as a marker fossil for the cretaceous. i don't remember what he called it. anyway, after that, we went down to the other end of the ballfield and went into the water where all the concrete pieces make a sort of stairway down into the creek. There is a large, extremely shell filled layer there, which I later learned to be pleistocene. I found my two shells from greensmill run there, along with several little busted up teeth. Interestingly enough, I sifted that shell layer near the base of the stairs and even found a few teeth in it. we finally went across elm street into the park, where we found a shallow area at the far end of the park, near the woods, I guess. There are some really big pieces of concrete down there, and we stood on those while we sifted the gravel from beneath the sand on the deep side of the creek there. both df and i found large crow shark teeth here, and there df found all of the carcharias teeth. he just put up pictures of his post from this march 13, 2005 trip this past weekend. i also found my little great white blade blade there.

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