Lee Creek Sneak Peek

Welcome to good times, good exercise, and the best surface collecting for fossil shark teeth anywhere. Yes, its that time of the year again when hunters world wide converge on Aurora NC in hopes of finding megalodon teeth of the highest order.

How I have anticipated the Spring 2008 PCS hunt! With no productive land sites in SC and water too cold to dive, its been a long fossil-less winter. Not exactly fossil-less, but the quality teeth have eluded me for a while. My drive up was uneventful and filled with 2 mojo-producing mexican feasts before my hunt. I bought a new rake against better judgement, and even worse, I left the stickers on. Only now in this late hour do I understand the error of my ways...

As I walked down the ramp, the guides explained the collecting area to us. Last year's area is off limits due to the reclamation, and the new area is to the left of the ramp. The collecting area, though large, is only about half the size of last season's area. I heard one guide say it took them 2 1/2 hours to get to the back. I made the walk in 45 minutes with a bucket full of vertebraes so I guess the distance depends on the person. When I reached the first good pile of Yorktown, it was easy to see that I was not the first person of the day there. There were footprints criss-crossing the entire pile. A few Tiger and Bull shark teeth were all that remained on the entire hill.

The story was the same throughout the day. Foot prints everywhere despite this being the first weekend of the collecting season. Apparently fossil hunting has caught on with the employees at the mine, and it was them who had free reign over the collecting area before our arrival and even in the morning of our hunt. The collecting area had a distinct end of the season look to me. I made the best of things and I concentrated on looking harder and it paid off by the end of the hunt. I found several nice makos, two cow sharks, and a bunch of of bulls and duskies to fill up my pockets. I was kind of upset that the area was looked over before I got there, but the longer I thought about it, the more I realized I was hating the player and not the game. If I were in the same situation and had access to collect the pit whenever I wanted, I would do it in a heartbeat. I would probably get fired pretty quickly, too, because when I called in sick all they would have to do is look in the pit to find me.

Others managed to find productive areas - I saw plenty of nice megalodon teeth and even a parotodus or two. The quality of the megs was amazing, too. We're talking every serration including the tip and full bourlettes on many of them. There will undoubtedly be more good finds this year if the rains keep falling.

Thanks once again to PCS for allowing me to hunt fossils on their property. If not for their generosity and support for the community, no one would even have a chance to find the amazing fossils so plentiful there. Thanks also to the Friends of the Museum who do such a great job supporting the Aurora Fossil Museum, which is the single biggest reason anyone gets in that gigantic, enticing, fossil laden, most glorious hole in the ground in the first place.