camping out in the campanianThis is the best of the stuff I have found in the last month or so of Cretaceous collecting here in NJ. My buddy Toofsnob and I have been looking for a spot just like this one for the better part of a year and we finally found it about a month ago. It kind of happened by accident, but the only reason I was so thorough digging in the area was because I had a sneaking suspicion that I was on the right track. The spot produces some awesome quality teeth for NJ. I have been slightly confused by the lack of reptile material though, especially since the only real nice Mosasaur tooth I found came right away after finding the spot. I also got a perfect little Xiphactinus tooth. But the best finds have been the mystery fossils. Since it is incredibly tough in NJ to find those spectacular fossil display pieces which we love, ie them big old megs, my driving fossil hunting force has become to find what is rare. The first mystery item was a tooth that I definitely had never seen before that showed up about a month ago. There were a bunch of buddies out digging that day with me and we threw around a bunch of possibilites, including some sort of dinosaur tooth. My first impression was that it was bony fish, however. As soon as I got online to do some research, my suspicions were confirmed and I was sure I had found a Protosphyraena tooth, which is a really whack looking Cretaceous toothed swordfish. As far as I know, there have only been a couple previous reports of this genera in NJ, one by Gerry Case and one by Leidy in the 1800s. Oddly enough, Leidy had misidentified the tooth as dinosaur when he originally described it in the 1800s, so we weren't the first to be stumped! The second intriguing find is still unidentified, but is some sort of primitive shark finspine. Hybodonts bear dorsal finspines and fragments of them are sometimes found in NJ, but this spine seems to bear some major differences from all hybodus spines even though it has many similarities as well. It is definitely a neat find, whatever it turns out to be.
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Location
| Monmouth County, New Jersey, USA |
| ID | 2737 |
| Member | toothpuller |
| Date Added | 4/10/2008 |
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| Scapanorhynchus texanus, the largest tooth is 2" which just by a hair comes in as my largest from this species |
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| Cretolamna appendiculata & Archaeolamna kopingensis |
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| Squalicorax pristodontus |
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| Squalicorax kaupi |
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| Paranomotodon angustidens |
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| sand tigers: Carcharias samhammeri, Carcharias holmdelensis & Odontaspis aculeatus
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| rostral spines of the sawfish Ischyrhiza mira, the largest is 1 7/8", which is just about my largest complete specimen |
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| cow nosed ray Brachyrhizodus wichitaensis |
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| other goodies, including the reptile stuff |
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| 1" mosasaur tooth, croc tooth, rare fish tooth (Pachyrhizodus),
rare cretaceous swordfish tooth(Protosphyraena), Xiphactinus tooth |
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