Surry County 6/23

The beach along the James River in Surry County is really a neat spot to go fossiling. It’s like beachcombing along the ocean, except the seashells are all millions of years old; fragments of ancient shells, along with multitudes of beautiful whole scallops (chesapecten), oysters, and the occasional nice orange ecphora specimen. Finding sharks teeth and other animal fossils is pretty tricky due to all the broken up shells, although this site does produce occasional “aurora” quality teeth, even perfect six inch megs once in awhile. I usually always find something interesting to make the trip but pickings are scarce. It is not the kind of place where you could ever fill a baggie with teeth. On this day I had covered almost two miles of shore using my kayak and hadn’t found diddly, a couple little verts, one tiny tooth and a couple broken ones. My eyes were fried from staring at bright shells for a couple of hours. I went back to my car, tied the boat on the racks, and decided to walk back to the adjacent beach for one last peek before heading home. There is about a three foot pile of broken shells where the extreme high tides pile them up in storms. I’ve known of a few who search these piles with garden rakes for hours, and good teeth can be found doing this if you have the patience for it. Anyway I decided to take a gander at the high tide pile about twenty feet from my car and lying right on top was a near flawless 2.5 inch blond mako. So my day was made after all. Pictured also is a monster chesapecten I picked up that had both halves cemented together in matrix. I figured it would make a good door stop.

Location

Surry County, Virginia, USA