GMR finally starts paying out!

By way of introduction, I was first introduced to collecting fossil shark’s teeth when I was a kid in the ‘70’s in Venice, Fl.  I used to walk up and down the beach and snorkel close to shore picking up sharks teeth all day long.  After a long dry spell, not going to Venice and not finding any shark’s teeth, I went back to Venice in 2007 and found my first Meg over 5” while SCUBA diving.  That rekindled the old fossil hunting  flame and prompted me to do some searching on the internet to see where in NC, where I currently live, I could find some more shark’s teeth.  That’s how I found blackriverfossils.org and learned about Green’s Mill Run.  I built a sifter and jumped in the creek, immediately finding the typical assortment of crappy GMR teeth.  I kept seeing the awesome Great White and occasional other teeth people found at GMR and posted here, so I kept returning to that fetid ditch determined to find a perfect Great White tooth myself.  I’ve been about ten times now, and either I’ve figured out what I’m doing and where to dig, or, I’ve finally gotten lucky.  Or, my personal belief is tha I have at last slaved in the service of the Fossil Gods long enough that they’ve finally smiled upon me. 

I’ve enjoyed the posts and especially the pics of others here, so I hope I can return the favor and share some of my finds.

Now to the point:  After working on a rather large and painful home improvement project I decided I was taking a Saturday off and doing something I wanted to do.  I threw my screens and shovel in the back of my truck and headed to Greenville.  As I walked down to the creek I saw that someone had beaten me there.  He looked like a pro with hip waders a vest and special fossil case around his neck.  We exchanged greetings and I started upstream not wanting to intrude on his spot.  Upstream sucked worse than usual so I headed back stream where he graciously invited me to dig in the same area he was digging and had just found a GW with the tip missing.  So I joined him and immediately found a GW with the root missing.  We leapfrogged downstream little by little and sharing our finds until he started finding megs.  Worn meg, broken meg, half a meg, another meg, and all the other types of megs you’ll find in GMR, but I usually won’t.  He invited me to join him downstream and announced:  “I have good feeling about this spot”.  So I came down and took a spot slightly downstream of where he was digging, not wanting to intrude and starded shovelling away.  Three screens in I found a well worn meg, then I too had a good feeling about that spot!  I disarded my ¼” screen because all I ever find in it is crap anyway and focussed on scouring the bottom of that creek for a perfect GW. 

Then I heard this guy I was digging with making that sound like when you find a great tooth...

“What??” I said.  “What is it? What did you find?” 

“I just found my tooth of the day!” he replied.

Then, he pulled out a nice complete GW.  I congratulated him, jealously, then dug into my patch of sand gravel and mud with renewed vigor.  I can’t remember how long it took but eventually I had the pleasure of making my own ‘I found a great tooth sound’ when I pulled out an absolutely great Great White.  A perfect 2 incher with every serration intact.  I showed him the tooth and then placed it in a box I brought along for just such an occasion.  Then, we kept digging.  And we dug.  And we dug.

Turns out this guy's name was MikeDOTB.

At some point I had to use the zip loc bag I brought my sandwich in to put all the teeth in.  At some point Mike predicted I was going to have a twenty Great White day.  At some point I decided I was too old to stand thigh deep in a creek digging fossils for eight hours so I left.  After some discussion about never leaving a table on a winning streak, Mike kept digging.  Between the two of us we cleansed that 20 x 20 foot section of creek of fossils.  And this is what I found: