Began and Ended March in Mississippi

Our field trip in March took us to southern Mississippi to a lime quarry comprised of marine rocks from the Oligocene. We had just a beautiful day with highs reaching into the low 60s, a breeze and bright sunshine. A fossil hunter could ask for nothing better!

This site has a huge diversity of fossils including bivalves (especially abundant scallops), gastropods, scaphopods, bryozoans, crustaceans, echinoids, fish (teeth, bones, and otoliths), cartilaginous fish (shark and ray teeth, barbs, and denticles), and other odds and ends including a huge type of single-celled foraminifera. Occasionally even articulated fish specimens can be found like this one!!! The bone preservation is really outstanding.

Most of the shark teeth are quite small making them a challenge to pick up amongst all the other fossils in the matrix.

The following is VERY atypical in numbers of shark, ray, and fish (including triggerfish and barracuda) teeth found, but is quite typical of some of the diversity of fossils that can be found at this site.

Jim Braswell

APS President