We finally got a break (we thought) in the high water below the dam on the Conecuh River and seized the opportunity for our field trip to look for shark teeth and other Eocene goodies. Turns out the evening before our field trip they opened the dam and the water bumped up 1.5 feet. Within a couple hours of our start time, they opened it up even more and water rose another foot.
This made it almost impossible to enter the river in nearly all of the normal collecting areas, however our intrepid fossil hunters were determined. It was a beautiful autumn day and while the water was cool it was quite pleasant when we started working to find sharks teeth and other wonderful fossils in the Lisbon formation. There were about 8-10 of us all corralled in one corner of the river, but everyone did well.
There were many shark teeth, ray teeth, and fishy fossils found.
Below, on the left is a bunch of fishy items: teeth, rib bones, and vertebra. On the right are ray teeth, spines and in the top left look to be some kind of claw cores, maybe turtle?
Some really interesting fossils can be found at this location such as these fish palate jaws, a ray dermal denticle that looks like the top of an acorn, and some nice vertebra with processes!
Turns out even with the challenges, we had a great day! Hope to see you next time.
Jim Braswell, APS President