Aurora. NC:
And rain fell upon the Earth
February 2009
This is the steepest ramp I have ever seen entering the mine.
And rain fell upon the Earth
In the 600th year of the life of Noah, in the second month, in the 17th day of the month, in that day the fountains of the great Tehom were split and the windows of heaven were opened. And rain fell upon... Aurora
This was a horrible weekend to be fossil collecting in North Carolina. Rain fell throughout the day, the temperatures kept dropping until snowfall was in the forecast, and the winds picked up. Do you know what it's like to be in 30 some degree weather in sleet on top of those ridges when the wind picks up??? It's Horrible!!! Did I make a 1200 mile round trip just to get pneumonia??
Despite the lack of good weather conditions, the fossil conditions were outstanding. PCS opened up a HUGE swath of the pit to collect in. You could literally collect entire ridges by yourself all day. Plus, there are very nice exposures of Yorktown and Pungo River. This has got to be the best collecting area in years (and I thought last year was good)! Also, the area is fresh, meaning the Yorktown is not too eroded yet. While that may not seem good for the immediate future, this is very good for the collecting season. Each rain should expose nice fossils throughout the entire collecting season.
Our collecting day started off by sliding down this very steep and muddy ramp. We headed toward what looked like nice Yorktown exposures. After a while of collecting we slowly migrated toward some nearby ridges with other collectors. While on top of one of the ridges, I looked across the mine, and saw tiny orange dot surrounded by empty ridges near the horizon. I realized this was a collector that had made it the far corner of the mine! This person literally had dozens of ridges all to himself. That had to be stopped! I quickly yelled over to Amy to follow me. Off we journeyed to the far corner of the mine. Once there, we found some nice Yorktown ridges with nobody on them. We spent the rest of the day there carefully searching.
It paid off; I found an outstanding Hexanchus tooth, while Amy found a MONSTER megalodon. This thing is 5" in width, and hits the 6" mark on the slant. It would have been 6 1/4" if it did not have feeding damage to the tip. She also found a TINY megalodon, it is only 4.5" in slant. Other finds include a medley of makos, tigers, seal material, and some whale teeth and bone.
What a beautiful collecting day!
Thank you Curtis and PCS for your hospitality in hosting the fossil groups! It's always a wonderful experience. You always have my support!
Here is the monster meg that Amy found.
Collectors heading into the mine. I should have packed a sled to ride down this ramp with.
The collecting area consists of rugged exposures. A fossil collectors paradise.
The topography is very conducive to finding fossils.
This is me climbing a Yorktown exposure.
Amy is dwarfed by the dragline in the background.
Even zoomed in, she is still dwarfed by it.
Here are most of the finds for the trip.
This is the monster meg. It has a 6" slant height, even with the feeding damage.
This is the smaller 4.5" meg that Amy found before it was taken from the matrix.
Here it is cleaned off. Notice the nasty root... Unfortunate.
Here is a beautiful lower Hexanchus tooth that the rain had just exposed.
The Hexanchus tooth cleaned off
This is a Notorynchus tooth that Amy found.
here is a shark rostral node. It comes from the snout of a shark, and is kind of weird looking. It looks like some sort of Mr. Potato head nose.
A seal femur bone. This is the first one for me.
