I got a second opportunity to go on a field trip with the Alabama Paleontological Society to hunt Cretaceous Period Marine Fossils in Montgomery Alabama. Yes, Montgomery!
Approximately 65 million years ago the sea covered what is now Montgomery County south known as the late Cretaceous Period as depicted in the second map. To the north, west and east dinosaurs roamed the landscape.
~Maps courtesy of Ron Blakey, Colorado Plateau Geosystems. I work on the weekends so it's rare I get to go on a Saturday trip with my fellow fossil collectors. This site is located just outside the city limits, a beautiful area with lots of trees and Spanish moss hanging from them. It gives you the feeling you're down on the Bayou.
The day was a steaming hot, 90 something degrees so the creek provided some added relief from the sweltering weather and I anticipated getting wet! This small creek is shallow in many areas where you can wade to hunt for fossils that had collected in the potholes you see in the second picture. The water is clear enough to see what is in the gravel or you can sift for fossils from that gravel. There are also dry areas where you can do surface collecting as well as you can see in the first picture.
Here you will find Shark Teeth of several varieties, Echinoids (they look like round sand dollars), Oyster and other marine sea shells as well as petrified fish poop (yes, I said fish or shark poop known as croprolites). Mostly Echinoids scatter the entire area. On this trip I found several Shark Teeth as well as Echinoids as well as Oyster shells not pictured.
Pictured above are teeth from a deep sea shark known as a a "living fossil"...the Goblin Shark (Scaphnorynchus). Another pic shows one of the teeth found in situ. I was surface collecting when I turned over a rock and there it was sitting all shining and pretty I was told that it is one of the largest found on the site yet? I posted a colored pencil drawing of Goblin Shark to give you an idea of what one looked like. The round echinoids were found lying on dry ground as well as under water, some were embedded in the stone and others free of that stone wanting to be picked up! The last pic looks like poop I was told by one of the collectors that it was and another that it wasn't...for the sake of argument I'm going to say that it is because Coprolites have been found on this site... okay, it was petrified or I wouldn't be holding it! What a great day of hunting! I'd never been to this area or collected fossils of this kind so it was a welcomed trip to hang with my compadres for half the day.
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