My hunting buddies and I had a trip planned to a creek in Southwest Alabama for a fossil hunt several Saturday's ago. Alabama weather being unpredictable, we checked the latest weather update. Thunderstorms moving through the area with lots of rain was the verdict, so we wound up canceling plans to the area. The last thing you want is be on a creek when it's lightening and thundering and with the amount of rain in the forecast you don't want to see a flash flood in any form! After the phone call I was naturally disappointed, within five minutes of hanging up Ann calls me and asks if I wanted to go scouting below Montgomery today. The rain was far to the northwest but as always the entire state was under a high percentage of rain. I said yes and went to meet my buddies for the drive South.
So.Many.Vehicles on the road at 9:00 am headed to the beach! We were headed to a creek that was said to have Muffin Crab carapace casts and got directions. The directions took us out in the middle of nowhere, on a recently created logging road made up sand and red dirt.
We came upon the site where a small stream ran across the road but was only crossable with an ATV or ORV. The gals got out to inspect the stream that widened into creek that looked deep in the picture above. My motto for deep creeks are "if I can't see the bottom, I ain't gettin' in it!" There are gators in this part of the state! My interest turned to the roadway we just came in on. From years of experience, If there is a creek near and the soil has been turned up, chances are there is a Native American artifact on the ground waiting to be found, so I took a stroll up the road and back toward the vehicle. As I got near the truck, there it was laying on the ground nice and pretty!
A quartz arrowhead, my first find of the day! I am on a roll and found 6 last week during a creek hunt. I have found more arrowheads the past month than all the years hunting them when I was a kiddo! My buddies made their way up to the vehicle and told me that the bottom of the creek was mushy mud and sand, nothing to be found there. We decide to do some more scouting, so we head out. We came across several creeks that can be seen from the roadway and stopped at one that was bigger but didn't find the tell-tale signs of a gravel and sand mix, all sand. Back on the road again. We slowed down as we drove over the bridges on our route and then Amy exclaims, hey there's gravel down there! Ann does an u-turn and we go back to investigate. At this time of day there was a lot of traffic on that country road! I mean, travel traffic and wondered why? I see tags from Ohio, Indiana, Georgia and Tennessee and it remained that way until around 2ish in the afternoon!
Anyhoo, we made our way down to the creek and Amy who says she is short in stature was just looking in the gravel bars and started to find all kinds of Enchodus teeth, big honkers of teeth and the biggest I've seen found in this state yet! Ann finds a partial Enchodus Jaw, and I'm still standing on the bridge watching the traffic zoom by.
I can't explain my reluctance going down there at first...maybe it was the thick overgrowth. One of the things I detest is ticks and poison ivy... snakes and spiders I can handle but that! I did make it down there and see all that gravel that needed to be sifted! As I'm surveying the area I find another quartz arrowhead under the current runoff!
For the next several hours I find shark, Enchodus, Mosasaur, saw fish rostrum, gastropod steinkerns, Operculum and a possible piece of a Mastodon tooth from the Pleistocene Period several million years after the dinosaurs, these mammals roamed what is now referred to the Black Belt in Alabama. Hold the presses! It has now been identified as a partial Enchodus Palatine jaw... if it is true the tooth tip that was broken off would of measured a whopping 3.5 inches! Pic#1- Archeolamna shark tooth, Enchodus tooth and Mosasaur tooth, Pic#2- Saw Fish Rostrum, Pic#3- Gastropod steinkerns with baby Exogrya Oyster shell, Pic#4- Adult Exogyra in gravel, Pic#5- Possible Mastodon tooth?, Pic#6- Operculum, portion of the Exogyra shells that can be polished for jewelry.
I also found an interesting fossil I thought was shark poop (Croprolite) in shape and texture, turns out it's a Anchura spiral gastropod encased in Pyrite... how cool is that! The scaly looking portion is where the pyrite crystals used to be, now worn down by the tumbling action of the current against the stones in the creek.
Last but not least are the vacated freshwater mussel finds. These shells have got to be the most dazzling, iridescent shells I've seen. Most of them have the brown lining on the outside worn by the tumbling action of the stones against it in the creek exposing the rainbow shimmer of mother-of-pearl!
While on the creek, the sun began to pop out and we thought it was going to be a great weather related day... that is until we started to hear thundering off in the distance. At this time we were on a roll finding all sorts of fossils! It wasn't long before the dark cloud was on top of us forcing us to leave the site! As we got all our stuff in the vehicle and inside the bottom opens up with torrential showers so hard that we couldn't see the road. Typical Alabama weather for ya! Now for the long drive home with lots of cool finds. As I say each time at any site I go to... I can't wait to go back, and with the torrential rains comes flooding. The site replenishes itself with new fossils to find!
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