Maybe some have been to Calvert Cliffs State Park in MD to look for shark’s teeth on the beach. I had heard there is a better beach nearby that is lesser known and not as picked-over for such finds. Does anyone know of other public beaches in the area that meet this description? Thanks!
For geographically-limited topics like this I’ve had better results over on the CDF, the City Data Forum. CDF has a Maryland sub-forum, which in turn has sub-forums for Baltimore MD, Frederick MD, and for Washington, DC suburbs in Maryland. These are listed at the top of the Maryland page.
➜ Maryland Forum - Relocation, Moving, General and Local City Discussions - City-Data Forum ■
CDF is quite active. Good luck in your search, HTH!
Digging back in my memory - I live in St. Mary’s county and eons ago I took my nephew to a place that you could only access from someone’s private property, but I couldn’t tell you even if you tortured me. I honestly don’t remember, except I think it was relatively close to Chesapeake Beach. I do know he didn’t find any shark’s teeth tho he did unearth a few other fossils, but he was 10 or 11 and easily bored.
These days I take my grands to the Calvert Marine Museum and let them dig in the little sandbox that is regularly reseeded with all sorts of fossil bits.
I grew up in central maryland but went to that area once or twice. I asked my mother who used to go there in the summertime as a youngster and she said “we used to find them all the time at long beach, and whale bones….” I cant say I know where that is relative to CCliffs.
ETA she was last there ~70 years ago
Only other place I know around there is Breezy Point, a little bit north of Calvert Cliffs.
Why is it supposed that shark teeth or other fossils are preferentially deposited on certain beaches?
The whole thing sounds UL-ish to ignorant me.
We used to go to Cherrystone Beach on the Virginia part of the Delmarva peninsula.
I wondered about that on a trip to Charleston, SC: I came across an ad for a fossil tooth guide with some language about guaranteed finds and researched a little. As I understand it, some natural underwater accumulation or veining is easy enough to visualize, things can concentrate in layers and beds over the eons.
The really good shark tooth hunting is in the dredged tailings that happen to include materials from these already richer deposits of artifacts. That gets the teeth further concentrated and often above the surface.
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Shallow Seas: For millions of years, vast areas of the East Coast were submerged under shallow seas, providing ideal environments for a variety of marine life to flourish. The remains of these organisms formed thick layers of sediment, eventually becoming fossilized within the accumulating strata.
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Coastal Plain Sediments: The Coastal Plain itself is formed from a wedge of Cretaceous and Cenozoic unconsolidated sediments laid down in ancient bays, estuaries, and shallow ocean environments, according to the New Georgia Encyclopedia. These deposits are particularly rich in marine fossils, including various sharks, bony fish, marine reptiles, marine mammals, and abundant invertebrate life like mollusks.
2. Sediment deposition and preservation
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Sedimentary Rocks: The prevailing sedimentary rocks in the fossil-rich regions of the East Coast, like limestone and sandstone, provide good conditions for fossil preservation because they form by the accumulation and hardening of layers of sediment, including animal and plant material, says the U.S. National Park Service (.gov). Unlike rocks that have undergone significant heat and pressure (metamorphic or igneous), fossils within these sedimentary rocks remain largely intact and visible.
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Rapid Burial: Rapid burial by sediments plays a crucial role in preventing decomposition and scavengers from destroying the remains of organisms before they can fossilize. This was particularly prevalent in the coastal environments and embayments of the ancient East Coast.
Because geology is complex. Fossils are embedded in rock. When you find loose shark teeth, they have been eroded out by rivers last week or 2,000 years ago. Where fossils are deposited on beaches depends on what geological layers are cut through by what rivers (that carry them out to sea) and the direction of the ocean currents that wash them up on land. If the river supplying the fossils is in a certain spot and the ocean currents carry the debris south, then beaches south of the river are much better for finding fossils than beaches to the north of the river. Also, rich fossil finds are often from beach reclamation work dredging sand from hundreds of feet off-shore and redepositing it on land. For instance for the past couple of years Holden Beach in North Carolina has been very rich in shark teeth (ranging from tiny to megalodon) thanks to dredging.
Take a look at this map of costal South Carolina for an idea how complex exposure and erosion can be.
Because hydraulic sorting and differential transport are things.
Similarly, if you walk around a big lake, like lake Winnipesaukee in NH, you will find places that have have natural sand beaches. A very few place, because most of the shore is bare rock ledge or vegetation. But there are a few spots where the currents tend to deposit sand.
Thank you all. Great info.
I was thinking of “shark teeth” findable on beaches as being from recently deceased sharks. Not from fossils.
Finding fresh shark teeth is much much less common than fossil ones. (Because there is a whole lot more distant past than recent past for one )
Wasn’t Leonard McCoy a southern MD?