Moveable Fossil Feasts

There are sites I consider moveable fossil feasts.  This is not in a Christian liturgical sense where the timing of a religious observation shifts from year to year.  Though a moveable fossil feast may, on occasion, exhibit some temporal impermanence, these feasts are much more about changing the locations of fossils.  Nothing divine about them, but, as a result of taking fossils from one site to another, likely more accessible, site, moveable fossil feasts offer collectors wonderful opportunities.

This terminology is mine alone.  I’ve never heard anyone refer to these sites in this fashion.  To be clear, I do not apply this term to places like the shoreline of the western Chesapeake Bay where fossils move as they erode from the Calvert Cliffs.  That process is natural.  In contrast, moveable fossil feast are human-made.  And, as such, the rewards they offer to fossil collectors are usually, but not always, a happy byproduct of the relocation of fossil-bearing sediment undertaken for some other purpose, such a beach replenishment.

This post offers brief descriptions of a few of the moveable fossil feasts with which I have some personal connection, either directly or indirectly, and one that I do not.  At the conclusion, I briefly highlight these sites' singular virtue and the challenging issues they raise.

North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina - A friend, sadly recently deceased, spent several weeks in different years vacationing with his wife at North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.  They walked the beach a couple of times a day, outings timed with low tide.  As they went, they collected fossils – teeth, bones, shells – objects the waves had exposed on the beach.  A small sample from one year is pictured below.

These finds were often a stratigraphic and chronologic hodgepodge, a nightmare for identification.  Some came from the Pleistocene and Pliocene epochs (between 5 million to 11 thousand years ago), more from the Miocene period (23 to 5 million years ago) or the Cretaceous (143 to 66 million years ago).  Among the finds over the years were pieces of fossil turtle shells, ancient horse teeth, shark teeth, pieces of fossil sand dollars, and ammonite fragments.

My friend surmised this mixture resulted from efforts to replenish the beach, presumably with material dredged from offshore sedimentary layers from different time periods.  A competing or, perhaps, complementary explanation is that erosion of offshore sedimentary layers is the agent responsible for the fossils and their diversity.

C&D Canal (Reedy Point, Delaware) – I collected here twice many years ago.  It is a site created by the dumping of material dredged by Army Corps of Engineers in 1980 as it deepened the Chesapeake and Delaware (C&D) Canal.  The fossil-rich material hauled to, and deposited at, this site came from the Mt. Laurel Formation, dating from the Late Cretaceous. 

Here is a view of the location on one visit more than 15 years ago.

What was practiced here was mostly surface collecting, practitioners wandering through the overgrown and exposed landscape, eyes focused on the ground.  It was actually very easy hunting, though it took some time before the objectives of the searching came into view.  Most abundant (and obvious) were the orangey, long, pointed belemnites, the calcitic skeletal remains from the tails of the Cretaceous squid, Belemnitella americana.  Oyster shells (Exogyra) were also common.  Pictured below are some of these fossils.  An amateur’s rather old guide to the fossils from the Canal is suggestive of what could be found.

Is this site still there, still accessible?  I don’t know.  One source stated some four years ago, that the Army Corps of Engineers was planning to do more dredging and pile the dredged material on this site.  Unfortunately, this “new” material was slated to come from a formation lacking fossils.  Another source simply says it’s closed.  Such is the fate of, at least, this moveable fossil feast.  

Aurora Fossil Museum, Aurora, North Carolina – Located near the Lee Creek Mine, a phosphate surface mine that, when it was open to collectors, yielded stunningly beautiful fossils, particularly those from the megashark Otodus megalodon.  The various Lee Creek fossils come mostly came from the Pungo River (Lower Miocene) and the Yorktown (Early Pliocene) formations.  Not unexpectedly, the areas where we could collect, when we permitted into the open pit mine, were not pristine, not as they were originally laid down, but, rather, we needed to figure out which formations might have contributed to the areas in which we were collecting.  For me, at least, that was not always clear.

Now, I don’t consider the mine itself to have been a moveable fossil feast because collectors went to where the fossils originated, albeit in strata that were highly disturbed by the mining process.

No, the moveable fossil feasts, for me, are the spoil piles of material hauled from the mine and deposited outside the Aurora Fossil Museum in Aurora, North Carolina.  Purportedly, this material consists of tailings from the Pungo River formation which, even if true, does not locate these fossils within the various units that make up this formation. 

When I was last there – some 15 years ago – this was the view toward the spoil pile where I hunted a couple of times, once when a trip to the mine was cancelled at the very last minute and once after a successful hunt at the mine.

The museum has evolved greatly since then and, among other changes, now has two pits of material from the mine.

The finds were small, though relatively abundant; searching on one’s knees was rewarded.  Here is a sampling of what turned up on one of my hunts through the spoil piles.

This moveable fossil feast is wonderfully accessible, located in a small town with parking just a short stroll away.  It’s all rather domestic as attested to by the cat who oversaw my activities.  (The cat may have had other intentions for the sand of the fossil pit.)

Bradenton Beach, Florida – The same friend who enjoyed the moveable fossil feast at North Myrtle Beach was vacationing one year at Bradenton Beach when he came upon this scene in a parking lot serving the beach.

Never inclined to ignore the possibility that fossils might be had, he explored these huge mounds of gray, phosphatic sand and discovered a true wealth of shells, most in fantastic condition.  He spent much of his vacation climbing up and down this sandy landscape, gathering shells.

These were, indeed, fossil shells because he learned that the sand had been hauled to this location from an area quarry which he concluded was the SMR Mine in Sarasota, making these fossils Pliocene, about 3.6 to 3.0 million years old.  Here are three beautiful specimens I obtained from him.

Though this moveable fossil feast was extremely accessible (in a parking lot, of all places), my friend searched these sandy hills quite feverishly because all of this material was slated shortly to be crushed to pave the parking lot.

Rotterdam Harbor, The Netherlands – This last moveable fossil feast, international in nature, was featured in Nina Siegal’s article titled On the Hunt for Mammoths which appeared on November 17, 2025 in the online version of The New York Times (print edition ran the article on November 19, 2025).  

This feast has features reflected in some of the descriptions I’ve already provided of such sites, but there is a remarkable attribute that sets this one apart, prompting me to think – “The Dutch know how to do this.”

In the article, Siegal describes how people are hunting for fossils along at the Maasvlakte 2 beach, on the harbor shoreline in Rotterdam, benefitting from a beach reclamation project – no, more like a beach construction project.  This beach is wholly constructed of sediment dredged from the sea floor of the North Sea, sediment roughly 2.5 million to 11,700 years old.  This sediment comes from what once was a steppe where megafauna animals lived.  As a result, the material used to build the beach contains the fossil remains of many land animals, such as woolly mammoths, woolly rhinos, and giant horses.  Sprinkled among these are fossils from invertebrates including sharks.

Now, here’s where it gets truly amazing.  What sets this moveable fossil feast apart from the others I’ve described so far is the incredibly well organized scientific support for the amateur fossil collectors who scour the beach.  In The Netherlands, these fossil hunters are permitted to keep their finds, but they are also encouraged to register them with the online Oervondschecker (“Primal Find Checker”), initiated by the Port of Rotterdam Authority and now maintained by the Naturalis Biodiversity Center.  (The default language on the site is Dutch, so having a browser translate the text is useful for some of us.)  As the website states:  “Every notification will be reviewed within a few days by an expert.  A find gets a provisional determination and an (estimated) time determination.”  Marvelous.

How does Naturalis do that?  Each collector seeking to register a find is asked to submit pictures of it with the precise GPS location of where it was found (ah, the wonders of the smart phone) or, at a minimum, they are advised to use the app to locate the find on its associated map of the beach.  As the Naturalis Biodiversity Center explains on the website, the dredging operations were “accurately tracked,” including the depths at which the sand was “sucked up” during each trip.  Data on the geologic origins of the individual layers of sand at the seabed in the North Sea feed into the Naturalis calculations.  Further, where the dredged sand was deposited on the beach was also meticulously followed.  As a result, the general provenience of a find can be determined and used to estimate its age.  That is truly amazing.

In conclusion, my descriptions of these few moveable fossil feasts suggest a cardinal virtue as well as a couple of sins associated with them.  The single most important positive attribute of these sites is that, as a result of human intervention, fossil-rich sediment has been moved from one location to another, a place that is typically much more accessible and convenient for collecting.  Fossil hunting at them can be easy – e.g., going through the Aurora Fossil Museum fossil pits or walking the beach at the Rotterdam Harbor.

On the other side of the ledger, these sites have certain downsides.  Having separated sediment from their original location, the makers of these sites (with the important exception of the Rotterdam Harbor beach) sever the ties between the fossils and the geological strata where they were originally found.  Identification and age determination can be difficult, and sometimes, though not always, impossible – the finds on North Myrtle Beach, for example, are a challenge.  Another key negative attribute is that they can be transient, sometimes offering only a limited opening for collecting - the material in the Bradenton Beach parking lot is a striking case in point.

Still, they are a wonderful phenomenon and taking advantage of them, no matter the challenges, is a delight.

A Day at the Beach -- Speak Memory

An exercise in memory.

A sunny, warm afternoon in early April on the beach at Fort Lauderdale, this is time well spent, not thinking about the befores or the afters, just sifting idly through the shell debris marking the reach of the tide.

Well, not completely idly. I have this thought – there have to be many sharks cruising off the Florida coast, losing their teeth by the thousands in the course of a lifetime. Despite most of these teeth being lost to the ocean depths, I have to believe some of these modern teeth will wash ashore and hide among the white fragments of shells. Though I do have this goal (still totally unrealized), I am not unaware that other things of interest are hidden here. For one, this erratically coiled, patterned tube, white and yellowish, clearly a shell.



Big, colorful, classically beautiful, complete shells – that’s been the extent of my interest in shells. This is small, inconspicuous, pale, and vaguely scatological. Maybe that last attribute explains why I pocket it (later leaving it on a bureau in the house where I stayed).

With some very desultory research, I conclude this is a worm shell, a shell from a gastropod. I tentatively label it as a Florida Worm Shell (Petaloconchus floridanus) or perhaps an Erect Worm Shell (Petaloconchus erectus). Or, maybe, the correct answer is “none of the above” but I don’t think so.

It took a couple of days, but, drifting out of some opened mental drawer, came a memory of an another object resembling this shell, an object I had not only seen before, but had collected as a marine fossil. “Out of sight, out of mind” is total rubbish if memory is part of the mind. Sure, the memory can be an unreliable guide to what you’ve seen. Sometimes establishing links that aren’t really there. “Yes, yes, that’s just like . . . .” And upon seeing the source of that memory, murmuring, “Oh, never mind.” But, “out of sight” has no bearing on what’s happening in the memory.

Here’s the basis of unbidden memory.

Some 18 months ago, while sifting through some of the fossiliferous material from the Lee Creek Mine piled up in front of the Aurora Fossil Museum (Aurora, NC), this curiosity with its patterned, coiled tubing, showed up, was put into its own baggie, and inserted in a drawer labeled Aurora. Now, another tentative identification. This, I think, is also a worm shell, though fossilized, perhaps a Serpulorbis granifera.

As is usually the case with me, there is some issue with the ID. S. granifera is clearly found in late Pliocene (Chowan River) and early Pleistocene (James City) formations (roughly 1 to 3 million years ago) at Lee Creek. Does it go back farther than that? It’s important, because I thought I was working in material from the Pungo River Formation (mid-Miocene – 10 to 20 million years ago).

Perhaps, this specimen was reworked from its original formation.

Sort of like a memory that turns up where and when you least expect it.


Coda: I am puzzled by the process through which the worm shell became fossilized. The fossilized tube is hollow in spots. Why didn’t it fill completely and the intruding material solidify? Perhaps it did, but now some of the solidified material has crumbled and fallen out as the exposed fossil encountered the elements.

Identification note: The identification of the fossil as Serpulorbis granifera is based on plate 35 in Geology and Paleontology of the Lee Creek Mine, North Carolina, Volume II published in the Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology series). I was let down by Moore’s Invertebrate Fossils, finding nothing in it coming close.

Winter

As winter has laid siege to my area in the Northern Hemisphere, temperatures have fallen and stayed low long enough to freeze the edges of the rivers and creeks. In many places, a thin skin of ice stretches across the top of the dark water. The beaches that easily yielded fossil treasures just a few months ago are now covered with an icy mantle of stiff seaweed; the sand itself resists my hands and my shovel. The end of a day spent outside in pursuit of fossils finds me sitting in the car, as the afternoon shadows lengthen, trying with aching unresponsive fingers to grasp the car key. It takes both stiff hands in a claw-like embrace to hold the key, insert it in the ignition switch, and slowly turn it. So little between me and blasting warmth from my car heater; so hard to do.

Despite the passage weeks ago of the winter solstice, this hemisphere is still losing more heat than it is gaining from the lengthening of these gray days. It grows ever colder outside.

This is the time of year to enjoy the warm comforts of the great indoors. I sit at my dining room table, my hands cradling a bowl of . . . gray black material from the Pungo River Formation. I bask in the imagined heat of the waters in which this material was laid down some 15 to 20 million years ago during the Miocene epoch. Yes, winter is the time to explore the world of very small fossils.

My quarry is not actually the “micro” fossil, if one means those fossils seen only under a microscope. Armed on this hunt with small maglite and tweezers, I am in pursuit of tiny fossils that are easily visible to the naked eye, as long as that eye is very, very close to the surface of this world.

I gather the material in the warmer months of the year from the “reject” piles in front of the Aurora Fossil Museum in Aurora, North Carolina – a marvelous museum dedicated primarily to the marine fossils found in abundance at nearby Lee Creek Mine. Over the years, the finds that have been made at the mine have been spectacular; recent ones can still be very good. The reject material (which has gone through the mining process to extract the phosphate) is a salt and pepper accumulation of mostly phosphate sand and small pieces of shells and barnacles. Though the mining experience and casual surface collecting has removed or broken all of the large, easily spotted fossils, what remains includes myriad shells, shark and other fish teeth, tiny fish vertebrae, and echinoid (sea urchin) spines. Riches on a very small scale.


The terrain


In this picture, I've circled the easily spotted (i.e., not so small) prey. From left to right: piece of an Eagle Ray (Myliobatis sp.*) mouthplate; echninoid (sea urchin) spine (to give a sense of size, this is 1 cm in length); and a tooth from a Requiem or Gray shark (Carcharhinus sp.*).


As the wind blows outside and the gray day fades to black, slow exploration of the world in this bowl exposes tiny jewels.


Stingray teeth (probably Dasyatis sp.); male in the middle


Catshark tooth (Scyliorhinus sp.*)

Does this satisfy the fossil hunting urge as I wait for the spring thaw? Not on your life.

*The sp. denotes uncertainty on my part as to the species. I didn't even try to identify genus, much less species, for the sea urchin that lost the spine.