Jayson Kowinsky

Hello,

Ya, it looks like coral pieces in a limestone matrix.  All the little circles look like coral polyps.

The “next adventure” wasn’t fossil related 🙁 …  I went to the South Pacific Humback Whale calving grounds in Vava’u for a few weeks (just returned a few days ago).

Although they are not prehistoric, being with “living” cetaceans in the wild is pretty cool. You can easily imagine what the Miocene and Pliocene seas must have looks like with the vast cetacean diversity back then.  Here’s a couple pics for the fun of it.

I’ll be heading to an East Coast Dinosaur site in a month. That will be the next fossil hunting trip, If I find anything, I’ll post some fossils.

@lcone, @egardner – Here are a few more pictures…  We also visited the Mace Brown museum.  Bobby and Sarah recently finished prepping the “Cone Whale” and put it on display. It’s the most complete baleen whale ever collected from the PCS Mine in Aurora, NC.  Also, it was collected by Lee Cone!!!

And finally, this is completely unrelated to anything… but I found a cool little coffee house by the Mace Brown museum, called “Tricera.”  It has a Triceratops fossil on display and tons of little triceratops dinos to play with!

@lcone, @egardner – Hello,  Sorry for the late reply… I just got back!  Here are some of the pictures of the fossil dive!

I also have a video of the trip, it’s on my page:

http://www.fossilguy.com/trips/blackwater-dive-2017/index.htm

You should check out the end, with Lee vs the Alligator!  I wish I would have filmed his facial expression!

Thanks Lee for this trip!

Just uploaded mine!

@llundgren

Hello, @vperez, @zacharias-allison

Here is a link to the page Victor is referring to.  It has most of the common teeth you can find at Aurora.  This should help you I.D. almost all of your shark finds from Aurora.

http://www.fossilguy.com/sites/l_creek/lcrk_col_shark.htm

Later,

Jayson

Hello,

I don’t think it’s a tooth.   The coquina layer in the Pungo River formation at Aurora is cemented together by limestone full of those tiny phosphate grains that I see in your sample.

It looks like a piece of coquina matrix from the Pungo River that just happens to have a tooth shape.

Later!

Hey Lisa,

PennDOT blew up most of the marine zone while widening the cut a while back.   There are occasionally chunks of marine zone that have fallen that people can search, but chunks of the plant layer are much more common to find.

I was there about a month ago to make sure the site was not blown up…again.   I only spent about 15 or so minutes there, and didn’t see any marine chunks, but there were quite a few giant slabs of Mahoning shale to look through.  The plant slab in the picture was laying out in the open, so everyone is at least guaranteed plant fossils.

The little path to the cut is always beaten down with footprints, and there are always little piles of worked through shale, so there are others that go there!  Maybe someone else who visits the site will also post here.

@llundgren, @bmacfadden, @vperez, @cathy-young, @lmccall, @cferrara, @lcone, @dkrisher, @egardner,

@hunter-thurmond

I’m still going to say it’s a Bryozoan colony encrusting the bottom part of your spiriferid fossils.