Maryland Shark Tooth Vacation

[Rosco53]

Just returned from a week-long shark tooth hunt on the Chesapeake Bay in southern MD. Heard about it from a friend of mine, looked into it and worked out so took a vacation. Hunted 4 different beaches in the area over the week, and overall probably collected about 600 teeth. The VAST majority are well under a centimeter, I was using a $5 strainer from walmart to look for them, and keeping EVERYTHING I found. Did manage a couple decent ones (relatively speaking):

My first one:


Couple other large ones I was fortunate enough to notice:




Part of a vertebrae:


Cartilage disc?


At Bayfront Beach, a lot of people were looking for beads. I found some of the smaller ones as well, but plucked this one too. Someone mentioned there's a chance it could be from the Colonial era, a trade bead? About 7 mm or so:


Lastly, even found a Message In a Bottle! Gentleman from the Smithsonian left it on the beach with his business card in it. Not quite as neat as finding one that was actually cast adrift, but still something I never expected.


Trying to re-find a few more from the trip, have a couple potential whale/dolphin teeth, and one TINY potential crocodile as well.

All in all, was an amazing vacation, already trying to figure a way to get back out there. So amazing to me to simply look down and pick up a 12 million year old fossil. An experience I won't soon forget! Even managed to get "bit" by one of the teeth while plucking it from the strainer! Did manage to avoid the jellyfish though.

 

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[Megalodon]

Hey Rosco,

Glad you had fun out here. We'll try to put you on bigger teeth next time.

Smokeycat and I went to your bead beach today and found small teeth but we changed to bead hunting. Neither of us found one as large as your black one but we met a bead collector who had a nice bunch of them and one this size he called a donut. Smokey found 5 before I found my first one, but I got my search image and found cobalt blue tubular, small red and small yellow. Smokey got all those types and colors plus a small green one and another a different shade of blue. Now its time to research these beads.

 

[Megalodon]

Your bead is larger with a larger hole. So I don't know if it is of same vintage as the beads we found today. Our beads look like those in the picture attached to this article. Their thoughts on our beads are souvenirs from the amusement park at Chesapeake Beach now about 100 years ago, or from a possible shipwreck.

https://jeffersonpatterson.wordpress.com/2014/02/21/waterfront-amusement-parks-in-maryland/#more-733

 

[A2coins]

I like the shipwreck angle cool stuff

 

[Megalodon]

I like the shipwreck angle cool stuff

As far as we can figure, the glass beads were made in Italy in the late 1800's and were meant for the resort beach of Chesapeake Beach between about 1890s-1910s and the ship carrying them was wrecked and they have been washing ashore ever since. Hunting for them at the water's edge is very popular.

Trade beads are occasionally found from the early 1600's trade with the Native Americans but they are rare and larger than these beads.

 

[A2coins]

That is so cool Ive always wanted to hunt finds like that the ocean gives up. I think there is so much treasure in the ocean from ship wrecks to submarines to planes someday after the Kids are out of College . Those are really awesome

 

[Wildcat1750]

Nice amount of teeth for the week! I keep all the small ones too. Love the message in the bottle.