Incidental Fossil Finds while shelling at Holden Beach, NC last week

June 19

As the title says, the fossils were found as a result of collecting seashells during our family vacation at Holden Beach, North Carolina. We've been staying at this beach for about 30 years with many family members joining us. Last year I think we had 45 people representing 4 generations.

The nice shells were few and far between and any fossils found were even fewer. All of the fossils are from the Peedee formation and found on the beach as a result of dredge ships doing beach restoration back in 2022. That's when everyone on the beach would find several hundred Sea Biscuits - Hardouinia Mortonis - per person. Well, that heyday is over and while the broken fossils were still plentiful, the pristine whole ones were very rare.

My niece was the only one to find any shark teeth, though she was also the only one looking for them. The beach sand near the end of the island where we stayed was mostly smooth with few shell beds at high or low tide. I found nice shells because the early riser gets the shells, just like the second mouse gets the cheese. 6 AM was sunrise and I was a quarter mile down the beach by then and walked 1.2 miles to the end of the island where the inlet had more churning waves and sand, thus revealing more shells.

On the first day I found one knobbed Whelk in decent shape and on day 2, I found 14 Whelks. My collecting was to share with the family and mainly to find a few nice ones to send in a goodie package to our daughter at Vanderbilt plowing her way through the first weeks of her Masters Program. So she gets a beach tee shirt, seashells and treats.

On to the images. Some shells and then right to the dredged fossils.

Mid week haul.