Two weeks at pleistocene beach

[Mahnmut]

Hello dear fellow forum members.

In contrast to my usual online hunting grounds and model building, I went out and collected some real fossils on the beach.

From 14th to 28th of september I spent between one and four hours a day strolling the beaches near Breskens, Zeeland, Netherlands.

The region is known for miocene, pliocene and pleistocene fossils and located close to the zwarte polder famous for its shark teeth.

What exactly, and from what ages, I found will take some time to find out, but here are some first impressions.

I did not take many pictures on the beach because sand and wind did not agree with my camera.

The plan is to add short day by day accounts of the fossils to give you an overview of the variety.

On some days I had the beach to myself, especially in the morning.

At the weekends it was crowded. But everyday there where at least some fossils to be found...

Edited Wednesday at 07:11 PM by Mahnmut
typos

[Mahnmut]

-First day

Went to the wash margin, which was a clear line of mollusk shells on otherwise clean sand.

Neither much natural debris nor trash, which is not what I encountered on other northsea beaches so far. Tidal current also seems to very clearly sort the material here.

There are about 3 vertical meters between high and low tide at Breskens, corresponding to about 100m of horizontal distance.

There are very flat stretches rof sand where nealy nothing of shell size accumulates, only a bigger piece of rock or brick now and then.

The shells (and most fossils) seem to accumulate along the seaward sides of sand banks and landward sides of tidal creeks.

I expected to look for places where bigger flotsam had gathered, but did not find any. Its just lines if shells and singular bigger pieces now and then.

A local gentleman who seemed to collect something dark put some fish vertebrae in my hand when I approached him and told me that the shell lines where the place to look for fossils.

After the fish vertebrae, I found some bone shards, one worn black epiphysis or metapodial and one possible skull fragment (last on the pic, will post better closeups in the ID-section eventually as for all my more interesting finds.)

Sorry again for the lack of outdoor fotos, but here is  what I found on the first day:

[Mahnmut]

-Second day:

day of the fakers

- a piece of bird bone,

-a thrillingly fanglike piece of old wood (I wonder if the soft black wood one commonly finds on that beach is also pleistocene in age. at least one local collector told me so),

- lots of spongiosa-like bored shells, some of remarkable thickness,

-a boneshaped limonite concretion and some really unambiguos pieces of bone, includibg one that may even be ID-able.

And  more fishverts.

[Mahnmut]

-Day three

I met a nice dutch lady that day, she lives in another part of the Netherlands but spends her holidays collecting fossils on the Beach.

It  was a nice encounter and talk, but I also noticed her carrying a little bag and leaving a very clean beach behind. She showed me a fragmentary scapula, a distal femur, both jet black.

We decided to walk in different directions then and met few times in the following days.

-Shortly afterwards I found my first near complete bone, a long and slender bird humerus.

-Some concentric porous thing that may be bryozoan colonies??

-Some fragments of bone with interesting structures that give me a slight hope they may be ID-able

-Multiple black Barnacle fragments

-between the soft black wood one piece of rockhard black material with a nearly fibrous texture that makes me think of rodent teeth???

-With rodents in mind, my eye fell on the basal side of a neat barnacle segment which was different from all the others and looked for a second like a rabbit maxilla.

I now know its a Whale Barnacle, specialized on right whales: Cetopirus sp., which makes it my personal fossil of the month.

On the way back from the beach I also found something I nearly discarded as a dog dropping, and probably wwould have If I had then known how many of those there where.

I am quite sure now its an os pisiforme, thinking of really big mammals then, but probably "only" bovid or horse.

 

[Mahnmut]

-Day four:

-Mostly shards of bone

-What I at first took for a piece of pelvis turned out to match the antorbital region of a deerlike skull

Enough for today,

best regards

J

[Mahnmut]

-Day five

Went out before sunrise, and it was worth it. The big phalanx lay on its own on flat sand for the early bird to pic. First thought horse, then noticed the asymmetry and began fantasizing about rhinos or hippos. Forum tells me bovid, well, its a big one at least.

For the first time I also found several fossil in close proximity, including a worn dolphin vertebra, small black land mammal vertebra and the round thing top right in the image I can only guess its a fish tooth (Hopefully the ID-Section can help).

Possible patella (yellowish), vertebra section with bryozoa, and the only black "Wenteltrapje" gastropod among hundreds of white ones.

Nice day.

[Mahnmut]

-

Day six

Lots of bone shards on first look.

Only on returning from the beach I noticed  that one shard was an artiodactyl hoofcore (first row, one down)

and one possibly a verrry worn whale tooth?? first row, middle.

That would be cool.

[Mahnmut]

Day seven

 

-Fragment of bird carpometacarpus

-Fish vertebra broken in a nice way looking like a star (There was a varying background noise of fish vertebrae, I collected about a hundred more or less intact ones over the two weeks, sometimes two, sometimes 20 a day.)

Bigger fragment of femur (?),

[Mahnmut]

-Day eight

 

Tooth fragment that appears horsy to me (mainly because of its length)

-small broken bird humerus and vegan mimic found right next to it.

-Big shard of what I believe to be bovid horncore- it dawns on me that the pleistocene ecosystem here was quantitatively dominated by artiodactyls, not surprisingly when you think about it. Just got my hopes up on hippos and elephants.

The small box contains the result of our fist visit to a spot on the verdronkene zwarte polder, famous for its shark teeth. Note the absence of shark teeth. Possibly shark verts.

Only solace was that all the other sharkhunters I asked got nothing either that day (or at least told me so)

 

[Mahnmut]

-Day nine

didn´t plan on collecting fossils that morning. Shark beach in the afternoon was the plan.

But looking for something to put as eyes on my daughters  sand-octopus, my own eyes fell on something black. turned out to be a tooth fragment, probably pig tusk. And then I noticed that one of the tidal creeks that until then had been covered in fine mud when dry had been washed clean by the current that day. Five meters from the tooth lay a big vertebral centrum, some meters on a fragment of a small pelvis, an astragalus  and well, more shards but nice ones.

Not bad for not collecting at all. I found nearly all fossils of that day in 20 minutes.

After completing the octopus and eating lunch we went to shark beach.

That day we found four fragments of shark teeth and one tooth of a durophagous fish I think.

Would have been happy if I had not at the beginning of that days visit seen a person with a 500ml bag half full of fossils pic up a perfect 4cm long shark tooth 3 m in front of me.

Even after my splendid morning finding nearly nothing after that was kind of frustrating.

[Mahnmut]

Here are the sharkteeth.

Objectively, that was one of the best fossil collecting days of that vacation, if not my life. Simple jealousy left me in a rather foul mood.

But not for much longer.

Good night for now.

J

[Atoothsatooth42]

Awesome posts! Seems like an interesting spot with some pretty unique fines.