- Joined
- Jul 23, 2013
- Messages
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To all the people wanting to find fossil shark teeth at Portland and getting no responses:
I was there in December 2015 and managed to find 14 teeth in the sand at Allestree Beach (just west of the large coastal seafarms, look on google maps). They were only small but there's definitely some interesting things to be found there and the good thing is you don't need to dive for them (better/bigger teeth are found around Dutton Way by diving though, if you're up for that). You will need a fine sieve to be able to separate the sand from the shell fragments and teeth on the beach. Look for patches where shell fragments are lying around on the sand (when i was there these patches were mostly high up the beach, so tides weren't an issue), scoop them up, sieve out the sand and look for small teeth in whatever is left. Usually you only find the tooth blades (no roots) and they are quite worn but it's better than nothing! They aren't present in large numbers though, i probably found one tooth for every 20 sieves. But the sand was dry which made sieving quick and easy anyway. You can also find fossil whale bone fragments on this same beach as well, if you can recognise them. I found a large black fragment just sticking out of the sand as i was leaving the beach. Very cool! The bones and teeth are derived from offshore beds of the Whalers Bluff formation and are about 4 million years old (Pliocene epoch).
Cheers,
Nathan
I was there in December 2015 and managed to find 14 teeth in the sand at Allestree Beach (just west of the large coastal seafarms, look on google maps). They were only small but there's definitely some interesting things to be found there and the good thing is you don't need to dive for them (better/bigger teeth are found around Dutton Way by diving though, if you're up for that). You will need a fine sieve to be able to separate the sand from the shell fragments and teeth on the beach. Look for patches where shell fragments are lying around on the sand (when i was there these patches were mostly high up the beach, so tides weren't an issue), scoop them up, sieve out the sand and look for small teeth in whatever is left. Usually you only find the tooth blades (no roots) and they are quite worn but it's better than nothing! They aren't present in large numbers though, i probably found one tooth for every 20 sieves. But the sand was dry which made sieving quick and easy anyway. You can also find fossil whale bone fragments on this same beach as well, if you can recognise them. I found a large black fragment just sticking out of the sand as i was leaving the beach. Very cool! The bones and teeth are derived from offshore beds of the Whalers Bluff formation and are about 4 million years old (Pliocene epoch).
Cheers,
Nathan
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