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DIGGER’S DIARY: TUESDAY, JANUARY 3, 2006 Playing Tooth Fairy By Robertson Shinnick My first treasure hunting expedition of 2006 did not involve a metal detector, and it was a very brief and casual affair. I was on my way to a job interview, so I was better dressed than I normally am when I’m out exploring. Obviously, a detector outing while dressed for business is out of the question, unless perhaps one is interviewing for a ditch digging job. I was interviewing for a Butler’s position at the newly-rebuilt Cloister Resort, and was dressed perhaps a little too casually for that, as it is. I had worked at the Cloister’s five-star-rated sister property, The Lodge at Sea Island Golf Club, since it opened in 2001, but my department was closing due to a reorganization, so I had to find another position within the company. Finding myself with a little time to kill, I decided to see if I could pick up a few fossilized prehistoric shark teeth. There’s a boat ramp behind the Golden Isles Marina on the Torras Causeway out to Saint Simons Island, and I had read that one could sometimes pick up fossil shark teeth in that area, beneath one of the big causeway bridges. A buddy of mine got me into hunting for fossil shark teeth some time ago, and it’s a refreshing change of pace, since the only equipment you need for this endeavor is a sharp eye. Shark teeth, bits of whalebone, and other prehistoric fossils from both marine and land creatures can often be found in the sand here, particularly when it is dredge spoil that has been pulled up from the bottom of local waterways, when they deepen the shipping channels. I once watched as my pal Billy Ridenour pulled an enormous mastodon molar out of the muck, when we were mudlarking in some of the dredge spoil piles. (In addition to being an enviable relic hunter and skilled metal detectorist, Billy is a formidable fossil hunter, too.) Often this dredge spoil is used as fill dirt or to resurface unpaved roads in the county, so you never know where you’re going to find some fossils. I walked the narrow beach beneath the causeway bridge and picked up two tiny teeth, both fragmentary, but found no more. Up the embankment and directly beneath the bridge, I noticed a lot of sand that looked like it might have been dredge material, and in one of the washouts where the runoff from the road had carved little channels, I noticed tiny bits of fossilized material- a promising sign. Soon I picked up two more small teeth, very near each other. Often they’re found in loose clusters. While none of the teeth I found this day were particularly big, one had some nice serrations on it, and it’s fun to pick up multi-million-year-old fossils in such a short, casual stroll. It was a nice way to kill a few minutes, and a good way to relax prior to a job interview, though I had to pull a few sandspurs from my pants leg to be presentable when it was time to leave. I didn’t get the Butler position, as it happens, though the manager who interviewed me is a personal friend of mine. It hadn’t been my first choice for a transfer, anyway. In retrospect, I’m not so sure how I would have tolerated the added demands and stress of that job, so I’m not terribly disappointed. It had been a gorgeous afternoon and I found some neat little fossils. I’m primarily a coin hunter, but I don’t pass up the opportunity to seek other interesting "treasures" now and then. Hopefully there will be success on both the treasure hunting and job hunting fronts in the near future. -RWS Left: small fossilized prehistoric shark teeth found near the Golden Isles Marina on January 3, 2006, beneath one of the F.J. Torras Causeway bridges.
Right: a medium-sized fossil tooth of Carcharocles Megalodon, found in January of 2003 on Andrew’s Island, near the Brunswick, GA waterfront. The Megalodon was an extinct ancestor of the Great White shark. These monsters would have been the size of buses or boxcars, and they fed on whales! This is one of the nicer teeth I’ve found, but not the largest: a couple of them were almost the size of my hand.
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