Even dedicated to fossils, animals or plants dead for millions of years, a Website must live. This one will be regularly updated with brand new articles in the coming months. For your convenience, they will first be published in this sequence, before being integrated into the other pages, according to their respective themes. Thanking you in advance for your visits and for your fidelity.

Carcharodon carcharias, juvenile Great White Shark tooth, Oorderen sands, port of Antwerp, Belgium

Some of them clearly came from young specimens, which was suggested by their reduced size and by the presence at the base of the crown of side “cusps”, a kind of small pointed growth that disappears in adulthood. Despite their often poorly preserved roots, these pretty quenottes were never to be disdained, quite the contrary...

Excerpt from the book "carchaDOrias, in search of the treasures of the Earth" (to be published)

Carcharodon hastalis (plicatilis ?), Upper Pliocene, port of Antwerp, Belgium

Grouped finds during the same day, a particularly exceptional fact in the sands of Oorderen (see "And Then They Were Three", previous articles)

And Then They Were Three. Once dried...

And Then They Were Three...

Sands of Oorderen, Upper Pliocene, port of Antwerp, Belgium (part 3)

Excerpt from the book "carchaDOrias, in search of the treasures of the Earth" (to be published)

Concerning reworked Pliocene sediments, deposited on site by a dredging operation followed by transport by pipeline, the occurrence of the fossils was completely random and did not allow any conclusion as to their origin. However, the immediate proximity of two extremely rare shark teeth Carcharodon hastalis (plicatilis?) taken in the same perfect state of preservation allowed us to hypothesize that they could come from the same animal. But without any conviction...

Sands of Oorderen, Upper Pliocene, port of Antwerp, Belgium (part 2)

Moving away from the road to gradually get closer to the dock, I began to have the feeling that the nature of the soil was changing noticeably, of sand becoming more homogeneous and less strewn with stony debris. And if proof was needed that my instinct had not deceived me, it must have been these two other teeth of the same species as the previous one. Of a more modest size, they sported this pretty deep blue color which suited them perfectly.

And Then They Were Three...

Excerpt from the book "carchaDOrias, in search of the treasures of the Earth" (to be published)

Sands of Oorderen, Upper Pliocene, port of Antwerp, Belgium (part 1)

And Then They Were Three...

Excerpt from the book "carchaDOrias, in search of the treasures of the Earth" (to be published)

Rainy day in the port of Antwerp

Winter pleasures

Encountered at the very end of the game, this beautiful fossil tooth still partially decorated with grains of sand had been such as to make us forget the icy water which had insidiously descended in a straight line from my sodden pants towards the inside of my boots, which did not were therefore no less so. With its frightening curves and almost metallic blue, it must have belonged to a large shark and alone justified all the trials of the day.

Excerpt from the book "carchaDOrias, in search of the treasures of the Earth" (to be published)

Carcharodon hastalis (plicatilis), Oorderen sands, port of Antwerp, Belgium

Meeting the “Beast”

When it came to searching for fossil shark teeth, what caught the eye was often the alternation of colors. The disparate association between a generally brownish, rather dark and grainy mass on the one hand, and a grey-blue, smooth and shiny material on the other. It betrayed what was respectively the root and the crown. However, I remained perplexed by this growth which seemed very voluminous to me, and even somewhat disproportionate compared to a specimen from an “average” sized shark. And moving it carefully back and forth with my fingertips gave me the impression of strong resistance. As if the tooth I had just discovered was sinking deep into the sand, a sign that it must be much more imposing than usual.

Excerpt from the book "carchaDOrias. In search of the treasures of the Earth" (to be published)

Carcharodon hastalis (plicatilis ?), Upper Pliocene, sands of Oorderen, port of Antwerp, Belgium

Exceptional day in the sands of Oorderen: in the series "Shark teeth, but not only that..." (part 1)

Capulus ungaricus, gastropod mollusk, Oorderen sands, port of Antwerp, Belgium

Carcharodon hastalis (plicatilis ?), pathological tooth, sands of Oorderen, port of Antwerp, Belgium

A beautiful... big ugly.

But the rare discoveries would live up to my expectations. Thus, over the months, some magnificent fossil teeth of the shark Carcharodon carcharias and its ancestor Hastalis would appear. That the last of them displayed a less flattering aesthetic did not put me off since it turned out to suffer from an interesting pathological

Excerpt from "carchaDOrias, in search of the treasures of the Earth" (to be published)

Carcharodon carcharias, fossil Great White Shark, Oorderen sands, Upper Pliocene, port of Antwerp, Belgium

Pointed towards the sky, it seemed stuck in its soft, soft setting. Such a posture in any case attested to the fact that it had only just been cleared by the recent rains, without its own weight causing it to collapse flat on the ground.

Vertebra of indeterminate fish, Late Pliocene, Oorderen sands, port of Antwerp, Belgium

Carcharodon hastalis, inferior tooth, sands of Oorderen (Upper Pliocene), port of Antwerp, Belgium

This is not a dung.

My flat country having known some great surrealist painters, one of whom is world famous (Magritte), this reference came to my mind spontaneously when such a brownish thing appeared before me. In addition to its indefinable shape, the ambient humidity gave it a shine that could be confused with a certain… freshness. Naturally, having had the imprudence to take a prospecting walk in this abominable dog weather did not exclude the risk of coming face to face with dog droppings! However, the object that lay before me was far from repelling me. Besides the fact that this terrible weather seemed to dissuade any regular visitor to the area, the hypothetical local walker, from coming to release his pet on this immense plain, the experience of several years of intensive research had made me identify something much nicer.

Right away, I understood that this was a beautiful sample of dolphin otolith. This curious “ear stone” was a fossil variant of these calcareous concretions common to all vertebrates, including mammals, which serve to ensure the sense of balance. But let's be fair. I was all the less surprised by this discovery as I had already taken another specimen a few hours earlier, very early in the morning and in a less ambiguous position. It was therefore even more recognizable.

Excerpt from the book "carchaDOrias. In search of the treasures of the Earth" (to be published)

To identify : Coprulus ?

Or fossil excrement. A very recent study published on the famous marine sediments of the Calvert Formation (United States) suggests that this mass could correspond to pellets of fecal matter, probably accumulated by invertebrate organisms, such as annelids (worms).

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