Paléontologique, mais presque... (French joke)
Precious little pots.
Chosen for their bright colors which would make them easier to find if I accidentally lost one during a prospection, these food boxes had significant advantages. Equipped with screw-on lids preventing any accidental opening and the loss of contents that would have ensued, they also offered ideal shapes and dimensions for their distribution in the pockets of my clothing equipment. They not only made it possible to store the collected pieces, but also to transport them in optimal safety conditions. But their interest did not stop there. Because without indulging in arenophilia, this curious practice which consists of collecting sand samples from all sources, I had gotten into the habit of taking systematic samples at each place of exceptional discovery. The objective thus pursued was to preserve traces of the environment in which these fossil shark teeth had stayed.
Read more in “carchaDOrias, in search of the treasures of the Earth” (to be published)
Fish vertebra (tuna?): Upper Pliocene, Oorderen sands, port of Antwerp, Belgium
A few minutes later...
Dire straits...
For several years now, due to lack of time for prospecting and, above all, lack of accessible land for a lover of Upper Pliocene pieces, discoveries have been extremely rare, if not non-existent. One of the latest was this Carcharodon hastalis, beautifully made and which also seems to belong to the "broad form" variant, i.e. the fossil species of mako shark which had particularly large teeth and is currently called Carcharodon plicatilis.
Teeth, but not only...
I already had similar specimens which, according to what I remembered at the time, were in better condition. And having observed it without much conviction left me focusing on its very pronounced porous character. The piece was not in perfect state of preservation. We could have found better ! Fortunately, carrying out endless prospecting without much success had the consequence that you ended up reducing its level of requirements, notwithstanding the clutter that such a fossil could generate until the end of the day. I mechanically pocketed the vertebra to give it the chance to prove some worth once returned home. What was my pleasure, having summarily cleaned it with clear water, to see on its side a long cut whose depth and finesse suggested a trace of predation. This cut was certainly the mark of a tooth left on the vertebra of a large cetacean, by a shark which was no less large.
Excerpt from the book "carchaDOrias, in search of the treasures of the Earth" (to be published)...
Another cetacean vertebra from the Upper Pliocene of the port of Antwerp.
Although devoid of traces of predation, and found well before the previous one, this other piece was no less interesting because it was very well preserved.
This is not a dung.
My flat country having known some great surrealist painters, one of whom is world famous, 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)
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