Pliocene of the port of Antwerp (Belgium)

Carcharodon carcharias

Favorable alignment of planets.

On this spring day, the atmosphere was so mediocre that I could not count on me to give it any honorary title of “lovely month of May”. On the contrary, the particularly dull morning sky was often masked by a succession of heavy and rapid white clouds preventing any lasting breakthrough of the sun which could have warmed the atmosphere. Once again, this proved that this type of research required what some would call a certain "hard-line". Especially since the probability of finding even a single fossil shark tooth throughout the day remained extremely low.

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

Carcharodon carcharias, Great White Shark, Upper Pliocene, Port of Antwerp, Belgium

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

Oreo antwerpiensis, or the fossil cookie...

Continuing my traditional photographic report did not prevent me from noticing a surprising characteristic. I was not dealing with just one intervertebral disc but two. Perfectly circular and almost identical dark pebbles that the chance of fossilization seemed to have stuck together. The only explanation that came to mind was that they must have come from one and the same animal, very likely from a young one, but that they had separated from their respective vertebrae.

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

Another cetacean intervertebral disc

Barely less rare than the previous one presented above, this isolated specimen belongs to finds which are generally extremely fragile, therefore only owing their preservation to particularly favorable circumstances of burial and transport. Which makes it interesting in a collection, whose vocation is in no way limited to fossil shark teeth, far from it...

Carcharodon carcharias

Fossil teeth of white sharks, Oorderen sands, Port of Antwerp, Belgium

Carcharodon hastalis, Upper Pliocene, port of Antwerp, Belgium

Unlike the sieving practiced by the vast majority of researchers, preferably in the basic gravel of the Kattendijk sands (very static activity by nature), prospecting in the Oorderen sands involves surveying immense wastelands, hoping that the extreme rarity of fossil pieces is compensated by their quality of conservation. Discovering a single tooth like this, although incomplete, meant a particularly successful day...