Other Fun Things

A friend of ours, Edwin, introduced us to shark teeth hunting in 1998. Since then we have gone to a couple of expeditions to look for fossilized teeth. We had our first introduction to it in Brownie beach, close to Annapolis. I must say it is really fun and reawarding. I think we have about 200 teeth from that beach from 3-4 trips. Unfortunately, the Chesapeake Bay does not have the most pleasant water and the beach itself is below Brazilian standards, but one can't have everything at once, can one? that is what I thought before going shark teeth hunting in Venice, Florida! that is a real beach! we spent New Years in 2003-2004 there and we have a collection of 246 teeth from there. I included some pictures of that expediton and of my precious treasure in the Photo2 Page By the way, while I was going hunting for 10 million year old teeth on the sands of Venice beach, Tommy was fishing on the peer. I had given him that Christmas a fishing rod and he was all excited about the possibility of fishing a shark from the pier as we saw someone doing in our first day there. He was committed to get one of those weird looking baby hammer head sharks and one day he did it!! I wasn't there when he caught it and, by the time that I arrived with my little plastic bag full of fossilized teeth, he had already dropped it back in the water but had taken pictures to prove his story! It really made me scared of going into the water there afterwards. Well, I wasn't swimming anyway due to the low temperatures (20-25C outside the water, but cold for cariocas), but it did make me think of all the hammer head adult sharks that were swimming in those waters... those baby sharks must have mothers, rigth?

Today (07/21/08) I have collected 785 shark teeth, 133 other fossils from Venice FL, 430 shark teeth, 130 others (and 4 rocks that I think are teeth but Edwin didn't agree) from Manasota Key in FL, 198 teeth and 10 others from Brownie beach MD. I also have either bought or was given as gifts a few items for my collection, including a trilobite, a cephalopod, amonites, and a little meteorite. Anything older than O stars is welcome (older than 5 million years). The newest acquisition is a giant amonite from Tibet. We bought it in a very interesting market on the streets of Lhasa.