20 Mile Creek Field Trip and Rockhead Cookout

Put on your water shoes, grab your sieves and buckets, and let’s get out there for those shark teeth and have a splash of a good time too!

On Saturday May 5, 2018, the NMGMS Rockheads will sponsor a field trip to the famous Frankstown “Shark Tooth” site (the W. M. Browning Cretaceous Fossil Park), which is located on Twenty Mile Creek in Prentiss County, Mississippi. We will meet at the site at 10:00 a.m. Parking is on the eastern side of US Highway 45 in the flat grassy area just off of the side road and includes under the bridge. We will be sifting through the creek’s sand and gravel for shark teeth and other small Cretaceous fossils. Be prepared to get wet and take precautions to limit sun exposure! You will be down in the creek, so you need to be able to go down the bank and get in the water. There is a somewhat steep, sandy path leading down the bank on both sides of the bridge, so wear shoes that can get wet, and a walking stick is a good idea. Bring a screening device, like a colander, sieve, or homemade screen made out of hardware cloth and a wooden frame, or fiber screening put into a large plastic embroidery hoop. Also, you will need a small garden trowel or scoop, plus small plastic jars with tight fitting lids, Ziploc bags, or pill bottles, to use as storage containers for the fossils. There are no facilities here. Be sure to bring plenty of drinking water, a hat, sunscreen, a towel, and dry clothes to change into. This is a wild site, so watch for poison ivy on the banks and snakes at all times. You will find many different kinds of teeth here, shark, ray, bony fish, Mosasaurs, and crocodile; also some vertebrae, turtle bone, scoots, petrified wood, and lots more. Many of the teeth are good sized, but most are very small, so be sure to check out anything that is black and shiny!

This will be lots of fun for all ages. If you plan to go on this field trip, please notify:
Nancy Roberts, therockhoundlady@yahoo.com, 731-689-5336.

Lunch: The Rockheads will be cooking hot dogs. There will also be chips, cookies, and lemonade, all for the small donation of $2. What a deal! Please bring your own chair. So come on out to support our Rockheads, and have a great time too!

Additionally: Robert Langford will kick off his 20-Mile Creek Summer 2018 Program, and NMGMS will be joined by several Scout groups for this field trip. The identification station will be set up on top of the creek bank. Robert will have fossil identification books, fossil labels, and will assist you in identifying and logging your best finds.

Robert’s summer Saturday schedule at Twenty Mile Creek will be as follows:
May 5, 2018, June 16, 2018, July 21, 2018, and August 18, 2018

20 Mile Creek 2018 Pictures

Leave a Reply