Sherman Creek, June 18 – Wrap-up

By Roger Farish

Fifty-two folks signed Hold Harmless Agreements to try to find shark teeth (and whatever else) on shady Post Oak Creek in Sherman, Texas last Saturday. I was glad to see families in the form of husband-wife, father-son, father-daughter and parents-kids attending with a number of them being first-timers. Attending was also a group of four teenagers with instructor. Educationally, a lot of folks now know what poison ivy looks like.

We entered through the Grayson County Equipment Company property (Kubota dealership) for access to the first gravel bar just below multiple rocky source outcrops for shark teeth. These strata also appeared to contain two-foot ammonite impressions that turned out to be septarian concretion remnants. By the way, this dealership has changed hands and is no longer owned by Ted and Carrie Baca, but the new owners are amiable to our whims.

The creek was stingy with its fossil materials, but yielded some nice specimens and assemblages for diligent participants. Virtually everyone found a handful of teeth and I saw dozens of Ptychodus whipplei’s as well as a number of complete bladed teeth and few interesting ones that I’m still investigating. See photos below.

The upstream rocky ledges provided a most pleasant audible and visual pastoral setting for shark tooth screenings. BUT one produced a surprise for Clay and son Owen Coleman who witnessed a sizeable water moccasin dart out from behind one of the little waterfalls, head toward them and coil up showing its cotton mouth. Clay was savvy enough to encourage the snake to go play somewhere else. This was the first actual water moccasin we’ve encountered in 20 years of probing these creeks even though other nonpoisonous water snakes have been seen.