I found a sizeable mastodon tooth fragment yesterday on the beach at Edisto. That was a thrill. There are lots of Pleistocene bone and tooth fragments here. This was the biggest and most thrilling fossil find for me.
There are lots of interesting things to find on Edisto Island. On an earlier occasion I found a really nice projectile point.
3 comments:
I'm planning to go fossil hunting on Edisto Beach later this month. I want to comb Jeremy's Inlet. My wife is disabled and want to park the car as close as possible to the inlet. I looked at a map and so that north of Jeremy's inlet are some unnamed roads, appearing to be right on top of the spot. Are these publicly accessible?
Mark, I think most of those roads near Jeremy's Inlet may indeed be private. By far the best fossil hunting and native American artifact hunting is at Botany Bay off Botany Bay Rd., which is further north and open to the public. There are just two hitches; it is a good quarter mile walk from where you can park and you are not allowed to take away things you find. I think the take away rule is mainly aimed at the people who want to scoop up sacks full of conch and whelk shells and cart them off but strictly speaking you are not supposed to take away anything. You might be able to push a wheel chair from the parking at Botany Bay, if not a regular one at least one of those beach ones that you can rent at Island Bikes and Outfitters with Rolleez balloon tires.
The whole purpose of my visit to Edisto is to collect Pleistocene age fossils. There wouldn't be any reason to go, if I couldn't keep what I collected. Anyway, I looked at satellite photos of the area. There's not a gated community. It looks like I can walk through a vacant lot between houses to get to the inlet. But I saw a road from the State Park Side that would shorten the hike from there as well.
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