Ancient shark teeth found at Florence site

When John Sullivan bought a chunk of property near Florence, he never expected to discover it was home to hundreds of shark teeth.

Sullivan, the county’s tax assessor, bought the property off Cleary Road in 1999. The property has a creek – nicknamed in the neighborhood “Devil’s Back Bone” – cutting through oak and beech trees. After buying it, neighbors told him about shark teeth in the creek. Sure enough, when he checked it out, he found them.

“I’ve found them from two to three inches long to as small as a finger nail,” he said. “It has been fascinating.”

Since then, he’s visited occasionally. He and his neighbors also allow geologists from severalLouisiana universities, who instruct biology high school teachers on fossils pulled from the creek.

The teeth are from sharks estimated to be about 30 million years old, said George Phillips, paleontology curator for the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science.

But being so far from the ocean, how did the teeth get there?

Most of Mississippi once sat below an ocean, and shark teeth and other aquatic fossils are buried below the state’s soil.

Phillips said the creek has cut into ground rich in fossils, exposing a variety of remnants, which represent a dozen different shark species.

Although all the teeth are of extinct sharks, they come from sharks similar to the modern sand, gray and tiger sharks, said Jeff Agnew, a geology lecturer from Centenary College of Louisiana who has studied the site.

Each shark can make between 30,000 and 40,000 teeth in its lifetime. Because sharks are made of cartilage, teeth are the most common fossil. Phillips said fish bones and teeth from rays turn up, too.

Phillips said sites with fossils occur occasionally when a natural force, like this creek, or construction and urban development opens a fossil bed.

Phillips said construction has exposed a new fossil bed near Pearl.

Other fossil finds have popped up recently in Rankin County.

A Brandon boy discovered a prehistoric shark tooth in his backyard on the Ross Barnett Reservoir. Dakota Ferguson was digging for clams when he dug up a tooth from a 34 million-year-old eared big-tooth shark. The Museum of Natural Science identified it in December 2007.

Louisiana State University’s geology department uses the creek site to educate Louisiana high school biology teachers. Jeffrey Nunn, an LSU professor and founder of the program, which is sponsored by Shell, hopes visiting the sight will lead to more geology taught in the classrooms.

Because no geology course is taught in high school, Nunn said a fossil segment, if taught in biology classes, might generate interest among students. At LSU, less than 100 students major in geology, while more than a 1,000 study biology.

“Maybe they’ll think, ‘I liked that segment in high school, maybe I’ll take a geology class and then possibly major in geology,’” Nunn said.

Eighteen high school teachers plan to come to the program’s third visit on Monday.

Sullivan said he happened upon this unique piece of property accidentally.

He said he buys and sells a lot of land. When he bought this piece in 1999, the surveyor called him and told him he better check it out.

“We went down there and looked,” Sullivan said. “It was a beautiful piece.”

And sometimes they’re pretty easy to find. Sullivan said it usually takes he and his two kids about 10-15 minutes to find one. Besides hunting for ancient fossils, Sullivan said the land is perfect for camping out.

“It’s a good getaway for the kids,” he said. “It’s about three miles from our home.”