panning for fossils
After a friend told us about searching for fossils and sharks’ teeth at the Big Brook Area, we decided to build some simple panning trays to give it a go! You can make your own panning trays from 4 pieces of scrap wood and some wire mesh (nothing larger than 18”x18” is allowed), but you can also use sand sifters or colanders. The Big Brook Area is located in Monmouth County, and the fossils and sharks’ teeth that you can find there were deposited during the Late Cretaceous Period! Once there, our kids filled their pans with gravel and dirt, sifted them out in the water, and then dug through to check out their finds.
Once home, we attempted to identify what we found with help from Derek Yoost’s NJ Fossils Site (www.njfossils.net). We definitely found 1 shark tooth, one tooth that we’re not quite sure what it is, several squid fossils, and some other pieces that we can’t yet identify. Our kids had so much fun searching for these treasures, but even more fun just splashing around in the brook!
Some tips if you go:
Wear water shoes. There is a lot of broken glass in the brook.
Bring towels and changes of clothes.
Bring some clean water to rinse off with after getting out of the stream. The mud and gravel is thick and stinky!
