Aurora Fossil Museum EarthCache
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The Aurora Fossil Museum is in the Frank and Grace Bonner Park, which is part of the Aurora City Park System. Please follow all Park Rules while you are visiting here. The most relevant of these rules to Geocachers being that the Park is only open from 8am to 8pm, and that there is to be no jumping or hanging from any of the permanent structures located in the park.
Museum Hours
Monday through Saturday, 9 am until 4:30 pm.
Beginning March 1st through Labor Day, the museum is also open on Sunday from 12:30 to 4:30pm.
The fossil Pit of the Pungo is always open for collecting from sun-up to sun-down.
Free parking is also available at the museum!
The Aurora Fossil Museum is FREE to all who wish to go inside!
The Aurora Fossil Museum's Address:
400 Main Street
Aurora, NC 27806
In the park you will find two large pits of sand, gravel, and rocks. This will be henceforth called Pungo. It is in these pits that you will be able to dig to find any fossilized shark teeth, vertebrae, as well as the fossilized teeth, bones, and shells of many other assorted sea creatures.
Shark Tooth Fossilization
Shark teeth are fossilized when the shark looses a tooth and it falls to the sea floor. In order for fossilization to occur, a tooth must be buried in sediment quickly. A Quick burial is important for fossilization for a number of reasons. First, the sediment acts to protect the teeth from the weathering, abrasion, and scavenging that could occur if they were exposed to open water and currents. Secondly, burial also limits exposure to oxygen and bacteria which are responsible for decay. The process of fossilization is a slow one that usually takes thousands of years. In the case of shark's teeth, they are preserved through a process known as permineralization. Which occurs as water seeps down through the sediments and over the teeth. This water carries different minerals in it that are deposited into open pore spaces in the teeth. The most common minerals are silica and calcite but other local minerals are deposited as well. Depending on which minerals are present teeth can be found in a wide variety of different colors, ranging from blue-grey to black to red-orange to white or even green.
The shark teeth that you will find here are all from the Pungo River Formation, which consists of fossils and sediments from the Pleistocene Era. The Pleistocene Era last from 2.00 mya (million years ago) to 0.01 mya. The section of North Carolina that Aurora is in is all from the Pleistocene Era.
~Pictured above is one of the scoops used to dig out the Pungo from the mining site to be transported here to the Aurora Fossil Museum. It is big enough to fit two cars inside it side-by-side! :O
Pungo River Formation
The Pungo River Formation is primarily composed of inter-bedded phosphatic sands, and clays, limestones and dolostones. It un-conformably lies above the Castle Hayne Limestone of the Eocene Age and is un-conformably overlain by the Pliocene Yorktown Formation. The contact with the overlying Yorktown Formation as observed in cores, is sometimes gradual due to the reworked phosphatic material at the base of the Yorktown Formation.
The thickness of the formation ranges from a thin edge in the Western part to more than 120 feet on the Eastern edge. The top of the formation drops as you travel Eastward by approximately 10ft per mile. The primary formational sequence consists of dolosit, coquinoid limestone, phosphatic sandy clay, dolstone and phosphatic doloclaystone.
To Claim a Find on this EarthCache, email Me the Answers to the Following 5 Questions:
1) What types of shark teeth did you find while here in Aurora?
2) How big was the largest shark tooth you found? From what type of shark was it from?
3) Other than sharks, what other creatures did you find fossils of?
4) EXTRA CREDIT: Post pictures of yourself in the Pungo Pits, around Aurora, & of anything else you want to of your visit here to the Aurora Fossil Museum! :D
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