It took me hell to get there (namely working eleven days in a row with my hours adjusted so that I never went over 40 hours in a week–so all those days of work for regular pay), but I was finally given a day off to return to the Cliffs I love so much.
The sight of the water as I stepped off the wooded trail nearly had me crying.
Calvert Cliffs State Park is located in Lusby, MD and is home to part of the Calvert formation, an Early to Mid Miocene fossil deposit. The clay-based cliffs are in a constant state of erosion, and give up new treasures to the tides and beach every day. Though CCSP boasts its wealth of fossilized shark teeth, I’ve also found seashell imprint fossils, fragments of Echphora gardnerae (the state fossil of Maryland), porpoise and alligator teeth, gar scales, and once a near-perfect porpoise vertebra.
Now that I have more “officially” started down this path of venerating my evolutionary ancestors, this trip to the Cliffs felt almost like a kind of pilgrimage–for it was here on this very beach that my love and awe for my most ancient ancestors was first truly sparked.
Tiktaalik's Grandchild 