Mariah Lawson asks about this fossil site: "Lowndes County, roadcuts along Route 263 from 0.4 to 3.3 miles south of intersection with Route 21 expose the Ripley Formation. Exogyra costata, Flemingostrea subspatulata, casts of mollusks, oysters, and rare echinoids and ammonites are found." This is the famous series of roadcuts at and south of Braggs, Alabama, where the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary is well exposed at the contact of the Cretaceous Prairie Bluff Chalk and Tertiary Clayton Formation. After some years of study, most geologists and paleontologists agree that about 200,000 years' worth of strata are missing at the boundary, which is a pity, because we were all hoping that it would show more about the weird and horrifying events that occurred at this violent moment in earth history. Yucatan is not very far away across the Gulf of Mexico, and that is where the asteroid hit in what was then a shallow sea. A huge wave would certainly have crashed through this area, but since the strata are missing, there's not much we can say about what happened here. But we know a great deal about what happened before and after the event, thanks to these studies. The site is not one that I usually recommend to avocational paleontologists. Its collecting quality is as about the same as that of alternative sites (e.g., several sites in the Livingston area), so there is no special reason to visit this one. More to the point, the Braggs cuts are heavily used by academics who have very few choices of places to go for information on the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, which is covered almost everywhere else by soil and vegetation. The boundary is not obvious (marl overlying marl). I try to steer visitors to a variety of sites, so they can all have the experience of collecting at places that have not been trampled. To get back to Braggs, the Ripley Formation is the formation below the Prairie Bluff Chalk, and is exposed in the northernmost roadcuts. Fossils are common; the echinoids and ammonites are mostly "rare" in the sense of being "uncommon here," not "rare everywhere in their range." Originally calcitic shells (oysters Exogyra and Flemingostrea) are well preserved; aragonitic shells have dissolved away, leaving internal molds that are typically phosphatic. I was working on a much-anticipated monograph, "Cretaceous Bivalves of Alabama," when economic changes made it necessary to sidetrack me into working on externally funded projects. So I have an incomplete manuscript of over 200 pages on Cretaceous mollusks in my file drawer that's not doing anyone much good: 2.5 man-years of work. <sigh> But you should be able to identify most of your Upper Cretaceous finds in the eastern third of the United States by reference to the following works. Most of them are out of print, but they are not rare publications; they can easily be borrowed by interlibrary loan. Andrew K. Rindsberg Geological Survey of Alabama ++++++++++++++++++++++ References on Upper Cretaceous invertebrates, Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plains of the United States Dockery, D. T., III, 1993, The streptoneuran gastropods, exclusive of the Stenoglossa, of the Coffee Sand (Campanian) of northeastern Mississippi: Mississippi Office of Geology, Bulletin 129, 191 p., 42 pl. Gardner, J. A., 1916, Mollusca, Brachiopoda, and Vermes. In Clark, W. B., ed., Systematic paleontology of the Upper Cretaceous deposits of Maryland: Maryland Geological Survey, Upper Cretaceous, 518 p. Richards, H. G., ed., 1958-1962, The Cretaceous fossils of New Jersey: New Jersey Bureau of Geology and Topography, Paleontology Series, Bulletin 61, pt. 1 (1958), 266 p., pl. 1-46; pt. 2 (1962), 237 p., pl. 47-94. Sohl, N. F., 1960 [published 1961], Archaeogastropoda, Mesogastropoda, and stratigraphy of the Ripley, Owl Creek, and Prairie Bluff formations: U.S. Geological Survey, Professional Paper 331-A, p. 1-151, pl. 1-18. Sohl, N. F., 1964a, Neogastropoda, Opisthobranchia, and Basommatophora from the Ripley, Owl Creek, and Prairie Bluff formations: U.S. Geological Survey, Professional Paper 331-B, p. 153-344, pl. 19-52. Sohl, N. F., 1964b, Gastropods from the Coffee Sand (Upper Cretaceous) of Mississippi: U.S. Geological Survey, Professional Paper 331-C, p. 345-394, pl. 53-57. Stephenson, L. W., 1914, Species of Exogyra from the eastern Gulf region and the Carolinas: U.S. Geological Survey, Professional Paper 81, p. 41-55, pl. 19-21. Stephenson, L. W., 1923, Invertebrate fossils of the Upper Cretaceous formations: North Carolina Geological and Economic Survey, v. 5, pt. 1, 604 p. Stephenson, L. W., 1926, The Mesozoic rocks. In Adams, G. I., Butts, C., Stephenson, L. W., and Cooke, W., Geology of Alabama: Alabama Geological Survey, Special Report 14, p. 231-250, pl. 77-92. Stephenson, L. W., 1934, The genus Diploschiza from the Upper Cretaceous of Alabama and Texas: Journal of Paleontology, v. 8, no. 3, p. 273-280, pl. 38. Stephenson, L. W., 1935, Further notes on the Cretaceous pelecypod genus Diploschiza: Journal of Paleontology, v. 9, no. 7, p. 588-592. [Diploschiza is now recognized as a junior synonym of Atreta.] Stephenson, L. W., 1941, The larger invertebrate fossils of the Navarro Group of Texas: University of Texas, Bulletin 4101, 641 p., 95 pl. Stephenson, L. W., 1955, Owl Creek (Upper Cretaceous) fossils from Crowleys Ridge, southeastern Missouri: U.S. Geological Survey, Professional Paper 274-E, p. 97-104, pl. 14-24. Stephenson, L. W., 1956 [1957], Fossils from the Eutaw Formation, Chattahoochee River region, Alabama-Georgia: U.S. Geological Survey, Professional Paper 274-J, p. 227-250, pl. 38-45. Stephenson, L. W., and Monroe, W. H., 1940 [1941], The Upper Cretaceous deposits: Mississippi State Geological Survey, Bulletin 40, 296 p., 15 pl. Wade, B., 1926, The fauna of the Ripley Formation on Coon Creek, Tennessee: U.S. Geological Survey, Professional Paper 137, 272 p., 72 pl. Weller, S., 1907, A report on the Cretaceous paleontology of New Jersey, based upon the stratigraphic studies of George N. Knapp: New Jersey Geological Survey, Paleontology Series 4, 1106 p. Whitfield, R. P., 1885, Brachiopoda and Lamellibranchiata of the Raritan clays and marls of New Jersey: U.S. Geological Survey, Monograph 9, 338 p., 35 pl. Whitfield, R. P., 1892, Gasteropoda and Cephalopoda of the Raritan clays and Greensand marls of New Jersey: U.S. Geological Survey, Monograph 18, 402 p., 50 pl.