Paleontology in North Carolina
About 600 million years ago, North Carolina was covered by a warm shallow sea that was home to corals, jellyfish, and Pteridinium.
This sea remained in place during the early part of the Paleozoic era and was inhabited by a variety of marine life forms, like those that left the trace fossil Skolithos.
By the Triassic, North Carolina had a terrestrial environment where the local bodies of freshwater were inhabited by invertebrates and fishes while conifers and cycads grew on land.
Sea levels began to rise and fall after the Cretaceous, and occasionally marine invertebrates, bony fishes, sharks, and whales were preserved.
A pair of Pteridinium were found in a creek in Stanly County (this fossil is now on display in the NC Museum of Natural Sciences).
[7] Other kinds of fossils preserved in the Triassic Pekin deposits include amphibians, fish scales, and petrified wood.
Pekin Formation reptiles include Pekinosaurus olseni, early relatives of modern crocodiles like the phytosaur Rutiodon, and several species of aetosaur.
[8] One interesting Triassic find in North Carolina was Uatchitodon, an archosauromorph reptile with hollow teeth adapted for the delivery of venom.
[6] One petrified log from the Cretaceous period preserved in a small Cumberland County creek weighs hundreds to thousands of pounds.
The large cretoxyrhinid shark Palaeocarcharodon orientalis is also known from the state, based on extremely rare teeth from the Beaufort Formation.
[17] Mollusks and foraminifera are known from here; in fact a new species of turriteline gastropod was discovered in this formation during 2008, found in cores drilled offshore by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Other invertebrates of this epoch included at least two species of gastropod, eleven pelecypods, two brachiopods, four echinoderms, and a great diversity of bryozoans.
Remains from this fauna can be found in Pitt, Craven, Lenoir, Wayne, Jones, Onslow, Duplin, and New Hanover counties.
[18] Author Rufus Johnson has described one Neogene marl pit near Aurora in Beaufort County as the most famous fossil site in the entire state.
[19] The Yorktown Formation preserves evidence of another fauna including invertebrates 43 different kinds of pelecypods, three scaphopods, and one crustacean.
[19] Evidence for this fauna is preserved in Halifax, Hertford, Martin, Beaufort, Bertie, Edgecombe, Pitt, and Craven counties.
[21] During the ensuing Pliocene epoch, North Carolina was home to invertebrate faunas including at least 25 species of gastropods and 46 pelecypods.
[22] The presence of whales in Halifax County is attested to by a middle ear bone preserved in Pliocene deposits of the Yorktown Formation.
[25] Near the transition to the Pleistocene, North Carolina was home to vertebrates like buffalo, megalodon, and whales that were preserved in Halifax County.
[26] During the ensuing Quaternary period sea levels again began to fluctuate in time with the expansion or melting of glaciers to the north.
[27] Later in the same epoch a fauna including a crustacean, 33 pelecypods, and 24 gastropods left behind remains in Perquimans, Camden, Hyde, Pamlico, Craven, Carteret, Onslow, New Hanover, and Brunswick counties.
[27] Pleistocene vertebrate life in North Carolina included the modern horse genus Equus in Halifax, Pitt, Washington, Pamlico and New Hanover counties.
Mastodons from Carteret, Edgecombe, Nash, Craven, Jones, Pamlico, Onslow, Duplin, Wayne, Pender, New Hanover, and Brunswick Counties.
[3] Around 1869 North Carolina's first known dinosaur fossils were discovered by Washington Caruthers Kerr in a Sampson County marl pit belonging to James King.
[30] Later during that same year, Edward Drinker Cope described the dinosaur remains excavated from a Sampson County marl pit as Hypsibema crassicauda.
