Carmel Church Quarry Fauna

Since the 1980's, Virginia Museum of Natural History teams have run digs at the Carmel Church Quarry marine fossil site in Ruther Glen, Virginia. The Carmel Church Quarry preserves a number of stratigraphic horizons ranging from the Eocene Nanjemoy Formation to the Miocene St. Marys Formation. Most fossils come from an intermediate Miocene horizon of the Calvert Formation. While the Carmel Church vertebrate fauna is dominated by cetaceans, fossils of fishes, sharks, sea turtles, pinnipeds, and sirenians are also represented.

Drawer containing the sample of otodontid shark teeth from Carmel Church. Species represented include Carcharocles angustidens and C. megalodon.



Vertebral column from the neck and trunk region of the holotype specimen of Eobalaenoptera harrisoni, a whale species known definitively only from the Carmel Church site



Vertebral column of a small mysticete whale