I did not inherit the finding gene.
Daddy could stand in a patch of clover, bend down, and come back up with a fistful of four-leaf clovers like it wasn’t even worth mentioning. It was almost like the clover wanted to be found by him.
Mama’s the same way at the beach. Turn her loose on just about any stretch of North Carolina coastline and she’ll come home with a pocket full of olive shells, a mermaid’s purse or two, and enough shark teeth to make jewelry. She has a knack for spotting the things everybody else walks right past.
Me?
I can follow in her exact footsteps and somehow come away with half a broken whelk, a bottle cap, and maybe a piece of driftwood that looked a whole lot more interesting from a distance.
So you can imagine my surprise when Brandon and I started finding fossilized sea biscuits at Holden Beach over the Fourth of July.
Not one.
Not two.
More than half a dozen.
Every time we looked down, there was another one tucked into the shell line. Each of them golf ball sized. They were smooth and heavy, cool against the skin, the color of wet concrete or old bone. Turn one over and you’d find the same five-petaled star you see on a sand dollar, only this one wasn’t etched into a fragile shell. It was frozen in stone.
We’d fill our hands, walk another fifty feet, and do it all over again.
For somebody who’s spent her whole life convinced she missed whatever everybody else seemed to find, it felt like the ocean had finally decided to let me in on the secret.
If you’ve never seen one before, a sea biscuit is basically a sand dollar’s sturdier cousin. They’re thicker, denser, and unmistakably rock instead of shell. The ones washing up at Holden Beach are the fossilized remains of an extinct sea urchin called Hardouinia mortonis, and they’re believed to be somewhere between 66 and 70 million years old.
Wrap your mind around that for a second.
These little creatures were crawling across the seafloor while the last dinosaurs still walked the Earth.
North Carolina wasn’t North Carolina yet. The coastline looked nothing like it does today. Even the Appalachian Mountains weren’t the weathered old giants we know now.
And somehow, after all that time, one ended up in my hand while I stood barefoot on the beach with sunscreen in my eyes and a folding chair tucked under my arm.
Of course, I started wondering why they seemed to be everywhere. Holden Beach hadn’t always been covered in fossilized sea biscuits.
It turns out the answer isn’t luck at all.
Just offshore sits the Peedee Formation, an ancient layer of marine sediment that’s been quietly holding onto these fossils for tens of millions of years. During beach renourishment projects, dredges pumped sand from that offshore deposit onto Holden Beach to replace what storms and erosion had carried away. In the process, they cracked open a layer that had been sealed since the end of the Cretaceous Period.
Almost overnight, fossils that had spent nearly 70 million years buried beneath the Atlantic started washing up along the shoreline.
It’s amazing to think about.
Something that survived asteroid impacts, shifting continents, changing oceans, and the rise and fall of countless species finally saw daylight because we were trying to save a beach.
Locals say the easy finds have already started thinning out. Every bucket that goes home, every high tide that rolls in, every storm that rearranges the shoreline chips away at this little moment in time. Sooner or later, these fossils will become harder to find again.
Which makes me appreciate our timing even more.
Between the two of us, Brandon and I came home with a nice little collection. Most of the sea biscuits were beautifully intact, their patterns still crisp beneath our fingertips after all those millions of years. I also found a good-sized piece of fossilized coral that I still catch myself picking up and turning over in my hands.
Holding something that’s been around for nearly 70 million years does funny things to your perspective.
You stop noticing the sunburn creeping across your shoulders.
You forget your flip-flop has rubbed a blister between your toes.
The emails waiting back home can wait a little longer.
For a few quiet minutes, you’re simply standing there with a piece of Earth’s history resting in the palm of your hand, realizing just how small your own little chapter really is.
So if Holden Beach is on your list this summer, spend a little time walking the wrack line near the pier around low tide. Keep your eyes on the sand instead of the horizon.
You may not have inherited the finding gene either.
But every once in a while, the coast decides it’s your turn.
