Shark teeth are common fossils in Georgia and are the official state fossil. From the Cretaceous to the Miocene periods (approximately 10 to 70 million years ago) sharks hunted and stalked the coastal areas of Georgia. It is very rare to find a fossil of an actual carcass of these prehistoric sharks, but their teeth are found in sizable numbers due to the fact that sharks constantly lose and replace their teeth.
An abundance of invertebrate marine fossils appear along the coastal plain of Georgia. The most common of these are bivalved mollusks, a shelled marine animal. Another invertebrate fossil of Georgia is the sponge. They first emerged in the Precambrian period (over 500 million years ago), and are animals that feed through tiny holes in their bodies that absorb water and food. Some invertebrate fossils appear similar to modern invertebrate animals.
Whale fossils of Georgia are quite famous, and represent early whales of the Eocene Epoch (54.8 to 33.7 million years ago). These fossils represent a key period of evolution for whales. The fossils have shown that these whales had only partly adapted for underwater hearing and had serrated teeth and vestigial hind limbs. Recently, an almost complete skeleton of an even more primitive whale was discovered in Burke County.
Three main dinosaurs have been identified within the fossils of Georgia. These include a smaller relative of the tyrannosaur, an ostrich-like animal and duck-billed dinosaurs. Since Georgia was mostly covered in water in the ancient past, many large animal fossils are actually ocean creatures. A common dinosaur fossil of Georgia is the giant crocodile, which reached a length of 9 meters and could weigh as much as 2.8 tons.