# W.M. Browning Cretaceous Fossil Park: legal collecting field guide

Canonical page: https://lithomap.app/resources/field-trips/browning-cretaceous-fossil-park-mississippi
Last access and rule review: September 18, 2026
Page purpose: Original LithoMap trip-planning reference for an explicitly authorized rock, mineral, or non-dinosaur fossil collecting destination.

## Direct answer

A public geological roadside park where visitors search creek sediment for common Late Cretaceous fossils under the park’s current rules.

## Location and material

- State: Mississippi
- Area: Twenty Mile Creek near Frankstown
- Category: Fossil collecting
- Collection status: Collecting allowed
- Expected material: Shark teeth, Mollusks, Petrified wood, Common marine fossils

## Authorization

The park’s visitor guidance tells fossil hunters to bring containers and a sieve for collected fossils. Any current sign, closure, or staff direction overrides this summary.

## Access

Check the official trip-planning page for parking, water level, weather, and amenity information. Stay inside the public park and out of highway or private property.

## Tools, limits, and season

- Tools: Use a hand sieve and surface-search creek gravel where current conditions allow. Do not undercut banks or excavate the road cut.
- Limits: Collect modest common specimens. Leave or report rare vertebrate material—including any possible dinosaur, marine reptile, or associated bone—rather than removing it.
- Season and current status: Creek level, storms, heat, and flooding control safe access.

## Conditions

- Check water level and weather.
- Stay in the designated public area.
- Do not cut banks.
- Report unusual vertebrate finds.

## Geology

The site exposes the contact between the Coffee Sand and Demopolis units deposited near a Late Cretaceous sea about 75 million years ago.

Moving water concentrates resistant teeth, shell fragments, and other fossils in gravel pockets.

## Field plan

1. Open the current official source and check alerts before leaving home.
2. Confirm the property boundary, parking location, and activity rules on arrival.
3. Begin with observation or surface searching and make the smallest possible disturbance.
4. Photograph context before handling any material that the current rules allow you to keep.
5. Pack out every item you brought and leave protected or uncertain material in place.

## Safety

- Flash flooding and slippery creek rock are major hazards.
- Use gloves around sharp shell and glass.
- Do not work beside traffic or beneath an unstable bank.

## Official sources

- Park trip planning and collecting equipment — W.M. Browning Cretaceous Fossil Park: https://arthropodeum.org/planavisit/
- Site geology — Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, Office of Geology: https://www.mdeq.ms.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/JustGeology2012_2013.pdf

This guide is not a permit, reservation, boundary survey, legal opinion, guarantee of access, or promise of a find. Open every official source again before travel. Current signs, closures, permits, claim boundaries, and staff instructions control.