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I really like the sturdiness of the Bothriodon sp tooth when held in the hand from the Isle of Wight, Lower Hamstead Beds in Bouldnor , and I would really like to know are these indents possible wear facets (indicated by the blue arrow). But before I can really ask that question with confidence, I thought it would be best to ask which end of the tooth is the root and which end of the tooth the tip is. @TXV24

Hi, It's been a while since I've put anything up on here so it figured it would a good time to share some of my finds from this spring so far. With such a productive winter the start of this spring on the Bouldnor Fm. coast was a bit slow with several trips in which little was found (odd for what is usually a heavily productive site) but as March and April came round the finds started coming in faster and better. Access at Bouldnor is now very dangerous and pretty much impassable due to thick and deep silt and mud which has covered part of the beach (which I found out the hard way trying to get through), along with two recent cliff falls which have brought several oak trees down onto the beach. Hamstead and Cranmore are as good as ever with a lot of the winter's mudflows now eroding away and making the foreshore a lot easier. (Hamstead Ledge on a spring low tide) Mammal finds have been pretty nice so far this spring, as usual all Bothriodon, and alongside them I've also made some nice alligator and turtle finds including two partial Emys in-situ in the Upper Hamstead Mbr. Here are some of the highlights: 1. More pieces of the large Bothriodon mandible I first found in January have turned up scattered over the same area. I now have part of the hinge, two sections with P2 - M3 and a part of the underside of the mandible from further forward. I regularly check the site on my collecting trips so hopefully yet more of the jaw will turn up. (The positions of the fragments may be slightly off in the image below but it gives a general idea) 2. Bothriodon caudal vertebra. This is one of my favourite finds from this spring. I was originally excavating a small micro-vertebrate site when I felt the tool make contact with a large bone, I dug a bit deeper into the clay and found this vertebra with the processes fragmented around it. Luckily with a bit of super glue the processes were easily reunited with the vertebral body, after 33 million years apart. Unfortunately I couldn't locate the other transverse process or neural spine in the matrix nearby so I think they may have been broken off on the Oligocene coastal plain. 3. Bothriodon upper molar in a fragment of maxilla 4. Section of Bothriodon mandible with a nice mental foramen. Unfortunately no in-situ teeth with this one. 5. Section of mammalian limb bone with evidence of rodent gnawing. This was an in-situ find eroding out of the Upper Hamstead Mbr. on the foreshore. Gnaw marks like these are really common on in-situ material especially on limb bones. I don't think the rodents were scavenging the flesh off the bones, more likely they were extracting calcium and phosphate or were simply using it to grind down their continually growing incisors. Either way it shows that for at least a period a lot of these bones were exposed to the elements and accessible to the variety of rodents present on the coastal plain. 6. Nice quality Bothriodon intermedial phalange 7. Large Diplocynodon alligator frontal bone Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the finds! Theo

Hi, I haven't posted in a while on here so I thought I'd show some of my best Bouldnor Fm. finds from this autumn (so far). As winter comes in the productivity on the coast has noticeably increased since the summer. We've had a lot of wet and windy weather through October and November, especially with Hurricane Ophelia and Storm Brian which has triggered a lot of falls and slips especially at Bouldnor and Hamstead Cliffs producing new material. I've also recently started as a lab volunteer at Dinosaur Isle (mostly accessioning Insect fossils from the Bembridge Insect Beds etc.) which has inspired me to get out on the coast a lot more often, meaning I'm now out collecting at least once a week. So here are my bests from the last few weeks: 1) A large piece of Emys plastron from Bouldnor. 2) A distal piece of an anthracothere humerus, most likely from Bothriodon