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I was on a good run with bottom lateral cow shark teeth in a new spot (seems to have ended lately; thought it would get better in the winter but footprints everywhere). While most cow shark teeth I had found in the past were rootless and broken, they were easy to identify with the multiple points, and by serrations on the first spike (or so I thought). I have a fair amount of these serrated first spikes. Recently I found two "pathological" bottom lateral cow shark teeth (out of less than a dozen I had found there). I've been looking hard but not finding much lately. I gathered up most of my previous collected cow shark teeth and looked at the serrations on the big first point. I was surprised that, while not as obvious as the first two, several had serations on a separate smaller first point, some seemed to have fused large serrations, and many could just be loss of serrations with weathering. The scan is of most of my bottom lateral cow shark teeth, all from Middlesex county VA, from three hunting spots. In one spot, where most broken and small teeth are from, almost all have serrations on the first spike (most of those in the right four columns). The ones from the recent spot and similar from other spots (left two columns) are much more variable: some have small spikes rather than serrations on the first spike, some have a small spike with serrations, several have fused serrations, and some are weathered but no obvious serrations on the first spike. There of course is overlap. It's unclear if this is just normal variability that varies by hunting site, or if the new site has a different subspecies. The new spot has a lot less shark teeth beyond the interesting cow shark bottom laterals (seems I would have found a symphyseal by now?) Mostly just the same I usually find, but less teeth. A few interesting things, will need IDs and will post soon. @flyersfan805 has a nice collection for comparison (and I'm sure there are others):

I have found more bottom cow shark teeth this year than my whole tooth hunting experience. I was wondering why I only find the bottom ones lately when I came across this weird one. I cannot see too well, and thought it was just another bottom cow shark tooth, but at home it is clearly different. It is roughly the same size as the other teeth, but is missing the small coarse serrations on the first point instead having three bigger points. (Sorry for the poor photos, but my scanner is not working). I see a similar one at the Calvert Museum website (no explanation I could find) and another similar posted claiming to be a pathological symphysial tooth. Any other ideas?

After looking at the Net, this seems to be a fossil catfish spine. How can you tell if it is a pectoral or a dorsal spine?