Florida Fossil Marine Jaw Bone ID Help

[Brnaubrey]

I will give you a little back ground on where I found this fossil. There is a creek that runs through some of my families land in the middle of Walton County Florida. It is not located in a place that most people look for fossils. There are only about three locations on the creek that the beds are visible and most of them are at least five feet underwater and not easily accessible. I found this on the bottom of the creek at one of these locations when I was a kid. For the longest time I thought it was some old native American artifact. I recently found out it is some type of marine jaw bone. I looked up some of the geological formations where I live, and from what I can tell the beds are part of the Alum Bluff Group which is from the Miocene period.

 

[mikeymig]

Lower jaw to a cetacean (whale,porpoise,dolphin). 

[Brnaubrey]

43 minutes ago, mikeymig said:

Lower jaw to a cetacean (whale,porpoise,dolphin). 

That is awesome. I am going to keep looking in these areas. I have recently found shark teeth at the same location so I hope after a few more visits to have more things to share.

[Andy B]

That's really cool. Grab a snorkel and mask and have a good look around!

[Brnaubrey]

27 minutes ago, Andy B said:

That's really cool. Grab a snorkel and mask and have a good look around!

It is a really odd location to find fossils because most everything is in South Florida. The sediment is mainly a hard clay shelf with compacted hard sand at the bottom. There is only a few places it is visible and it changes depending on how the creek washes the loose sand around. It used to cover a very large area and now it is mostly filled in. The shelf's have a lot of very defined layers. There is one layer that has a lot of teeth in it, but they are extremely brittle. I have not tried to dig up anything at the bottom, but what I have done is scoop out some of the mud with my hand between the bottom layer and the shelf. It is a type of blue sandy mud, but the teeth that I have found at that layer have been tan, grey, and even black in color. I think when it warms up I am gong to take a better look around. It is just hard because the current is very swift. I left most of the teeth with my parents, but next time I go visit Ill look for some more and post what I find. I have yet to really explore the area so I am pretty excited about it. I don't think anyone knew it was there besides documentation about finding fossils when digging wells around Walton County.

[Andy B]

I would be exited too. Looking forward to seeing the results!

[Ruger9a]

Yes, please post you results so we can get excited with you.

[Shellseeker]

22 hours ago, Andy B said:

I would be exited too. Looking forward to seeing the results!

There has been a paucity of any whale jaw material found in Florida!! I will be interested in @Boesse Bobby's comments.

This is my sole entry.

 

KogiopsisFloridanaN0389.pdf

[Brnaubrey]

22 hours ago, Shellseeker said:

There has been a paucity of any whale jaw material found in Florida!! I will be interested in @Boesse Bobby's comments.

This is my sole entry.

 

KogiopsisFloridanaN0389.pdf

I plan to go back and look around this spring. I have found some interesting shark teeth the last time I was there and found some bone fragments. I left them at my parents house back in Florida. Once I head back Ill take some pictures and start updating my collection. It is something I have been wanting to get more information about for a long time. There are a few natural springs that are way up hill from the creek that have these hard clay shelf's similar to the ones that drop off into the creek. There are imprints of shells in the clay. Ill try to take some pictures of that as well.

[Brnaubrey]

I just wanted to add this one photo I forgot I had on my phone. These are the teeth and things I found at the location last summer. Ill take better ones in a few months.

[Boesse]

Oh yeah that's definitely a longirostrine dolphin mandible, from where the left and right dentaries are fused at the midline. I've seen this same morphotype in the Pungo River LS at the Lee Creek Mine - not sure what type of dolphin, but not a pomatodelphine (Zarhachis, Pomatodelphis) or a typical eurhinodelphinid. Not very similar to a squalodelphinid either.

[Shellseeker]

On 2/5/2020 at 12:09 PM, Brnaubrey said:

I will give you a little back ground on where I found this fossil. There is a creek that runs through some of my families land in the middle of Walton County Florida. It is not located in a place that most people look for fossils. There are only about three locations on the creek that the beds are visible and most of them are at least five feet underwater and not easily accessible. I found this on the bottom of the creek at one of these locations when I was a kid. For the longest time I thought it was some old native American artifact. I recently found out it is some type of marine jaw bone. I looked up some of the geological formations where I live, and from what I can tell the beds are part of the Alum Bluff Group which is from the Miocene period.

 

The section that Mikeymig provides is about 60 inches;  the small piece I have is 5 x 2 inches; What is the length & width of the section you found?

 

[Brnaubrey]

I plan to head back to Florida at the end of March and Ill get the dimensions. I have been looking up the geology where I found this and I am certain it is from the Miocene time period. The creek behind my parents house cuts into this fossil bed in a hand full of locations. It looks like there are also some spots on higher ground that are part of the Citronelle Formation. It is really hard to get to the good spots unless the water level is very low and only if the sand has not covered up the exposed areas. There are probably more spots I have not seen, but the creek ends up flowing through some federal land and I only look in places where it flows through my family's land. The geologic map I looked at shows how the creek cuts into the Alum Bluff group.