Deer?

[BellamyBlake]

I have here a tooth meant to be from a fallow deer, found in St. Albans, Hertfordshire, England. It's 29 mm x 21 mm. While I don't necessarily doubt the ID, I'm looking to age it which may be a bit harder. The seller claims it's from the Holocene, but it "looks" fossilized to me. This will of course be easier to determine once I have it in hand. I'm curious, though, and wonder if anyone here can tell based on the information I've provided.

 

My question then is dual. Would fallow deer be an accurate ID, or might it be a related find like red deer? And might this be Pleistocene as opposed to Holocene, based on the locality and/or appearance?

 

Thank you,

Bellamy

[Fossildude19]

Need to see the chewing (Occlusal) Surface head on. 

[BellamyBlake]

40 minutes ago, Fossildude19 said:

Need to see the chewing (Occlusal) Surface head on. 

 

Is this the chewing surface or the root?

[Max-fossils]

1 hour ago, BellamyBlake said:

 

Is this the chewing surface or the root?

That is indeed the chewing surface  

 

This tooth appears to me like a lower m3. However I am not experienced enough in deer dentition to recognize whether the Dama dama ID is accurate. From what I've heard/seen, deers have rather similar teeth which can sometimes make it hard to recognize species apart.

 

About the age question, it is typically best to have the specimen in hand in order to evaluate that, but judging off of its colors and preservation, I agree with the Holocene dating, as it seems consistent with other Holocene teeth I've seen. 

 

Hope this helps at least a bit!

[BellamyBlake]

3 hours ago, Max-fossils said:

That is indeed the chewing surface  

 

This tooth appears to me like a lower m3. However I am not experienced enough in deer dentition to recognize whether the Dama dama ID is accurate. From what I've heard/seen, deers have rather similar teeth which can sometimes make it hard to recognize species apart.

 

About the age question, it is typically best to have the specimen in hand in order to evaluate that, but judging off of its colors and preservation, I agree with the Holocene dating, as it seems consistent with other Holocene teeth I've seen. 

 

Hope this helps at least a bit!

Max thanks for your analysis; it's definitely helpful! I'll go with Holocene for now. My main reason for asking was because I like having an age range on my labels, and 0 - 11,000 years is a little broad haha. Sometimes, of course, it can't be narrowed down further. But if it so happened that a user here knew this locality and could therefore surmise a narrower range (i.e. 8,000 - 11,000 years), that would have been useful for my labeling purposes.

[Notidanodon]

1 minute ago, BellamyBlake said:

Max thanks for your analysis; it's definitely helpful! I'll go with Holocene for now. My main reason for asking was because I like having an age range on my labels, and 0 - 11,000 years is a little broad haha. Sometimes, of course, it can't be narrowed down further. But if it so happened that a user here knew this locality and could therefore surmise a narrower range (i.e. 8,000 - 11,000 years), that would have been useful for my labeling purposes.

if you think about it in terms of fossils thats quite a short time generally its very hard to date teeth like this unless they are found in a location with human remains or in a specified formation that has been dated, otherwise holo/pleistocene is the best you cann really get, its hard to tell the difference

[BellamyBlake]

2 hours ago, will stevenson said:

if you think about it in terms of fossils thats quite a short time generally its very hard to date teeth like this unless they are found in a location with human remains or in a specified formation that has been dated, otherwise holo/pleistocene is the best you cann really get, its hard to tell the difference

It's short of course in that example. More or less, I would be interested in some way to differentiate between a Holocene "fossil" from 11,000 years ago and like 20 years ago. The amount of fossilization is hard to quantify in any reliable way, and so it's true - I may not get a more reliable answer than "Holocene." I delved into the literature to see if I could find a more reliable timeframe as to how old the fossils in that formation exactly are, but came up dry

[Notidanodon]

4 hours ago, BellamyBlake said:

It's short of course in that example. More or less, I would be interested in some way to differentiate between a Holocene "fossil" from 11,000 years ago and like 20 years ago. The amount of fossilization is hard to quantify in any reliable way, and so it's true - I may not get a more reliable answer than "Holocene." I delved into the literature to see if I could find a more reliable timeframe as to how old the fossils in that formation exactly are, but came up dry

I have tried to do the same for many of my UK holo/pleistocene specimens and there are very few described formations that hold these fossils