Parotodus benedeni intermediate tooth?

[siteseer]

I'm virtually certain this tooth is an upper intermediate tooth of Parotodus benedeni from the Middle Miocene Sharktooth Hill Bonebed, Bakersfield, Kern County, CA.  It's about 1 1/4 inches high (32mm) and an inch wide (25mm).  It could be a juvenile tooth but I think the less-expanded root lobes indicate a tooth position between larger teeth.  It's too big to be a symphyseal and the root is wrong for that anyway.  The root is too high to be a posterior.  The pallial dentine is worn away but you can see the depression of the bourlette.  It isn't serrated and not the shape of Carcharocles megalodon.  It's definitely not a Carcharodon hastalis nor planus tooth and it's not Isurus.

 

I'm wondering if anyone else has a tooth like this - maybe a Lee Creek collector or another STH collector.

 

Jess

[Gizmo]

Looks like one to me.  

[MarcoSr]

Jess

 

The below figures/plates are from Kent Powell 1999 Reconstructed Dentition of the Rare Lamnoid Shark Parotodus benedeni from the Yorktown Formation (early Pliocene) at the Lee Creek Mine, North Carolina from the Mosasaur Volume: VI May 1999.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your tooth definitely looks like a Parotodus.  The root shape also suggests an intermediate tooth to me.

 

Marco Sr.

 

 

[powelli1]

Hi siteseer I don't think it's an intermediate tooth because the blade looks to be to wide and to much of an angel of the blade, but I do think it's a upper lateral maybe L2 or L3. Thanks to MarcosSr for posting the paper that Dr Kent and I did on the 114 Parotodus benedeni teeth that I recovered from the Lee creek main years ago. It is a very nice tooth. George

[siteseer]

4 hours ago, powelli1 said:

Hi siteseer I don't think it's an intermediate tooth because the blade looks to be to wide and to much of an angel of the blade, but I do think it's a upper lateral maybe L2 or L3. Thanks to MarcosSr for posting the paper that Dr Kent and I did on the 114 Parotodus benedeni teeth that I recovered from the Lee creek main years ago. It is a very nice tooth. George

 

Hi George,

 

Thanks for your comments.  You are Parotodus Man.  The root lobes in Parotodus are more spread out in the upper lateral teeth I've seen.  This is the only tooth I've seen where they are virtually vertical so I thought it was from a jaw position lesser-seen.  It doesn't appear to be pathologically compressed mesiodistally.  There is at least a 10 million year old difference between the Yorktown and the STH Bonebed., and if this is a juvenile tooth, it could have an irregular morphology.  

 

Jess

 

@sagacious  @Al Dente  @sixgill pete  @non-remanié  @isurus90064  @Anomotodon

[fossilsonwheels]

Super tooth Jess. Quite a rare one. 

[sagacious]

Hi Jess,

 

I knew I had seen this tooth form before -- it took me a moment to remember where.

 

I think a decent argument could be put together for it being an intermediate tooth. The crowded and compressed roots, along with the large crown as compared with the root size, immediately suggest an intermediate position, and I might expect the potential for some slight variability in that position.  However, I'm with powell1, and I don't think this is an intermediate tooth.  The compression seen in the vertical root lobes doesn't here seem to result in a more upright crown.  Of the very few benedeni intermediate teeth I've seen, the root is generally surprisingly robust in that position.  Because of that, I think it's possible that there are many unrecognized benedeni intermediate teeth in collections out there. 

 

I think this is probably a posterior tooth of an adult shark.  This might be an underrepresented tooth form in collections, or it's position might be less easily recognized when there's damage to the relatively less robust roots, but Parotodus seems to have an upper posterior position that's apparently crowded to the extent that the root lobes are near vertical. 

 

On the Elasmo site, there are some P benedeni teeth figured under the heading Leriche 1910 as Oxyrhina Benedeni. The tooth numbered 8, with position listed as uLp, appears to be a virtual match with your tooth, with near-vertical root lobes and the same crown obliquity and proportion of crown dimensions to root size.  This suggests to me that the tooth form is probably common to the species, but perhaps not well-recognized.  

 

Thanks for showing us another very interesting tooth.  

 

Eric