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Tooth? In Oxford UK


daveinoxford

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Complete newbie.  This may not even be a tooth.  But there’s been some building work near us (Oxford, UK) and diggers have unearthed lots of unusual rocks.  We’ve found plenty of belemnites and now this.  Any ideas?

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Edited by daveinoxford
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I say tip of a pliosaur tooth. Some of the images show a couple of ridges reaching the apex. Was this from the Oxford Clay? 

 

 

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

I concur with @paulgdls. The enamel on this looks much more like that or a pliosaur than that of an ichthyosaur. The conservation reminds me of the teeth typically assigned to Liopleurodon sp. found at Wicklesham Pit in Faringdon, though those finds derive from the Kimmeridge Clay from which they have been reworked into Albian (Cretaceous) deposits...

 

All the same, compare with the tooth in this thread:

 

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'There's nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fibre and, in some cases, backbone' -- Terry Pratchett

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Just to add that for an ichthyosaur tooth I'd either expect the tooth to be entirely smooth as in a minority of species, or observe at least some remnants of the enamel folds that so typical for this clade of marine reptiles. If the tooth were from a crocodile, on the other hand, I would expect to see carinae - at least one, considering the size of the fragment - and either a lot of very fine striations, or an entirely smooth surface. Instead, I'm seeing a rugose enamel without folds, but with a couple of fine striations, which is a much closer match for plesiosaurian teeth, and pliosaurs in particular. Though Madzia's 2016 article "A reappraisal of Polyptychodon (Plesiosauria) from the Cretaceous of England"        declares that genus a waste-bucket taxon, the figures provided should prove very informative for comparative purposes:

 

peerj-04-1998-g007.jpg.3e38675bc7b87094300215d69b7b5b5e.jpgFigure 7 from Madzia 2016. Note the vermicular striae between the adjacent apicobasal ridges.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5ff6442186f55_marinereptiletooth.jpg.70e263c6401b5a335949f847168cdd0e.jpgEnlarged and colour-enhanced version of OP's tooth.

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'There's nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fibre and, in some cases, backbone' -- Terry Pratchett

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