Monmouth County Cretaceous revisited - re-classification to Plioplatecarpine

[pachy-pleuro-whatnot-odon]

I agree, identifying isolated marine reptile teeth, even if one knows the general clade it's likely to belong to, is tricky at best, impossible at worst. I therefore frequently like to stick with family or, at best, genus-names (depends on how well-studied a deposit and well-defined yet distinguishable its fauna is), soon I would've thought plioplatecarpinae is sufficiently broad to define this as a mosasaur tooth. But I had no idea of the variation that locally exists within this family...

 

Let's hope the experts come back to us, as I'm now also quite interested in knowing the attribution of this tooth

[frankh8147]

1 hour ago, pachy-pleuro-whatnot-odon said:

I agree, identifying isolated marine reptile teeth, even if one knows the general clade it's likely to belong to, is tricky at best, impossible at worst. I therefore frequently like to stick with family or, at best, genus-names (depends on how well-studied a deposit and well-defined yet distinguishable its fauna is), soon I would've thought plioplatecarpinae is sufficiently broad to define this as a mosasaur tooth. But I had no idea of the variation that locally exists within this family...

 

Let's hope the experts come back to us, as I'm now also quite interested in knowing the attribution of this tooth

 

We'll see! With an isolated reptile tooth, its just tough.

 

I did get some feedback but the identifications were very tentative. The two responses I got back so far was that it looks Mosasaurine, but its tough to tell from pictures if those are true striations or an illusion (I believe them to be true striations). There was also a question as to whether or not it could actually be a Plesiosaur tooth - some type of polycotylid. I'm open to all ideas and Plesiosaurs are still understudied here so its an interesting thought. That said, in New Jersey, we aren't aware of any Plesiosaur teeth with any carinae at this time.

 

With the other examples, opinions and comparison shown by you and other member of this forum; I still stick with my initial identification (with a slight variance towards Platycarpus) but that is still subject to change

[pachy-pleuro-whatnot-odon]

6 hours ago, frankh8147 said:

There was also a question as to whether or not it could actually be a Plesiosaur tooth - some type of polycotylid. I'm open to all ideas and Plesiosaurs are still understudied here so its an interesting thought. That said, in New Jersey, we aren't aware of any Plesiosaur teeth with any carinae at this time.

 

With the other examples, opinions and comparison shown by you and other member of this forum; I still stick with my initial identification (with a slight variance towards Platycarpus) but that is still subject to change

 

Yeah, I'd also say that the chance of this turning out to be polycotylid are quite slim, as most plesiosaur teeth simply don't have carinae. Those that do, have them in a straight line opposite each other, rather than offset from one another, as is the case here.

 

I agree, I'd stick to your initial identification for now. But these things are indeed subject to change - which is only natural as or knowledge grows and new discoveries are made (a condition that equally affects academia)  The number of times I've relabelled pieces in my collection as my understanding changed...