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I recently got this unusual, at least to me, marine mammal tooth. I am pretty sure it’s Pinniped but beyond that I’m not sure. Marine mammal fossils are not something I have a great deal of knowledge about. 

I suspect it could possibly belong to an Odobenid as opposed to Allodesmus. I have never had any teeth from the STH Walruses in my collection so I’m going solely off some research I did. It’s a really cool tooth whatever critter it belonged to. 

 

Any thoughts ?? 

B69C8E53-B0B3-4BE6-A04A-E71CCE889BDA.jpeg

5D50B304-279F-425B-8631-9D4EE2DD53DE.jpeg

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    Tim    VETERAN SHALE SPLITTER

   MOTM.png.61350469b02f439fd4d5d77c2c69da85.png      PaleoPartner.png.30c01982e09b0cc0b7d9d6a7a21f56c6.png.a600039856933851eeea617ca3f2d15f.png     Postmaster1.jpg.900efa599049929531fa81981f028e24.jpg    VFOTM.png.f1b09c78bf88298b009b0da14ef44cf0.png  VFOTM APRIL - 2015  

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looks like pinniped to me, but their not my speciality

 

'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'

George Santayana

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Certainly an anterior premolar of a small odobenid or otariid pinniped. Better photos are needed, but possibilities include Neotherium and the fur seal I named from the Topanga Fm., Eotaria crypta - not yet identified from STH, but it should be there (some possible fur seal/otariid teeth are present in museum collections).

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I don't recall seeing this thread before.  The old school interpretation of a tooth like this was that some Allodesmus premolar-like teeth had two roots.  It's a rare find in any case.  I didn't know about the Eotaria possibility.  Interesting.  Isn't too early to be a fur seal?  I'll have to look at what I have.  I think I have two double-rooted teeth similar to that

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2 hours ago, siteseer said:

I don't recall seeing this thread before.  The old school interpretation of a tooth like this was that some Allodesmus premolar-like teeth had two roots.  It's a rare find in any case.  I didn't know about the Eotaria possibility.  Interesting.  Isn't too early to be a fur seal?  I'll have to look at what I have.  I think I have two double-rooted teeth similar to that

I was totally unaware of the Eotaria possibility. I thought Neotherium was possible and I’d be shocked if this was a fur seal but that’d be really cool. 

 I read Boesse’s blog about Eotaria and STH is in the right timeframe for it. I guess we’ll see. 

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Can’t help with the ID, just here to admire that little gem :wub:

What amazing preservation. In the top of my list of things I’d like to find around here! 

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I am reasonably certain that this is an anterior premolar (likely P2) of a small otariid. @siteseer - prior to our 2015 naming of Eotaria, the oldest otariids from the eastern North Pacific was Pithanotaria starri from the Santa Margarita Fm. Eotaria is from the Topanga and therefore even older than STH.

 

Edit: there are no teeth in any imagotariine walruses, Neotherium included, that look like this.

Edited by Boesse
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1 hour ago, Boesse said:

I am reasonably certain that this is an anterior premolar (likely P2) of a small otariid. @siteseer - prior to our 2015 naming of Eotaria, the oldest otariids from the eastern North Pacific was Pithanotaria starri from the Santa Margarita Fm. Eotaria is from the Topanga and therefore even older than STH.

 

Edit: there are no teeth in any imagotariine walruses, Neotherium included, that look like this.

Awesome ! That is really interesting. Thank you @Boesse

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Awesome tooth! It's hard to believe that the delicate root is intact. One errant hammer-swing, and things would be different. Heck, maybe even an unfortunate hailstone strike would have made it a lesser find. I've seen a few allodesmus teeth from STH (I have but a one.), but they all had single roots. Thanks for sharing the image, and eliciting learned responses that we can view. Cheers.

 

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20 minutes ago, MrR said:

Awesome tooth! It's hard to believe that the delicate root is intact. One errant hammer-swing, and things would be different. Heck, maybe even an unfortunate hailstone strike would have made it a lesser find. I've seen a few allodesmus teeth from STH (I have but a one.), but they all had single roots. Thanks for sharing the image, and eliciting learned responses that we can view. Cheers.

 

Thank you. It is a really cool little tooth. We are all fortunate to have experts like Boesse here to share their knowledge ! 

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On 11/26/2022 at 8:58 AM, Boesse said:

I am reasonably certain that this is an anterior premolar (likely P2) of a small otariid. @siteseer - prior to our 2015 naming of Eotaria, the oldest otariids from the eastern North Pacific was Pithanotaria starri from the Santa Margarita Fm. Eotaria is from the Topanga and therefore even older than STH.

 

Edit: there are no teeth in any imagotariine walruses, Neotherium included, that look like this.

 

Interesting.  I've seen Allodesmus-like teeth from the Santa Margarita.  I haven't seen any mammal stuff from the Topanga.

 

Right, the tooth in question is more simple in form and it seems larger than the Neotherium premolars I've seen.

 

Thanks for the notes.

 

Jess

 

 

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Here's Eotaria crypta - to be clear, we're talking about the Topanga Fm in Orange County. Definitely simpler in morphology than early imagotariine walruses like Neotherium, but I actually thought this was smaller - no scale, though. 2 cm scale bar on this image below.

image.thumb.png.3d9cab6c0a6acab303baade6b4537570.png

 

 

And for comparison, mandibular dentition of Neotherium published a few years ago by my colleage Dr Jorge Velez-Juarbe: image.thumb.png.6dafc9b84ff29329f8ec5a4f00e931a9.png

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