Fish vert and fish tooth

[Shellseeker]

Finds from a week ago.

I am used to finding Sawfish verts more often than Shark verts.  This may be a Shark vert. If so, type of shark?  Interesting and isolated damage.

 

Here is a view after drying:  Size Diameter 34 x 17 mm max/min, and 28 mm height

 

A 2nd find:  I immediately thought Drumfish, because I know of not other fish that has similar teeth ? Is it?

[old bones]

What about an alligator 'button' tooth?  It looks a lot like the micro ones that I find in the Montbrook site matrix. 

[hemipristis]

Carcharinus sp. shark vert. 

 

I don't know a soul who can speciate them, sorry

[Shellseeker]

Thank you ....   Something new and unusual and almost certainly a correct identification. 

 

As always, the questions...

Alligators are not uncommon in the Florida fossil record.  I have hunted the Peace River for almost 15 years and to my knowledge, have not seen these tiny Alligator teeth previously...

Great Photo from the Florida Museum.... Montbrook... you say. 

 

Guess I will seek feedback from local hunters... Well I do not seem to be able to flag Harry, digit, podigger, sacha, plantguy.. Maybe later.

 

Well, I was typing this response, and my internet went dead.... local problem...

Let me try (again) to flag Florida fossil hunters, to get their knowledge on "tiny button gator teeth".... @Harry Pristis, @digit@PODIGGER@Sacha@Plantguy..  How many do you have or have seen?  This is my first  !!!..

Ken,  what "age" is Montbrook ?  These are early Pliocene finds...

 

[old bones]

Glad I could help.

I should have stated that I have been volunteering my time searching the micro matrix from the FMNH Montbrook site for some time now. That is how I came to recognize the little conical alligator teeth. I photograph the interesting fossils with my microscope, and all the fossils get returned to the Museum.

 

The Montbrook site is Late Miocene or early Pliocene.

 

Julianna

[Shellseeker]

4 hours ago, hemipristis said:

Carcharinus sp. shark vert. 

 

I don't know a soul who can speciate them, sorry

 

At this site,  no Megs.  Shark teeth are dominated by Bull/Dusky,  followed by G. cuvier for 99% of all shark teeth.  The rest are a few types of Mako, GWs, Hemis, Lemons. These last 4 combined comprise 1 in 100 of shark teeth found.

 

In 5 years of hunting, I have 5 sawfish verts and this one as my only identifiable Shark Vert.

[Shellseeker]

4 minutes ago, old bones said:

Glad I could help.

I should have stated that I have been volunteering my time searching the micro matrix from the FMNH Montbrook site for some time now. That is how I came to recognize the little conical alligator teeth. I photograph the interesting fossils with my microscope, and all the fossils get returned to the Museum.

 

The Montbrook site is Late Miocene or early Pliocene.

 

Julianna

Thanks, Julianna..

I know you see the value in sending new finds to TFF members who have seen the fossils of the world and might, just might recognize mine. It is a fantastic resource to have.  I have found many early Pliocene fossils at this location,  Great Whites but no Megalodons.  Montbrook would be similar.

 

My curiosity burns on why these tiny gator button teeth are found in the Pliocene, but not as far as I can tell in the Pleistocene. I will contact many of my Peace River hunting friends to see if they recognize this one.  I love puzzles.    Jack

[Sacha]

36 minutes ago, Shellseeker said:

 

 

My curiosity burns on why these tiny gator button teeth are found in the Pliocene, but not as far as I can tell in the Pleistocene. I will contact many of my Peace River hunting friends to see if they recognize this one.  I love puzzles.    Jack

 

I've never seen anything like it Jack, but for most of my hunting I was using 1/2 inch screen so I might have missed them.

[digit]

3 hours ago, Shellseeker said:

Ken,  what "age" is Montbrook ?  These are early Pliocene finds...

Seems to date around 5.5 Ma (Late Miocene--Hemphillian NALMA).

 

I agree with the little gator "button tooth". Would be a bit big for fish pharyngeal teeth and the (worn down) indication of the two carinae (ridges) down the sides of the tooth definitely shouts "Gator!" to me.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[PODIGGER]

Jack,

 I haven’t come across any of the gator button teeth.

[digit]

Most (but not all) tend to be pretty small and would better show up picking through micro-matrix than searching out in the field with a larger mesh screen.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[Shellseeker]

12 hours ago, digit said:

Most (but not all) tend to be pretty small and would better show up picking through micro-matrix than searching out in the field with a larger mesh screen.

Cheers. -Ken

Ken, Got a response from Richard,

Quote

That is the crown from a posterior tooth in an alligator. While the front teeth of alligators are sharp and “pointy”, the back teeth are broader and flatter. These are used for crushing turtle shells and bones of other prey items so that they are small enough for the gator to swallow. Such posterior crushing teeth are found in just about all species in the gator and caiman family.

Richard

So, small and juvenile Aligators have these teeth...  Why do we not recognize the adult  versions?  Each large gator must have many pointy  teeth versus posterior crushing teeth. 

Here is a photo from PaleoCris

[hemipristis]

On 9/3/2021 at 3:29 AM, Shellseeker said:

 

At this site,  no Megs.  Shark teeth are dominated by Bull/Dusky,  followed by G. cuvier for 99% of all shark teeth.  The rest are a few types of Mako, GWs, Hemis, Lemons. These last 4 combined comprise 1 in 100 of shark teeth found.

 

In 5 years of hunting, I have 5 sawfish verts and this one as my only identifiable Shark Vert.

bull sharks and dusky sharks are Carcharhinids (aka genus Carcharhinus)

[Shellseeker]

@Jesuslover340 created a fantastically informative post about ..... Croc/Gator teeth and has many examples of posterior teeth.  I was mesmerized by the long pointy ones and likely failed to recognize the short squat  gator teeth in the Peace River, plus it looks like long pointy dominates in numbers of teeth for Alligator.

 

[digit]

11 hours ago, Shellseeker said:

So, small and juvenile Aligators have these teeth...  Why do we not recognize the adult  versions?  Each large gator must have many pointy  teeth versus posterior crushing teeth. 

 

Here's a good Wikimedia image of a gator jaw:

 

It's easy to see the more rounded crushing teeth toward the back of the jaw. They tend to be smaller than the larger conical teeth that we usually recognize in our sifting screens. At the Montbrook site we find a lot of gator teeth--both isolated teeth and occasionally complete jaws or fragments containing teeth. Because we are not sifting lag deposits out of the river as we do in the Peace, a much larger percentage of these teeth have the elongated hollow roots still attached and are not just the enameled crowns. I've seen many long pointy gator teeth from this site as well as the more rounded back crushing teeth (with and without roots).

 

Unless they came from a substantially sized gator, the back teeth tend to be relatively small and compact (especially just the crowns without the root). Most would likely drop through a 1/2" mesh screen and many of the smaller ones through a 1/4" mesh (especially if split and partial). To be sure the posterior teeth do turn up in sifting screens (as shown in Cris' handful of teeth above) but I suspect we overlook the posterior "button" teeth more frequently as they don't match our search image of "gator tooth" as well as the long pointy ones do.

 

Gator tooth fun fact:

 

Usually, most gator tooth river finds are just the crowns. Since gators continuously replace their teeth (up to around 50 times), the majority of teeth are unrooted crowns because the replacement teeth push up removing the root of the active tooth above it before it falls out. Same process happens in humans losing their "baby" teeth which come out rootless (though we only manage to do this replacement trick a single time). Rooted teeth were still in the jaw when the animal died. Quite often you can see a curve at the bottom of the tubular root which is where the crown of the replacing tooth was eroding the root. I've seen this many times on nicely preserved Montbrook teeth (but always forget to take a photo). Here is a nice example from @PrehistoricFlorida:

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

 

 

[Shellseeker]

3 hours ago, digit said:

Unless they came from a substantially sized gator, the back teeth tend to be relatively small and compact (especially just the crowns without the root).

Thanks, Ken... Very informative !!!! Above in this thread, I said that I have never seen this in the Peace River. This being Julianna's photo of Montbrook button teeth or the subject of this thread!!!

LOOK at the above tooth, then your tooth from PrehistoricFlorida.  Put them side by side and explain the characteristics that make them the same tooth.  That is mostly why I missed them when I found them in the Peace River.  They were hiding in plain sight!!!

[Plantguy]

Hey Jack, nice finds. I've not found any of these but I do remember seeing some pics of someone elses finds somewhere---maybe it was Juliannas of her Montbrook stuff or somewhere else. The memorybank is running low and I just dont remember. Enjoyed seeing the finds/discussion and the refresher! 

Regards, Chris 

[digit]

Working in the FLMNH warehouse today sorting bone bags from the Montbrook site. Came across a bag from March that was a square that both Richard Hulbert and I were working on clearing out so we could jacket a specimen in the adjacent grid square. Just a few decent bones in that bag that will be cataloged and this was one of them--a really sweet gator tooth. You can see the two carinae (ridges) running from the tip of the enameled crown down to the root and you can see the beveled section of the base of the root which was being eroded away by the replacement tooth below it.

 

 

A manicurist could have a field day with my fingers after sorting through bones, cleaning off matrix and gluing back together fragmented bones.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[Randyw]

Nice tooth!

[Shellseeker]

4 hours ago, digit said:

Just a few decent bones in that bag that will be cataloged and this was one of them--a really sweet gator tooth. You can see the two carinae (ridges) running from the tip of the enameled crown down to the root and you can see the beveled section of the base of the root which was being eroded away by the replacement tooth below it.

 

Gorgeous tooth, Ken.. Just the memory is one of the payments for your role..  Thanks

[digit]

Came across a rooted posterior gator tooth much like the crown that started this discussion.

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

 

 

[PrehistoricFlorida]

Definitely a posterior alligator tooth. 

[pachy-pleuro-whatnot-odon]

I've found couple of these tribodont, or "button"- teeth from the Eocene of France (even found one embedded in a piece of turtle carapace). But, as may be expected from looking at your average alligator jaw, their numbers are far outweighed by the regular pointed morphology. This may be another bias that explains why you may be less familiar with them... I think that from the overall 30-odd teeth I've found, only two are "button"-teeth.