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North Carolina crocodile tooth, maybe Deinosuchus?


fossil_lover_2277

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Hi all, last week I found a tooth that I’m pretty sure is crocodilian, I believe it might be from Deinosuchus rugosus, any thoughts? The tooth is from NC Tar Heel formation sediments. Btw it has two carina.

 

Also, I have a bone fragment I found from the same location, I believe it’s from the skull or possibly the rib of a mosasaur or crocodile, or I guess possibly a large turtle. Is there any way to identify it further? Organisms can have different bone morphology at the histological level, wanted to see if anyone could narrow the bone down to coming from a turtle, crocodile, or mosasaur based on the bone structure. Although it may not be possible just by looking at the pics. Thanks!

 

 

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Edited by Lando_Calrissian_4tw
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That kind of solid to porous bone ratio is typically dino but couldn't say for sure. Almost certainly not croc or turtle bone. Tooth is croc and big ones from there are usually Deinosuchus. On second thought the prominent carinae could make it mosasaur despite the lack of a shelf in the root cavity and roundness. Rockwood is basically correct.

Edited by Plax
clarification
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1 hour ago, Plax said:

despite the lack of a shelf in the root cavity and roundness.

Lost to breakage ? I thought mosasaur teeth were not concave on the root end. They likely both had root canals though.

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Bone does look dinosaurian.  The tooth does look like croc. could be Deniosuchus sp. .  I don't believe D. rugosus has yet been described from NC.

 

Capture.JPG.bbc2ec755e4e1189b5aa40be3d7ddd1f.JPG

 

Cossette et al.  (2020) Systematic review of the giant alligatoroid Deinosuchus.  

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Actually common at a couple of sites here. Maybe the paper doesn't include rugosus. Would have to read it again to see. It was originally described from here in NC and is in the modern literature. 

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1 hour ago, Troodon said:

I don't believe D. rugosus has yet been described from NC

 

The type specimen is from North Carolina, described by Ebenezer Emmons in 1858. It is the Cossette and Brochu paper that declared D. rugosus as nomen dubium due to lack of complete material from the type locality and uncertain stratigraphic placement of the holotype.

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2 hours ago, Rockwood said:

Lost to breakage ? I thought mosasaur teeth were not concave on the root end. They likely both had root canals though.

They are concave with an elliptical as opposed to round cavity. But have seen them with root attached so you wouldn't see the concavity.

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2 minutes ago, Al Dente said:

 

The type specimen is from North Carolina, described by Ebenezer Emmons in 1858. It is the Cossette and Brochu paper that declared D. rugosus as nomen dubium due to lack of complete material from the type locality and uncertain stratigraphic placement of the holotype.

Looks like we overlapped Al!

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Here are the two teeth that Emmons described. Emmons was an interesting person who did a lot of geology in the northeast but got into an argument with James Hall (state geologist of New York) that led to a slander lawsuit against Hall. Emmons left NY and took a position in NC as the first state geologist of NC. His office was the upper floor of the state capitol building in Raleigh. They have kept his office in the original condition and you can tour the building and see a lot of his original rock and fossil samples.

 

 

croc1.JPG

croc2.JPG

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5 hours ago, Troodon said:

Bone does look dinosaurian.  The tooth does look like croc. could be Deniosuchus sp. .  I don't believe D. rugosus has yet been described from NC.

 

Capture.JPG.bbc2ec755e4e1189b5aa40be3d7ddd1f.JPG

 

Cossette et al.  (2020) Systematic review of the giant alligatoroid Deinosuchus.  

When you say “dinosaurian”, do you mean dinosaurs and mosasaurs, or strictly dinosaurs? Is there a noticeable difference between the structure of mosasaur and dinosaur bone?

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4 hours ago, Plax said:

Actually common at a couple of sites here. Maybe the paper doesn't include rugosus. Would have to read it again to see. It was originally described from here in NC and is in the modern literature. 

 

4 hours ago, Al Dente said:

 

The type specimen is from North Carolina, described by Ebenezer Emmons in 1858. It is the Cossette and Brochu paper that declared D. rugosus as nomen dubium due to lack of complete material from the type locality and uncertain stratigraphic placement of the holotype.

I believe I read that a Borealosuchus-type crocodile is known from NC, as well as Deinosuchus. The tooth is too big for Borealosuchus, but is there another genus outside these from NC that it might could come from?

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Can we have a shot looking down on the tip? If you're collecting at the famous site on the Cape Fear in Bladen County those crocs are all I'm aware of. The cross section on the fifth pic doesn't look right to me for croc. Perhaps 4 and 5 are a different tooth?

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5 hours ago, Plax said:

Can we have a shot looking down on the tip? If you're collecting at the famous site on the Cape Fear in Bladen County those crocs are all I'm aware of. The cross section on the fifth pic doesn't look right to me for croc. Perhaps 4 and 5 are a different tooth?

Here’s more pics, but no all the tooth pics are the same:

 

 

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Edited by fossil_lover_2277
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