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Need help identifying this specimen


colohank

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I need help identifying this specimen.  I found it while sorting through a box of childhood treasures collected by my maternal grandfather, probably in the late 1880s and early 1890s. The "collection" is varied and disorganized.  It includes lithic tools, projectile points, potsherds, mineral specimens, fossils, military buttons, some boars' tusks, rodent skulls, and other curiosities -- in short, anything that might have caught the eye of a youngster.  None of the items in the collection, including this specimen, have been treated for preservation or appearance.  Provenance of the objects is unknown, but I assume that most objects were collected in the area surrounding my grandfather's boyhood home in Huntington, WV.  The specimen is small.  As oriented in the picture, i measures only 15mm (5/8-inch) in width (from left to right), 9mm in height (less than 3/8-inch), and 5mm (1/4-inch) in thickness.  It appears to be bilaterally symmetrical (or nearly so), and the surface is smooth, lustrous, and rather evenly dotted with pores.  The back surface, facing away from the camera, is planar and rough, which suggests that the specimen may have been broken off of something larger.  Please don't be misled by the apparent size of the specimen in the photo (about a 2X life-size image on the sensor).  It's really very small.

 

Thanks in advance for any help or insights you can offer.

 

 

 

 

DSG_5239a.jpg

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Interesting looking piece for sure. I don't know what it is but give this group some time. Someone will know.

 

Recommend getting additional photos of other sides to help. And a little brighter.

 

Good luck!

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Welcome to TFF from Austria!

 

I have no idea what it is, but looks interesting, thanks for sharing.

 

1 hour ago, Sjfriend said:

Recommend getting additional photos of other sides to help. And a little brighter.

Yeah. But the pic is already very good and sharp, good background, good setup of lightning overall :dinothumb:. Are you a pro photographer, @colohank? We rarely see that good pics of such small items in a first entry :dinothumb:.

Franz Bernhard

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sweet! I think that your suspicion that it's marine is almost surely correct. I know almost nothing about anything besides "central texas cretaceous vertebrates", but I can almost guarantee you that someone else will recognize this come morning time 

“Not only is the universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think” -Werner Heisenberg 

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Syringopora ?Syringopora_coral_KGS.jpg.6c881966079721dd4c35e30beaa0df4d.jpg

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" We are not separate and independent entities, but like links in a chain, and we could not by any means be what we are without those who went before us and showed us the way. "

Thomas Mann

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Too small for coral. The symmetry, small size and shiny surface makes me think Paleozoic shark tooth but photos of different angles would help identify this.

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Thanks, everyone, for your prompt replies, comments, and suggestions.  Thanks to Al Dente, I'm leaning heavily toward an Agassizodus tooth (teeth?) based on the picture (KE-038) he posted.  That image just about nails it.  I'll try to set up and capture some additional images from other angles to share with you later today or tomorrow.

 

No, I'm not a professional photographer, Franz.  Just an enthusiast with an interest in higher magnification photography.  

 

Thanks again.

 

Hank

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Here are additional pictures of the tooth in various orientations.  Most around 2-2.5X, but the pores are at 13X.  First is the fracture plane on the "back" of the tooth.  Then a shot of the "bottom."  I chose a bit more dramatic lighting for the third image.

DSG_5563a (Custom).jpg

DSG_5617a (Custom).jpg

DSG_5679a (Custom).jpg

DSG_5718a (Custom).jpg

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