Post Oak Creek Oddities

[flyingpenut]

I usually don't post the trip to POC anymore but this time there were some oddities i wanted to confirm and or see if anyone knows what they are. I found the usual few ptychodus teeth as well as tons of broken shark teeth but also some more rare items. There is one small shark vertebrae, a piece of a fish vert, two broken ends of sawfish rostral teeth, a weird piece that looks like coral to me but also looks like it has teeth poking out of it, a large piece of mammoth enamel, and what I believe is a small mosasaur tooth. Pictures 2, 3, and 4 are the mosasaur tooth. I have it in my hand for scale and it is small but it looks exactly like ones i have seen posted from the North Sulphur River just smaller than most. Pictures 5 and 6 are of the coral looking thing. I could have sworn i saw something like this on the forum before but i have looked and can't find the post. Any ideas of what this is? 

 

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[facehugger]

I have a couple of conical teeth like that from POC. I assumed they were small mosasaurs, but I think also may be a possibility of crocodilian origin? Interested to see what other responses you get here...

 

Nice haul!

[fossil_lover_2277]

The object in pics 5 and 6 looks like an unbroken section of some turtle carapace, I think Trionyx spp. (Soft shell turtle). It’s a very nice find if it’s Cretaceous (I’m not sure if it is Cretaceous though, not overly familiar with Texas fossils, and it kinda doesn’t look real mineralized, maybe it’s Pleistocene?).

 

Edit: plastron, not carapace. Most turtle plastrons tend to lack markings, but apparently soft-shelled turtles are an exception 

 

I’m not 100% sure on the tooth, but I wouldn’t rule croc out.

Edited December 16, 2021 by fossil_lover_2277

[hadrosauridae]

Pics 5 and 6 are part of the plastron of a softshelled turtle.  It looks very similar to the ones I have found in the cretaceous hellcreek, but then I'm not sure that these plastron elements have changed a lot over the years.

 

I'm trying to find pics of mine, theyre buried somewhere on this computer, lol

 

Edit to ad - OK, found my pics.  What you have is the hypoplastron element.  Its the posterior half of the whole, consisting of an hypo and a hyo plastron.  The hypo is the upper part in the image.

 

 

These are the ones I recovered in the HC

 

Edited December 16, 2021 by hadrosauridae

[Fossildude19]

The conical tooth could be a pterygoid tooth from a mosasaur. Something to consider, anyway.

[BudB]

Wow, another POC post the same day as mine. Great finds!

[Harry Pristis]

For comparison:

 

[Texas Turtles]

Nice soft shell turtle bones! Are they mineralized? I ask because turtle bones from extant species under sediment can darken in less than a year.

[flyingpenut]

23 hours ago, hadrosauridae said:

Pics 5 and 6 are part of the plastron of a softshelled turtle.  It looks very similar to the ones I have found in the cretaceous hellcreek, but then I'm not sure that these plastron elements have changed a lot over the years.

 

I'm trying to find pics of mine, theyre buried somewhere on this computer, lol

 

Edit to ad - OK, found my pics.  What you have is the hypoplastron element.  Its the posterior half of the whole, consisting of an hypo and a hyo plastron.  The hypo is the upper part in the image.

 

 

These are the ones I recovered in the HC

 

Thank you very much for sharing and the ID. This is exactly what i have. However as mentioned by fossil_lover_2277 it is not fully mineralized and would be Pleistocene in age. 

[JohnJ]

1 minute ago, flyingpenut said:

it is not fully mineralized and would be Pleistocene in age. 

Not necessarily.  It is more likely to be recent.

[flyingpenut]

20 hours ago, BudB said:

Wow, another POC post the same day as mine. Great finds!

Thanks. I went out a couple of days before you and I thought it would be picked over as well but we did well considering. Those modern fish jaw with teeth was really cool you found. 

[flyingpenut]

9 minutes ago, JohnJ said:

Not necessarily.  It is more likely to be recent.

Ok thanks. I didn't realize that area had soft shell turtles these days but it is pretty neat. 

[JohnJ]

Just now, flyingpenut said:

Ok thanks. I didn't realize that area had soft shell turtles these days but it is pretty neat. 

They are very, very skittish and dive underwater quickly.

[flyingpenut]

On 12/16/2021 at 11:00 AM, Fossildude19 said:

The conical tooth could be a pterygoid tooth from a mosasaur. Something to consider, anyway.

Thanks. Ill look into it a little bit more. 

[flyingpenut]

On 12/16/2021 at 9:54 AM, facehugger said:

I have a couple of conical teeth like that from POC. I assumed they were small mosasaurs, but I think also may be a possibility of crocodilian origin? Interested to see what other responses you get here...

 

Nice haul!

Thanks. Im going to look into it and see if i can find out definitively. I will reply back and let everyone know. 

[BudB]

On 12/17/2021 at 9:46 AM, flyingpenut said:

Those modern fish jaw with teeth was really cool you found. 

As was the soft shell turtle piece you found. I would have never recognized that, even though I have seen them many times, and even kept a couple of tiny ones in a terrarium for a while in my youth. Funny how really interesting modern stuff gets found right along with the fossils.

[Jared C]

Something else to consider - I do agree that the conical tooth looks like a pterygoid tooth from a mosasaur, but at that size, a Pachyrhizodus tooth is also possible. I'm still content to be in the Mosasaur camp though.

Btw - an Eagle Ford mosasaur tooth is way cooler, in my opinion, than some of those big ol' mosasaur teeth you can find in more recent formations, like the Ozan in the NSR - it represents the time when mosasaurs started really diversifying. Just has more historical significance I think.