Dredge IDs

[SawTooth]

Today we took a trip down to a dredge and had probably our second best trip, we came out with quite a few fossils that we could not identify, I was wondering if anyone could help? Ones a vert from a large fish, probably a drum, but I was wondering if someone could clarify that. Another is a bone that looks nearly complete, probably from a whale, but I am not certain and it looks distinct, and I was hoping someone would know the specifics. Also we got a price of what I am pretty sure is turtle plastron and a gator vert. And the best find was some sort of canine. I'm not sure what it is, I do not believe its whale but the tooth looks to short to be canine or feline, but I could be wrong.

[fossilhunter21]

Sorry that I can't be of any help, but those are some nice finds! I may not be able to help, but these forum members know a lot about this kind of stuff: @Shellseeker, @Bone Daddy, and @Harry Pristis.

 

-Micah

[Harry Pristis]

No. 1 is a Tilly bone -- a vertebra.

No. 3 may be a bony fish cranium.

 

[Shellseeker]

51 minutes ago, Shark13 said:

Today we took a trip down to a dredge and had probably our second best trip, we came out with quite a few fossils that we could not identify, I was wondering if anyone could help? Ones a vert from a large fish, probably a drum, but I was wondering if someone could clarify that. Another is a bone that looks nearly complete, probably from a whale, but I am not certain and it looks distinct, and I was hoping someone would know the specifics. Also we got a price of what I am pretty sure is turtle plastron and a gator vert. And the best find was some sort of canine. I'm not sure what it is, I do not believe its whale but the tooth looks to short to be canine or feline, but I could be wrong.

Welcome to the forum. If you are going to fossil in Florida, this is the place to come. I hope you recognize the value,  get more addicted to fossil hunting. I have an agenda ... my son has a home south of St Augustine and I am interested in fossil hunting some future date. Knowing some locals always helps,

 

If we are going to be successful identifying your finds, you have to help. 1)  Bright light -- sunshine or halogen 2) get rid of as much extra space as possible 3) make your camera is focused... your 1st 3 photos are... your last 2 are not... they blur when you zoom in.... 4) we need measurements... millimeters is best...

Here... about 20 millemeters... I need to see minor scratches on the tooth.. This is a fish tooth

 

So Harry got the 1st 2 IDs.... I think your canine might be dolphin... Give me sharper photo, a photo from the end....

 

Your 2nd photos could be whale, but might need a whale expert to figure it out...It does not seem like jaw or rib...

 

The 4th fossil looks like bone, with marrow inside which means it might be impossible to identify.  There is tons of bone with few/no distinguishing marks...

 

Hope to see more data , new photos    Jack

[hemipristis]

#3 may be a sea robin skull cap.  Could you show a photo of the other side?

[SawTooth]

14 hours ago, hemipristis said:

#3 may be a sea robin skull cap.  Could you show a photo of the other side?

 

14 hours ago, Shellseeker said:

Welcome to the forum. If you are going to fossil in Florida, this is the place to come. I hope you recognize the value,  get more addicted to fossil hunting. I have an agenda ... my son has a home south of St Augustine and I am interested in fossil hunting some future date. Knowing some locals always helps,

 

If we are going to be successful identifying your finds, you have to help. 1)  Bright light -- sunshine or halogen 2) get rid of as much extra space as possible 3) make your camera is focused... your 1st 3 photos are... your last 2 are not... they blur when you zoom in.... 4) we need measurements... millimeters is best...

Here... about 20 millemeters... I need to see minor scratches on the tooth.. This is a fish tooth

 

So Harry got the 1st 2 IDs.... I think your canine might be dolphin... Give me sharper photo, a photo from the end....

 

Your 2nd photos could be whale, but might need a whale expert to figure it out...It does not seem like jaw or rib...

 

The 4th fossil looks like bone, with marrow inside which means it might be impossible to identify.  There is tons of bone with few/no distinguishing marks...

 

Hope to see more data , new photos    Jack

Hope this helps!

[Shellseeker]

5 hours ago, Shark13 said:

Hope this helps!

Great Comeback.... Excellent photos... I am going to leave #3 to @hemipristis and hope he nails the identification....

Let me focus on the canine... it is a canine but not dog, cat, or any one of those other predator mammals..

Crocs,  Gators, and whales have open roots,, and I do not believe it is a reptile...

So, almost 2 inches (broken in half?), an open root cavity,  it might be whale...  It is a good possibility, but I am not sure... Do other TFF members know or a canine with open roots other thanthe 3 I mentioned?

@Boesse may also help on the whale bone IF that is what it is....

 

The texture of this one seems like bone or hoofcore... Interesting. I'll need help from others.... Edit... it would help if I actually add a "zoomed" version

Edited March 27, 2022 by Shellseeker

[SawTooth]

1 hour ago, Shellseeker said:

Great Comeback.... Excellent photos... I am going to leave #3 to @hemipristis and hope he nails the identification....

Let me focus on the canine... it is a canine but not dog, cat, or any one of those other predator mammals..

Crocs,  Gators, and whales have open roots,, and I do not believe it is a reptile...

So, almost 2 inches (broken in half?), an open root cavity,  it might be whale...  It is a good possibility, but I am not sure... Do other TFF members know or a canine with open roots other thanthe 3 I mentioned?

@Boesse may also help on the whale bone IF that is what it is....

 

The texture of this one seems like bone or hoofcore... Interesting. I'll need help from others.... Edit... it would help if I actually add a "zoomed" version

I'm not sure if it was just a typo, but I noticed that you said two inches instead of  centimeters, just in case you were overestimating the size, wasn't sure if that was a typo.

[Shellseeker]

On 3/27/2022 at 8:28 PM, Shark13 said:

I'm not sure if it was just a typo, but I noticed that you said two inches instead of  centimeters, just in case you were overestimating the size, wasn't sure if that was a typo.

Not a typo,  just a lack of care... the last 3-4 days have been hectic,  and I am making errors that I donot normally make.  

What's true is that I think it is whale because it has a hollow root and very few teeth have hollow roots.  Whale is one of them. This is one of my whale teeth found in Florida...  It is 32 mm long and about 5 mm in diameter, and is certainly broken lengthwise.

Tooth closest to ruler.

 

[SawTooth]

The size and shape seems to look more porpoise or dolphin, do you know if either of those are hollow?

 

[Shellseeker]

4 hours ago, Shark13 said:

The size and shape seems to look more porpoise or dolphin, do you know if either of those are hollow?

Let's see if we can get others to comment on whether Dolphin teeth can be hollow. and if so, can they Identify this one...  @Al Dente @MarcoSr @siteseer @hemipristis

In Florida we can have some very small Whale teeth,  and some very large Dolphin teeth...

 

 

Both of my teeth are hollow:  Your tooth is either dolphin or whale... It is definitely not porpoise.

[Harry Pristis]

Quote

. . . Crocs,  Gators, and whales have open roots,, and I do not believe it is a reptile...

So, almost 2 inches (broken in half?), an open root cavity,  it might be whale...  It is a good possibility, but I am not sure... Do other TFF members know or a canine with open roots other thanthe 3 I mentioned?

There is a misapprehension here.  Crocodilians have open pulp cavities; but, whales have closed pulp cavities.  That doesn't mean that an odontocete tooth can't be hollow; it's just not open in the way of croc's.

 

There are very few mammals with open pulp cavities --Xenarthrans come to mind --and odontocetes are mammals in the mainstream in that regard.  That is, they have closed pulp cavities.

 

The cavity (lumen) of most mammal teeth is filled with dentine-producing cells that deposit dentine on the inner walls of the lumen.  During the life of the mammal, the deposited dentine gradually narrows the lumen.

 

So, a mammal tooth that is unerupted or newly erupted is likely to have a large lumen and a relatively thin dentine wall.  When that wall fails, it produces what may appear to be an "open pulp cavity."  That is the case with this odontocete tooth.

[Al Dente]

2 hours ago, Shellseeker said:

Let's see if we can get others to comment on whether Dolphin teeth can be hollow.

Yes, they can be hollow. As they age, the pulp cavity fills in, which forms growth layers. Sliced sections of teeth can be used to age whales. The dolphin tooth is from this web site - https://whalewatchingazores.com/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-dolphins-part-2/

The other tooth is a sperm whale tooth.

 

 

[Shellseeker]

3 hours ago, Harry Pristis said:

There is a misapprehension here.  Crocodilians have open pulp cavities; but, whales have closed pulp cavities.  That doesn't mean that an odontocete tooth can't be hollow; it's just not open in the way of croc's.

 

2 hours ago, Al Dente said:

Yes, they can be hollow. As they age, the pulp cavity fills in, which forms growth layers. Sliced sections of teeth can be used to age whales.

Thanks to both of you..  More than a misapprehension, I was dead wrong...

and I am trying to understand the source of error.

I make these types of errors based on the results of my fossils hunting. It is a comparison of the whale and dolphin teeth that I have found over the last decade while hunting in Florida.

The dolphin teeth I find are typically small (less than 1.25 inch),  mostly whole or even if broken do not show a pulp cavity.  The few I have found above 1.25 inches are whole or when broken,  show a pulp cavity with a closed root (2nd photo down).  I only have 3-4 dolphin teeth that are above 1.5 inches and the others are unbroken.

 

Whale teeth on the other hand seemed to show a different pattern. I agree that whale and dolphin have pulp cavities.  I have a few dolphin teeth that show the cavity and many whale teeth.  What I seemingly incorrectly believed was that an open root could be a natural occurrence on numerous whale teeth, even when that tooth was unbroken.

Here is a photo of associated whale teeth of Kogiopsis that were extracted from a fossil whale jaw found underwater..  As you can see , the whale teeth are "open rooted"

Some of my early Kogiopsis whale teeth,  that I thought were unbroken,  had similar open roots into the pulp cavity...  Here is one, 

 

Most whale teeth I have found are broken and I can not determine what the root area looked like. about 20 % have open roots like the one above,  the other 10% have the normal closed roots.

 

I had also had a comment from @Boesse that implied this situation that whale teeth could have open roots as part of their tooth development.  I do not have details on the open root process.  There was no explicit discussion on whether or not it applied to Dolphins as well as whale.

 

So, a couple of mistakes on my part.  I believed that Dolphins did not have an open root process like whales because I had not found such a tooth personally and could not find an example of such a tooth on the internet.

 

Back to @Shark13 's canine,  it is clearly broken so I can not tell  if it had a naturally occurring open root. It also does not exhibit the horizontal rings that I use as deterministic of whale teeth, below.  My net is Shark13's tooth is dolphin, although I myself have not identified or seen a dolphin tooth that looks like it... 

[Harry Pristis]

Jack . . .

It might help your comprehension if you stopped referring to a "naturally occurring open root" and thought of these teeth as having "still-developing roots."  Whales, by definition, have closed pulp cavities.

Speaking of whales, dolphins are whales, so they have closed pulp cavities by definition (though individual dolphin teeth may have "still-developing roots."  Delphinidae is a family within the suborder Odontoceti.

Suborder Odontoceti toothed whales

Family Delphinidae dolphins, killer whales, pilot whales, and relatives

 

[Al Dente]

Many of my fossil whale teeth have an open root. Here are some examples of modern whale teeth I pulled from the internet that show an open root.

 

 

[hemipristis]

On 3/28/2022 at 3:15 AM, Shark13 said:

 

Hope this helps!

 

 

 

 

 

It's not a sea robin. The characteristic texturing of the upper surface is missing and the shape is different.

 

So I hit the web. As there isn't much out there on fossil fish neurocraniums, I visited several osteology websites, including one that provided images of representative members of each of the modern fish Orders so see if I could find something similar.  No luck, I'm sorry.  The closest that I could find (maybe 60% similarity) is a coastal species lives in South America and Africa.

 

I still believe that it is a fish neurocranium, but for now it will have to be species undet.  

[hemipristis]

15 hours ago, Shellseeker said:

Let's see if we can get others to comment on whether Dolphin teeth can be hollow. and if so, can they Identify this one...  @Al Dente @MarcoSr @siteseer @hemipristis

In Florida we can have some very small Whale teeth,  and some very large Dolphin teeth...

Both of my teeth are hollow:  Your tooth is either dolphin or whale... It is definitely not porpoise.

 

I can offer the following:  The 2 teeth pictured below from Aurora were ID'd as dolphin, and are hollow.  They have a resemblance to the tooth in question, though marine mammals aren't my focus.  The larger of the two is 23mm in length, while the smaller is 16mm in length.

 

Thoughts?

 

 

 

 

Edited March 30, 2022 by hemipristis

[SawTooth]

 

3 hours ago, hemipristis said:

I can offer the following:  The 2 teeth pictured below from Aurora were ID'd as dolphin, and are hollow.  They have a resemblance to the tooth in question, though marine mammals aren't my focus.  The larger of the two is 23mm in length, while the smaller is 16mm in length.

 

Thoughts?

 

 

 

 

The general shape definitely matches those last few, and from the last tooth at the bottom you can see where the roots broken the different texture change that could have (possibly?) been what the hollowed out section of mine?

[Boesse]

Hey all - the distinction in my mind is when, or if, during ontogeny the pulp cavity closes. During growth the root is hollow and thins towards the tip of the root, with a bit of a wedge shape, and the crown fills up first; late during ontogeny, the entire root becomes filled with dentine, and the hole at the tip disappears. In other cetaceans like physeteroids and the tusks of ziphiids, narwhals, and a couple of extinct weirdos (Odobenocetops), the teeth grow continuously during life and have an open pulp cavity permanently - in this regard the teeth are either true tusks or grow just like them (sperm whales).

 

On that note, I've got a bunch of baby dolphin skulls from the Pysht Formation of Washington that I've been acid prepping, and they do not have roots at all - just hollow enamel crowns that are half a millimeter thick (I have to fill them with glue).

[Harry Pristis]

Hmm.  Bobby normally clarifies issues, but not in this case.  He does confirm that whale teeth, as they mature (ontogeny), do close their pulp cavity.  Then he points out exceptions for tusks which continue to grow and retain an open pulp cavity. This is a tangent which will confuse some.

 

Tusks commonly are adapted incisors and are exceptions (like Xenarthrans are exceptions) to the mammal norm.  Examples of exceptional incisors, beyond those cited by Bobby, include beavers, proboscideans, rodents, etc.

 

Bobby does mention his "baby dolphin skulls" with no roots at all, but he provides no interpretation that contributes to this thread.  "Hollow enamel shells" is how all mammal teeth begin, adapted incisors included.

 

[Shellseeker]

On 3/30/2022 at 4:55 AM, Al Dente said:

Many of my fossil whale teeth have an open root. Here are some examples of modern whale teeth I pulled from the internet that show an open root.

Thank you,  I also have some modern sperm whale teeth that exhibit (like your middle tooth) the impression that they are unbroken from root to tip, and expose the entire pulp cavity. I am a very curious person, usually driven by observations on the whale fossil teeth I find. Bobby gave me a taste of an answer that this might be a normal part of whale tooth development. I would like to understand the process,  when in development of a whale tooth do such open areas exist and not exist, what research papers relates, and do others find fossil whale teeth and dolphin teeth that exhibit this characteristic?

 

On 3/30/2022 at 6:03 AM, hemipristis said:

I can offer the following:  The 2 teeth pictured below from Aurora were ID'd as dolphin, and are hollow.  They have a resemblance to the tooth in question, though marine mammals aren't my focus.  The larger of the two is 23mm in length, while the smaller is 16mm in length.

 

Thoughts?

Thanks for the examples. I would like others to provide more examples of unbroken dolphin teeth that have access into the pulp cavity.

 

On 3/30/2022 at 9:25 AM, Boesse said:

Hey all - the distinction in my mind is when, or if, during ontogeny the pulp cavity closes. During growth the root is hollow and thins towards the tip of the root, with a bit of a wedge shape, and the crown fills up first; late during ontogeny, the entire root becomes filled with dentine, and the hole at the tip disappears. In other cetaceans like physeteroids and the tusks of ziphiids, narwhals, and a couple of extinct weirdos (Odobenocetops), the teeth grow continuously during life and have an open pulp cavity permanently - in this regard the teeth are either true tusks or grow just like them (sperm whales).

Thanks Bobby,

I have copied and will end up parsing each phrase of your paragraph above.  My eyes are focusing on the ".. when , or if..."  

http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/108737-a-whale-with-no-name/

Here is a thread where I have photos of a number of unbroken whale teeth found in the Peace River watershed. Some show a clear open area into the pulp cavity and others a completely closed root. ... I probably need to learn a lot more about fossil whale dentition....

On 3/30/2022 at 12:28 PM, Harry Pristis said:

Hmm.  Bobby normally clarifies issues, but not in this case.  He does confirm that whale teeth, as they mature (ontogeny), do close their pulp cavity.  Then he points out exceptions for tusks which continue to grow and retain an open pulp cavity. This is a tangent which will confuse some.

I agree Harry ,  that tangent will confuse some,  maybe even me. 

 

From the TFF thread referenced above,  here is a whale tooth.. I was intrigued...

 

I could not explain why this whale tooth had an unusual closed root, and since finding it, I get the feeling that it is a pretty unusual tooth... almost closed root , but not quite.

 

To all, sorry for the long post... It has been a hectic 3 days...   Jack