Carnivore teeth and jaw

[diginupbones]

Just by coincidence I found a piece yesterday similar to the one that @PaleoNoel posted. Pretty sure it’s dog, would appreciate some input. Sorry no scale, current out hunting.  North central Nebraska. Miocene. Thanks @Nimravis  @siteseer @fossillarry  

[sjaak]

Agree, it looks like a K9 maxilla. Nice find, hope somebody else can help you further.

[siteseer]

Yes, it's something from the dog family.  It looks like it could be modern, though so maybe dog, coyote, or wolf.  Please provide measurements when you get the chance.

[diginupbones]

22 hours ago, siteseer said:

Yes, it's something from the dog family.  It looks like it could be modern, though so maybe dog, coyote, or wolf.  Please provide measurements when you get the chance.

Let me know if any other measurements would be helpful. Definitely not modern, hard as a rock and heavy. 

[siteseer]

Do you know the formation or a closer age than just Miocene?  What else did you find with it?  If you could show some horse teeth from there, those might help narrow down the age to at least Early, Middle, or Late Miocene.  It appears to be a rather advanced dog.  Bones can get partially mineralized within a few hundred years or less.  Having said that, I can see that it might be as old as Miocene.

[diginupbones]

33 minutes ago, siteseer said:

Do you know the formation or a closer age than just Miocene? 

There is a quarry site not too far from where I found this that was labeled as clarendonian. I find lots of three toed horse teeth, rhino, mastodon, mammoth.

[Lorne Ledger]

I agree with @siteseer, this is an advanced canid - about coyote sized and that is exactly what it looks like to me.  Can't be miocene, likely late pliocene to modern - but it does look fossilized.

[diginupbones]

5 minutes ago, Lorne Ledger said:

  Can't be miocene

Why are you ruling out Miocene?

[Harry Pristis]

Get out the calipers and give us the length and width of the crown of the carnassial.

 

 

[siteseer]

3 hours ago, diginupbones said:

Why are you ruling out Miocene?

 

If you're finding mammoth, you're getting a mix of ages because mammoths don't appear in North America until the Early Pleistocene.  In fact, the Pliocene/Pleistocene boundary is defined here by the arrival of mammoths in North America.  That might explain it.

 

Clarendonian is a North American Land mammal age that covers part of the Late Miocene (roughly 9-12 million years ago).  It would be interesting to see a sample of the horse teeth.  A view of the biting surface and a side view should be good enough.  If you're finding rhino, that would certainly fit with a Clarendonian age as rhinos died out in North America at the end of the Miocene (maybe a few stragglers in the Early Pliocene).

 

I've seen a lot of tar pit coyote and some dire wolf.  That maxilla section does seem to be about the size of either a large coyote or possibly a wolf but too small to be a dog the size of a dire wolf and it does look like one from a coyote-maybe wolf.  It would help if you got the measurements Harry requested.  The view in the photo is at a bit of an angle.  I won't rule out that it's some Late Miocene dog around the size of a coyote-wolf.  There was a coyote-sized dog in the Latest Miocene-Pliocene, Canis davisi.  Somebody who knows more about dogs would have to comment on whether that could belong to one of the borophagine dogs.

 

 

[diginupbones]

2 hours ago, Harry Pristis said:

Get out the calipers and give us the length and width of the crown of the carnassial

L=22mm. W=10mm   I measured the widest part of the enamel for each.

[diginupbones]

2 hours ago, siteseer said:

If you're finding mammoth, you're getting a mix of ages because mammoths don't appear in North America until the Early Pleistocene. 

Sorry, meant to say mastodon and Gomphothere. I’ve never found a mammoth tooth or had anything confirmed as mammoth but I have found mastodon and gomph Teeth and ivory. The majority of the stuff I find is rhino and 3 toed horse. If you are familiar with the Ashfall fossil beds in Nebraska, I’m pretty much finding the same stuff. 

 

2 hours ago, siteseer said:

  It would be interesting to see a sample of the horse teeth. 

You can check out some of the teeth that I have found if you search my earlier posts.

[diginupbones]

I was doing some online searches and came across this. This was found in the same county maybe 20 miles from where I found this jaw. Pretty interesting, very similar.

 

[siteseer]

Your specimen isn't from Aelurodon.  The first upper molar doesn't have that extra cusp.

 

The funny thing is Fossillarry called me earlier and one of the things we talked about is this fossil.  He might have a few more comments for you later.

 

I will check some of your other posts for the horse teeth.

[Harry Pristis]

canid P4 crown lengths are:

For 50 dogs, C. familiaris, the avg. length was . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.28mm

For 111 female coyotes, C. latrans, the avg. lngth. was . . . . . . 19.60mm

For 166 male coyotes, the average length was . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.38mm

For 12 eastern female gray wolves, C. lupus, the avg. was . . . . 22.67mm

For 19 eastern male gray wolves, the avg. P4 length was . . . . . . . . . . 24.55mm

For a good number of dire wolves, C. dirus, the crown length. . . . 30-35mm

11 hours ago, diginupbones said:

L=22mm. W=10mm   I measured the widest part of the enamel for each.

You can see that the decimal points are important.

[diginupbones]

4 hours ago, Harry Pristis said:

You can see that the decimal points are important.

 

More precise measurement is L=22.7

[Lorne Ledger]

22 hours ago, diginupbones said:

Why are you ruling out Miocene?

That P4 and M1 are well defined and screams wolf/coyote.  There just weren't any canids in the Miocene with such a robust M1.  Not unusual to find mixed ages.  See if you can find more of it!!!!!!   Stellar find btw.