Possible Mosasaur tooth. Location unsure

[svcgoat]

I received this in small bulk lot owned by a relative of the seller. I am unsure on the location or if the tooth is in fact from a mosasaur. My reasoning for mosasaur is that it lacks serrations and it came with other cretaceous specimens, however the color is off for Morocco which are the specimens I am more familiar with. If it's mosasaur perhaps a location is will be possible as well? Best regards.

[Meganeura]

Looks mosasaur-like to me, or gator even. I'd wager based on the color it came from near you - black Mosasaur teeth come from NC usually, I think!

[Praefectus]

I am thinking it is a Moroccan mosasaur tooth. It might be from the black oil shales near Bekrit, but I think more likely is that it came from the really small layer of black fossils from the Moroccan Phosphates. The residual matrix at the base looks a lot like the grainy sands from the phosphates.

[pachy-pleuro-whatnot-odon]

I agree, this looks like a Moroccan mosasaur tooth rather than a US-based one. While it is true that a lot (most even, I'd say: Texas [Ozan], Mississippi [Eutaw], Alabama, Georgia, Delaware, Carolinas, New Jersey - though not Kansas) of US mosasaur-teeth are dark in colour - being black to a dark-blue colour - they would be consistently so, with their roots having a more or less similar colouration. In the case of this prognathodontid tooth, the darkening of the tooth is incompletely applied (we might call it clouded, a term used for similar incomplete covering in pottery), with the start of the root having a lighter colour than the rest of it. While, to my knowledge, this is not seen in the phosphate mines of Ouled Abdoun, the teeth found in the oil shales at Bekrit do have a notable black-coloured preservation that in some cases can be rather patchy. The latter condition especially seems to occur with larger teeth found at this locality, as well as with ones that have more rugose enamel, as a prognathodontid would. And, in fact, if you look at the bit of matrix visible in the third photograph, immediately at the top under the finger nail, you can just make out a patch of the dark grainy matrix that is typical for Bekrit. It's just the oil has incompletely penetrated matrix and specimen in this case.

[svcgoat]

Thank you very much!