Dyrosaurous?

[Gigantopithicness]

I need help identifying this 

[Troodon]

I think what you have here us a composite/fabricated skull of the back end.  Will need a closeup of the teeth but they are probably added but would like to determine if they are Crocodilian or Mosasaur.   Very typical of these type of skulls from Morocco.

@pachy-pleuro-whatnot-odon @LordTrilobitecan add more definition and verification of my comments

[pachy-pleuro-whatnot-odon]

I don't think the skull is entirely fabricated, although there are some pieces of bone that look too smooth to be actual bone and are likely reconstructed. Overall, though, most of the skull seems to consist of real bone, and its anatomy also seems generally okay, if full of gaps towards the back of the skull (such as the postorbitals, squamosal and quadrotojugal). This increases the probability of the specimen being a composite, since not all pieces need to perfectly fit together. The skull is supposed to identify as a dyrosaurid crocodile, though, but not necessarily Dyrosaurus itself (multiple dyrosaurid crocodilian species have been recovered from the younger layers of the Moroccan phosphates). This being the case, the teeth definitely don't belong with the skull, as they have the wrong shape and colour for a dyrosaurid crocodile, and much rather match those of the mosasaur Thalassotitan atrox, which teeth are a dime a dozen, and therefore often used in whatever skull reconstruction is being undertaken.

 

However, @Troodon is absolutely right in that, to give a proper analysis of the specimen, we'd need to have better photographs. The above are just presuppositions based on a single, not overly high quality image.

[Gigantopithicness]

Thank you @Troodon and @pachy-pleuro-whatnot-odon I will add some more pictures tomorrow

[Troodon]

The pitting led me believe it's croc bone that is different from adjacent bone

 

 

 

 

[LordTrilobite]

The skull looks mostly correct. I think there's a lot of original bone there. BUT...

The matrix around the skull has definitely been altered. The colour is much to homogeneous pretty much everywhere. I do not trust it at all. Some bone parts look a little off like others have said. But since the entire matrix cannot be trusted, I don't trust any of the bones to be in their original position either.

I'd say this is a mostly correct decent reconstructed skull. But it might be a composite of different skulls. So if you want an original skull, I don't think this is it.

[jdp]

4 hours ago, pachy-pleuro-whatnot-odon said:

This being the case, the teeth definitely don't belong with the skull, as they have the wrong shape and colour for a dyrosaurid crocodile, and much rather match those of the mosasaur Thalassotitan atrox, which teeth are a dime a dozen, and therefore often used in whatever skull reconstruction is being undertaken.

 

This is 150% the case; there's even a very obvious putty region around the base of the teeth. I would be shocked if this skull is more than 20% real, and would not be shocked if even less than that is real. The matrix is probably sand and glue.

[Gigantopithicness]

@pachy-pleuro-whatnot-odon @Troodon @LordTrilobite@jdp

[pachy-pleuro-whatnot-odon]

Hmm... Well, the matrix is obviously artificial, as there are no microfossils in it. However, much of the bone seems authentic to me, if low-quality. You can see the neurovascular foramina on the rostrum, especially the premaxilla, and some osteoderm patterns towards the back of the skull. However, it seems to me that, in addition to the parts I previously mentioned as missing, the area around the orbits is off, with their anterior margin missing (although this could just be damage to the skull) and the frontal appearing to have been shifted forward as well. The teeth, however, surprisingly look less mosasaurid and more dyrosaurid in the supplied photographs, but are still obvious inserts.

 

As others have commented: an artistic piece that was likely composed from the parts of various dyrosaurid crocodile skulls...

[Troodon]

Thank you for the photos

Here is a Dyrosaurus skull posted by Alex Hasting of a skull at the Science Museum you can compare against.  

I'm not a croc expert but look at the length of the snout in the museum specimen and the illustration below.  See how much shorter yours is... so is it a partial snout?.

 

 

 

 

The top portion, frontal(F), squamosal (Sq) etc is most likely composited as well as the teeth

 

A new description of the skull of Dyrosaurus phosphaticus (Thomas,1893)(Mesoeucrocodylia: Dyrosauridae) from the Lower Eocene of North Africa
Stephane Jouve
2005, Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences

[Gigantopithicness]

@pachy-pleuro-whatnot-odon @Troodon @LordTrilobite@jdp 

 

A family member received it and just wanted to know what something like this would be worth to a collector. I was really interested in it and wanted to figure out exactly what it was before he went and sold it. Thank you all for the helpful information!

[jdp]

5 hours ago, pachy-pleuro-whatnot-odon said:

Hmm... Well, the matrix is obviously artificial, as there are no microfossils in it. However, much of the bone seems authentic to me, if low-quality. You can see the neurovascular foramina on the rostrum, especially the premaxilla, and some osteoderm patterns towards the back of the skull.

 

A lot of this appears to be sculpted. There are a few parts that seem more likely to be real (the anterior part of the frontal bone, the occipital, the left cheek) but I still think this is mostly plaster or putty. If you really wanted to know how much of it was real, you could stick it in a CT scanner I guess.

[Phos_01]

On 1/21/2023 at 7:02 PM, Gigantopithicness said:

I need help identifying this 

It looks very bad in my opinion , it looks like its a complete fabrication with inserted teeth, like other have mentioned: the matrix is completely handmade, and also you can see in the new photos that they have added some into the 'skull' to make it look more authentic. It looks there are some parts of bone composed in the skull, like you see what they do with Mosasaurs. I would not trust this one , my opinion is that its a composed work