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Devonian fish tooth from Yunnan, China


Misha

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Hello everyone,

I recently came across some fossils posted on our favorite auction site described as Onychodont teeth from Yunnan, China.

This immediately caught my eye and I decided to send in a very low offer, not expecting to even purchase or bid, just to see how much the seller might ask for a fossil like that. Surprisingly the offer was accepted, and after a few weeks this fossil arrived. It's a 3cm long tooth on a Limestone matrix with other fragmented remains from fish.

I know that identifying Devonian fish teeth is something that is very difficult to do, so I am not expecting that it can be done with this specimen, but I wanted to know if there's any reason to believe it could've come from an Onychodont like the seller claimed. Additionally, I asked the seller where in Yunnan this was found and I was told it comes from Wuding County, I was wondering if by any chance anyone might know what formation this may have them come from, I looked it up and a number of fossils described from the Haikou Formation come up, although I couldn't find much more info on the formation itself to confirm if this could be the origin of the fossil.

As always, thank you for reading and any assistance you may be able to offer.

 

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I did also see these teeth on auction and was very curious. I was looking at the listings for a good while just staring at the screen and looking for info/context, but became hesitant about them since they are Chinese vertebrate fossils and isn't the common dino egg, Lycoptera, Keicho, Gansu mammal, etc.

 

Probably need more context. Like, is it old collection? It could hypothetically be from some obscure long lost site.

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10 hours ago, Kikokuryu said:

Probably need more context. Like, is it old collection? It could hypothetically be from some obscure long lost site

I asked the seller for some additional info.

They weren't able to provide the Formation these came from, said they consulted with a "specialist" to get that ID and stated these fossils were uncovered recently, not from an old collection.

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2 minutes ago, Misha said:

I asked the seller for some additional info.

They weren't able to provide the Formation these came from, said they consulted with a "specialist" to get that ID and stated these fossils were uncovered recently, not from an old collection.

Interesting. I wonder if they are treated as debris like some of the invertebrates?

 

The thread here mentions a black list style ban for specific species that cannot be exported no matter what, but this was posted back in 2014. Overall, it seems really confusing. Unless this whole system was scrapped and it's just a simple blanket ban now.

 

 

I mean, Onychodontiformes indet. isn't really a species I guess? I do wonder though, unrelated to China specifically, if a country did a black list ban, I'm curious how they handle indet. specimens. I guess restrict the whole clade?

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1 hour ago, Kikokuryu said:

Interesting. I wonder if they are treated as debris like some of the invertebrates?

 

The thread here mentions a black list style ban for specific species that cannot be exported no matter what, but this was posted back in 2014. Overall, it seems really confusing. Unless this whole system was scrapped and it's just a simple blanket ban now.

 

 

I mean, Onychodontiformes indet. isn't really a species I guess? I do wonder though, unrelated to China specifically, if a country did a black list ban, I'm curious how they handle indet. specimens. I guess restrict the whole clade?

Yeah, I'm not sure, I tried looking into the legality of these kinds of things on my own and found a few papers discussing it back when I initially purchased this. From what I read it does seem pretty complex and not entirely clear but I didn't find anything that would ban very partial fish remains like this. Although, maybe I wasn't looking in the right spots

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