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Fl Shark Tooth Id


Guest Cris

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OK, here I have some teeth from a construction site in Florida. I know these LOOK a lot like teeth from Morroco, but I assure you that they aren't. The geology of the area where these were found is very odd.... There's a giant hole a couple miles across and the construction site was at the very bottom... They started digging a retention pond and found a layer of "black sand in between clay" and there were tons of these teeth in the layer.... At least 6 of the workers found some and one guy got a total of 20, one being over 3 inches. I posted here in the ID section because I'm not 100% sure what they are.

post-16-1207624577_thumb.jpgpost-16-1207624599_thumb.jpgpost-16-1207624618_thumb.jpg

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That sure looks like otodus. Is otodus present anywhere in Florida or is it too early?

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Well, I looked it up and it seems that Otodus was living until the middle Eocene. I believe that would mean that they're not too old for FL. Does anyone know of Otodus being in Florida?

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Cris, that is very very interesting, i would say your best bet would be sending this message along with the pics to a paleo in the museum. Im sure they will be able to tell you more, and perhaps these workers have stumbled upon an extreamly important site! you must be sure you let someone proffesional know before the layer is built over....

Very exciting!

Chris

"Turn the fear of the unknown into the excitment of possibility!"


We dont stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.

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I believe I remember hearing someone on the forum talk about Otodus' being in FL but they had never seen one before... I'm pretty confident that the museums already know about it. I actually got a few hits while searching "Florida Otodus" after looking around for a while... No pictures, but two websites had them on their list of Florida fossils.

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I do know of a source that states Otodus are found in Florida, and that is precisely what you're holding. Great RARE teeth. The only problem is, if you want to sell them, it may be hard to convince someone they aren't Moroccan. :cool:

There's no limit to what you can accomplish when you're supposed to be doing something else

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Thats some nice teeth you found. Wish i could find one :D. I have just never heard of any Otodus coming from FL before.

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OK, here I have some teeth from a construction site in Florida. I know these LOOK a lot like teeth from Morroco, but I assure you that they aren't. The geology of the area where these were found is very odd.... There's a giant hole a couple miles across and the construction site was at the very bottom... They started digging a retention pond and found a layer of "black sand in between clay" and there were tons of these teeth in the layer.... At least 6 of the workers found some and one guy got a total of 20, one being over 3 inches. I posted here in the ID section because I'm not 100% sure what they are.

post-16-1207624577_thumb.jpgpost-16-1207624599_thumb.jpgpost-16-1207624618_thumb.jpg

The only serious reference to Otodus in Florida was in a 1969 master's degree thesis by Norm Tessman SEE THE FLORIDA OTODUS

Tessman subsequently contributed a shark tooth article to The Plaster Jacket, an occasional journal of the Florida Paleontological Society and the Florida State Museum. This series of Plaster Jackets was edited and updated and expanded to produce Hulbert's (Ed.) THE FOSSIL VERTEBRATES OF FLORIDA. I have here Tessman's thesis, his Plaster Jacket article, and Hulbert's book.

The only gross error I have found in Hulbert's work is that he picked up Tessman's erroneous identification of Serratolamna as "juvenile Otodus." Now the mischief is done -- there will be collectors who never see the images of the "Florida Otodus" (which are pretty clearly Serratolamna) but will remember the reference.

Chris, someone is pulling your leg. These teeth certainly appear to be Moroccan Otodus.

-----Harry Pristis

http://pristis.wix.com/the-demijohn-page

 

What seest thou else

In the dark backward and abysm of time?

---Shakespeare, The Tempest

 

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Very interesting post, Harry. That was my first thought, too... Someone was crazy... But I've talked to more than one person that claims to have found those teeth there... One guy that I've known my entire life and know for a fact that he wouldn't even joke about something like this. They know literally nothing about fossils. I honestly believe the only way this is a hoax is if someone actually seeded the retention pond with teeth. However, I don't see a bunch of construction workers who don't make that much money and know nothing about fossils, buying a bunch of teeth to throw in the dirt. We'll see tomorrow... Even if someone is nuts, it's worth a few days of hunting the area and making sure.

EDIT: Is this the same source you were talking about, Northern Sharks?

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No. The only place I see a reference to Florida Otodus is a website called fossil sharks and rays of the world (or something like that. If you google that it should come up. It's posted by a guy in Gainesville and I think you mentioned before that you know him. He doesn't go into any detail about where, it just says FL. Another thing, I've never heard of any American Otodus teeth measuring 3". Not to say they can't exist, but I thought the large ones were pretty much localized to Morocco. With that coloring, you'd best be sure thay aren't planted teeth. Have you ever seen any other Florida tooth, any species, that color????

There's no limit to what you can accomplish when you're supposed to be doing something else

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Very interesting post, Harry. That was my first thought, too... Someone was crazy... But I've talked to more than one person that claims to have found those teeth there... One guy that I've known my entire life and know for a fact that he wouldn't even joke about something like this. They know literally nothing about fossils. I honestly believe the only way this is a hoax is if someone actually seeded the retention pond with teeth. However, I don't see a bunch of construction workers who don't make that much money and know nothing about fossils, buying a bunch of teeth to throw in the dirt. We'll see tomorrow... Even if someone is nuts, it's worth a few days of hunting the area and making sure.

EDIT: Is this the same source you were talking about, Northern Sharks?

Well, Chris, find a few of these teeth in situ yourself and we'll have a mind-boggling (relatively speaking) scientific discovery! Skepticism is appropriate.

Keep in mind that many phosphate mine workers have a nice sideline in selling fossils about which they know little. They know the important thing -- large shark teeth are worth dollars! However, finding good Florida teeth is a sometimes thing. It is not much of a leap of imagination that some enterprising miner (or excavator) acquires Moroccan teeth (inexpensive) which he passes on as Florida teeth (expensive).

Again, find 'em yourself -- don't accept stories.

-------Harry Pristis

http://pristis.wix.com/the-demijohn-page

 

What seest thou else

In the dark backward and abysm of time?

---Shakespeare, The Tempest

 

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Well, Chris, find a few of these teeth in situ yourself and we'll have a mind-boggling (relatively speaking) scientific discovery! Skepticism is appropriate.

Keep in mind that many phosphate mine workers have a nice sideline in selling fossils about which they know little. They know the important thing -- large shark teeth are worth dollars! However, finding good Florida teeth is a sometimes thing. It is not much of a leap of imagination that some enterprising miner (or excavator) acquires Moroccan teeth (inexpensive) which he passes on as Florida teeth (expensive).

Again, find 'em yourself -- don't accept stories.

-------Harry Pristis

Hmmm, interesting... I was just looking at these teeth again and it appears that the tip of one is polished somewhat... I believe I recall something about the guy that had found 20 or so of the teeth offering to sell them to the other guys that I know... I wonder if he threw a couple around for people to find and then sold the rest to the workers....?

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It looks like you purchased some Otodus from Florida . . . . that were found in Morocco. It even looks like there is a typical Moroccan repair on one of the teeth. There are Otodus teeth that are from several sites in the U.S. I have seen Otodus teeth from Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. There is a good chance that they can be found in Alabama also, but I haven't seen any of them. The Moroccan teeth are much larger on average than the U.S. teeth, but that may be a function of the difference in water depth. The moroccan teeth were deposited in much deeper water than most of the U.S. deposits which is why most of our teeth are juveniles. If they followed the same mechanism as some modern sharks they only entered shallow water to give birth and then immediately left for deep water so they didn't have much of a chance to drop the big adult teeth.

Here is a pic of the biggest Otodus teeth that I have from Maryland. The largest two are just over 2 3/4 inches and these are not the largest found in this area. I have also seen a huge Otodus vert that was close to 4 inches across.

post-210-1207686808_thumb.jpg

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It looks like you purchased some Otodus from Florida . . . . that were found in Morocco. It even looks like there is a typical Moroccan repair on one of the teeth. There are Otodus teeth that are from several sites in the U.S. I have seen Otodus teeth from Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. There is a good chance that they can be found in Alabama also, but I haven't seen any of them. The Moroccan teeth are much larger on average than the U.S. teeth, but that may be a function of the difference in water depth. The moroccan teeth were deposited in much deeper water than most of the U.S. deposits which is why most of our teeth are juveniles. If they followed the same mechanism as some modern sharks they only entered shallow water to give birth and then immediately left for deep water so they didn't have much of a chance to drop the big adult teeth.

Here is a pic of the biggest Otodus teeth that I have from Maryland. The largest two are just over 2 3/4 inches and these are not the largest found in this area. I have also seen a huge Otodus vert that was close to 4 inches across.

post-210-1207686808_thumb.jpg

Nice teeth, Ron. Actually, I didn't purchase these. The guys I knew wanted me to post about them and see what everyone said.

"The moroccan teeth were deposited in much deeper water than most of the U.S. deposits which is why most of our teeth are juveniles."

That's part of the reason why I believed this to be true, since the contruction site was in the bottom of a good 70-100 foot deep hole that's miles across... I know when you're fishing and you drift over a deep hole, you wind up catching fishes that you would normally only find very far offshore. Perhaps my imagination got the best of me :D I'm pretty confident that these are from Morocco after seeing the polished tip on that one. Thanks for the replies, everyone.

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It even looks like there is a typical Moroccan repair on one of the teeth.

Ron which tooth and where? I didn't notice anything on them. I gotta learn this stuff :P

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The bottom tooth in the pic of three looks like it has a patch in the middle of the root. It's the darker colored material. It may not be a patch but it sure looks like one.

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Cris, I sure would like to see where this type of construction site is that is 50 to 100 ft deep and miles long, are we building a new bardge canal?It seams like Holes deeper than 50 ft and 100 ft for sure any where in florida would fill with water. Are they diving to get these teeth? :unsure::unsure:

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It's my bone!!!

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The Moroccan teeth are much larger on average than the U.S. teeth, but that may be a function of the difference in water depth. The moroccan teeth were deposited in much deeper water than most of the U.S. deposits which is why most of our teeth are juveniles. If they followed the same mechanism as some modern sharks they only entered shallow water to give birth and then immediately left for deep water so they didn't have much of a chance to drop the big adult teeth.

This is the "nursery theory" to explain why there is such a high proportion of small megalodon teeth found in South Florida versus say the Carolinas.

The argument goes like this: The shallow water of a proto-Tampa Bay may have provided a feeding niche that smaller sharks could exploit. Little megalodons grown larger migrated out into the Atlantic waters off the East Coast to hunt whales and walrus and other large prey. This would explain the size distribution of the teeth.

I'm not sure the same theory applies to Moroccan Otodus. For starters, the adult size of Otodus does not approach the adult size of megalodon. Whales were just getting started, so to speak, and those large, early whales probably preyed on Otodus, rather than the reverse.

I don't know enough about the geology of the Oulad Abdoun Basin to talk about water depth. Do you have a reference, Ron? I know that crocodilians are commonly found in the phosphate, and that suggests to me a rather shallow body of water.

This argument becomes even more tenuous when we posit that the deep-water Atlantic deposits that produce adult megalodon teeth might have been the shallow-water nursery for Otodus.

Interesting.

-----Harry Pristis

http://pristis.wix.com/the-demijohn-page

 

What seest thou else

In the dark backward and abysm of time?

---Shakespeare, The Tempest

 

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Ron which tooth and where? I didn't notice anything on them. I gotta learn this stuff :P
I think this what he is talking about. I had a patch on one of mine. Just wet it and you should see the patch if it is one.

post-23-1207697082_thumb.jpg

post-23-1207697234_thumb.jpg

It's my bone!!!

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Cris, I sure would like to see where this type of construction site is that is 50 to 100 ft deep and miles long, are we building a new bardge canal?It seams like Holes deeper than 50 ft and 100 ft for sure any where in florida would fill with water. Are they diving to get these teeth? :unsure::unsure:

Sorry I didn't make this more clear... The "hole" is actually a natural thing that's probably been there for a very long time.. You can't tell that it's a hole unless you look at the area on a topographic map, then you can see just how much lower it is than the surrounding area. The contruction site was at the very bottom of the natural "hole"

I think this what he is talking about. I had a patch on one of mine. Just wet it and you should see the patch if it is one.

Hmmm, what do they make these patches out of? I hope it is a patch so I can show it to the guy who had me post this. I tried scratching at that area and it's rock hard... Is there any way to test it to make sure it's not just a discolored area?

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Cris: If you have a blacklight, shine that on the tooth. If there's a patch or repair, it should glow a different color. Most of the repaired Otodus teeth I've seen are quite obvious. Try Worthy's suggestion of wetting it as well. Water can't harm it anyway.

There's no limit to what you can accomplish when you're supposed to be doing something else

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Sorry I didn't make this more clear... The "hole" is actually a natural thing that's probably been there for a very long time.. You can't tell that it's a hole unless you look at the area on a topographic map, then you can see just how much lower it is than the surrounding area. The contruction site was at the very bottom of the natural "hole"

Hmmm, what do they make these patches out of? I hope it is a patch so I can show it to the guy who had me post this. I tried scratching at that area and it's rock hard... Is there any way to test it to make sure it's not just a discolored area?

Chris . . . do you mean a natural hole as in a sink-hole? . . . like Paine's Prairie? If they're filled with water, they're called "lakes" such as Newnan's Lake or Orange Lake; nonetheless, they are but large collapses of the karstic variety.

What do they use to make the root patch? . . . I believe they get a syphilitic, old Bedouin to urinate in a bucket of plaster of paris -- that gives a decent color match. A patch on the root of your tooth will be softer than the root itself, in my experience. It'll be even softer when wet . . . and fragrant. It should crumble under a fingernail. ^_^

http://pristis.wix.com/the-demijohn-page

 

What seest thou else

In the dark backward and abysm of time?

---Shakespeare, The Tempest

 

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Chris . . . do you mean a natural hole as in a sink-hole? . . . like Paine's Prairie? If they're filled with water, they're called "lakes" such as Newnan's Lake or Orange Lake; nonetheless, they are but large collapses of the karstic variety.

What do they use to make the root patch? . . . I believe they get a syphilitic, old Bedouin to urinate in a bucket of plaster of paris -- that gives a decent color match. A patch on the root of your tooth will be softer than the root itself, in my experience. It'll be even softer when wet . . . and fragrant. It should crumble under a fingernail. ^_^

No, there's no water... Just roads and buildings... And I'll make sure to get my friend to lick it, scratch it and see if it's a patch... Then I'll repeat what you said to him :P

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