Texas Megalodon?

[mkspsa]

This HGMS newsletter with an article on shark teeth was pointed out to me after I asserted that no C. megalodon have been found in TX.  I gave as a reason that the TX Miocene exposures are primarily fluvial or alluvial.

 

http://www.hgms.org/BBG/Aug08.pdf

 

Anyone have any insight?  The article provides an image of a meg tooth, though its relatively small and fairly worn (4.7 cm).

[Plax]

Brachyrhizodus wichitaensis was described originally from paleozoic rocks if my memory serves me correctly. The type having been dropped at a site. Dumping fossils was quite common at sites in the 70s and 80s. The parking area at Swatara Gap near Lebanon PA comes to mind. There were always little piles of trilobite material dumped there by collectors that were traveling from one trilobite spot to another. There was no mistaking provenance in this example though.

[Omegaman]

Seems quite possible that it is local, not dropped by indians, considering the sea bed that used to divide North America.

 

"The ancient sea monster was discovered by accident. Frederickson, who was then an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, had started an amateur paleontology club to study novel fossil deposits. In 2009, the club took a trip to the Duck Creek Formation, just outside Fort Worth, Texas, which contains myriad marine invertebrate fossils, such as the extinct squidlike creatures known as ammonites."

 

From https://www.cbsnews.com/news/20-foot-monster-shark-fossils-found-in-texas/

[Al Dente]

5 hours ago, Omegaman said:

Seems quite possible that it is local, not dropped by indians, considering the sea bed that used to divide North America.

 

"The ancient sea monster was discovered by accident. Frederickson, who was then an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, had started an amateur paleontology club to study novel fossil deposits. In 2009, the club took a trip to the Duck Creek Formation, just outside Fort Worth, Texas, which contains myriad marine invertebrate fossils, such as the extinct squidlike creatures known as ammonites."

 

From https://www.cbsnews.com/news/20-foot-monster-shark-fossils-found-in-texas/

The  Duck Creek Formation is Cretaceous, many tens of millions of years older than megalodon. Cretaceous fossils are common in Texas. Megalodon existed during the Miocene and early Pliocene. Marine fossils from the Miocene and early Pliocene are not found in Texas with any abundance. These layers are either buried or eroded away.

[jagged maggie]

I've recently found what I believe is a Megalodon tooth in a Dallas TX creek.   I've found around a 100 sharks teeth and this one is off the charts big.   It wasn't just laying there but a small shinning piece caught my eye and I pulled it out of the river rocks.  It's edges and still serrated, like most sharks teeth I find, because they are recently unearthed by erosion.   It is only 1/2 of the tooth.  I know that I have found something very special.   

 

[Lone Hunter]

Dallas creek, that's interesting, really think this should be separate post in Fossil ID. Curious what it is. @Fossildude19

[siteseer]

The Dallas area was dry land across the whole time C. megalodon was alive (Early-Middle Miocene to Early Pliocene).  You can find Eocene-age marine fossils as far north as College Station but that seems to be about the farthest inland that the ocean reached from then on.  In fact, I can't find a record of Oligocene marine rocks anywhere near there.  By the Miocene, only terrestrial deposits are found in the region with the Gulf of Mexico shoreline not far from what it is now. 

 

Maybe someone with a lot more knowledge of Texas geology can comment further.  Are there even any Oligocene marine rocks in Texas?  it's possible much of the Oligocene rocks (marine or terrestrial) have eroded away.  Are there any Miocene marine rocks anywhere in the state?  @Uncle Siphuncle

 

That tooth could have been dropped nearby as a joke or perhaps left accidentally.

Edited July 29, 2022 by siteseer

[Uncle Siphuncle]

I’ve encountered no marine exposures here btwn Olig and Plio.  Going w recent transplant on the tooth.

[Shellseeker]

7 hours ago, siteseer said:

By the Miocene, only terrestrial deposits are found in the region with the Gulf of Mexico shoreline not far from what it is now. 

Curious,

It would seem that in the Miocene, when Meg teeth were dropping in huge numbers over areas south of Tampa, there are no equivalent distributions on the west side of the Gulf.

Sounds like Texas might have been a lot higher back in the early Miocene.

Quote

Numerous teeth thought to belong to a megalodon, a colossal prehistoric shark that could have eaten Jaws for breakfast, have recently been discovered in a flooded inland cavern. 

The numerous teeth were found by Kay Nicte Vilchis Zapata, diver and underwater photographer, in a network of water-filled caverns near the city of Mérida in Mexico’s Yucatan state, according to local newspaper The Yucatan Times. Known as Cenote Xoc, the main cavern is thought to run for over 600 meters (1,970 feet), with numerous smaller flooded vaults branching off the main corridor. 

https://www.iflscience.com/divers-find-megaldon-teeth-in-an-inland-cave-network-in-mexico-54136