Odd Shark Tooth From Alabama, Shark Tooth Creek

[non-remanié]

Some of the top row could be salted too. A few look like they might be Scapanorhynchus, but most look like paleogene Striatolamia to me instead. But I'm not positive. But it does make sense because it would be a very easy to acquire species to seed with.

[RickNC]

Is it just the location where some of the teeth seem out of place, or those more recent teeth occurring with the older cretaceous teeth? My local creek here has cretaceous material present along with every other age up to Pleistocene.

[Darwin Ahoy]

In the top row, several of the teeth could be goblin shark, Scaphanorhynchus texanus. Anterior teeth are strongly striated (fine ridges running almost the length of the blade), lack cusps or have weak cusplets, and have a prominent nutrient groove. Lateral teeth have a more flattened (broad) blade, striations are greatly reduced or absent, and there are prominent cusplets. I don't see anything that looks like obvious lateral teeth, but several in the top row could be anterior goblin shark teeth. I can't see the striations in the photo, so I can't be sure. Some of the teeth have conspiculous cusplets and are likely sand tigers instead. The Ptychodus are definitely Cretaceous. Everything else (all of row 2 and 3, and the tigers in the bottom row) looks Miocene to me, and so out of place for where they were collected.

I don't see any Cretalamna, Squalicorax, or Cretalamna, but those were much less common than Scaphanorhynchus when I collected there, in the pre-salting days.

Others are welcome to agree or disagree. I only got interested in shark teeth a couple of years ago, and don't have a ton of experience.

Don

Another givaway on the Scapanorhynchus, particularly if the roots are in okay shape, is that the striations continue onto the root itself. Even laterals that lack striations on the cusp will show striations on the root.

Is it just the location where some of the teeth seem out of place, or those more recent teeth occurring with the older cretaceous teeth? My local creek here has cretaceous material present along with every other age up to Pleistocene.

While there are sites that can produce like that, luckily FossilDAWG seems to have worked this site prior to the contamination, and found no such assemblage of species.

[AmazoniteJosh]

I've collected from creeks in the immediate vicinity of the commercial Shark Tooth Creek site. The teeth are largely from a lag at the Mooreville/Eutah (Tombigbee Sand) contact, though material must also come from the rest of the Mooreville as well. These are Late Cretaceous formations. Ptychodus mortoni is not uncommon, other Ptychodus species are rare or essentially nonexistant. A view of the top of your specimen would help to confirm the ID.

I agree that the mix of species is highly suspicious, and it suggests salting of the creek with shark teeth from elsewhere. Certainly there is no local site to produce tiger sharks. My collections contain many Scaphanorhynchus texanus, Cretalamna appendiculata, Squalicorax, and some Ptychodus mortoni and Cretoxyrhina mantelli, and no Paleogene or Neogene forms.

Don

I'm not even sure what the difference is between a Ptychodus mortoni and other Ptychodus species, but here's a view focused in on the tops of the 2 Ptychodus we found.

[Fathergoose]

Newbie Alert......

I just found this site and had to comment. Fascinating info - I had been wandering about that place. I spent yesterday on the back roads of Greene, Sumter, Marengo, and Hale counties, stopping at outcrops and creek crossings (some of the more intriguing ones were inaccessible due to undergrowth, but I marked them for a return trip this fall). I grew up bringing home Calamites from the coal mines and strip pits of Tuscaloosa county, and deer hunting throughout West Alabama (so I'm familiar with the area). Over the years I've picked up shark teeth and a few other finds, and I once took my daughters on a field trip to the area near Eppes where the Exogyra are thick on the ground. I had always wanted to take a leisurely tour and just stop and look, and yesterday I finally did it. I'll definitely be going back. I only found a few worm tubes, crumbling Gastropods, and those prolific Exogyra, but I'm hooked. I quickly realized that I need to do a lot more research, both on the fossils/species (I had to look up the names I've used here) and on learning more about how to find successful sites. I'm sure there are threads here about the best books for identification purposes, which I need badly. Anyway, I found this thread really interesting - so much to learn. I look forward to homing in on some great sites, and finds.

[Auspex]

Once in a while, it's good to take time to smell the sun on the rocks...

Welcome aboard, Fathergoose!

[siteseer]

RickNC,

Yes, it's just the location. When I look at the Carcharhinus and Negaprion teeth in that group, they look like Middle to Late Miocene teeth and perhaps even came from the Bone Valley Formation of Florida (Peace River teeth?). Even if we say, "Okay, they could be Middle Miocene in age," I checked "Fossil Vertebrates of Alabama" (1981) by John T. Thurmond and Douglas E. Jones and there aren't any Miocene exposures that far north in the state (see the map on page 5) - no published reports of any Miocene vertebrates at all in the state. I doubt the ocean has been that far north anywhere on the Gulf Coast since the Early Oligocene.

Carcharocles auriculatus teeth have been found around Yazoo City in neighboring Mississippi (still slightly lower in latitude than Aliceville, AL) but those are finds (Dockery and Manning, 1986) of the late Eocene - a time well represented by rocks/fossils in the southern parts of the Gulf Coast states..

Jess

Dockery, D.T., III, and E.M. Manning. 1986.

Teeth of the Giant Shark Carcharodon auriculatus from the Eocene and Oligocene of Mississippi. Mississippi Geology. Vol. 7, Number 1. September 1986.

P.S. "Fossil Vertebrates of Alabama" is ripe for revision. The illustrations are almost all line drawings and the few photos are too dark. I'm sure a new edition would provide some surprising finds but Miocene sharks near Aliceville will not be one of them. Maybe someone else can pin down a possible origin of the carcharhinid teeth from the forms and preservation.

Also, anyone used to be able to get Mississippi Geology for free - you just had to ask for it (they mailed issues to you even if you were out-of-state back in the late 80's-early 90's) but I think it ended its run in the 90's.

Is it just the location where some of the teeth seem out of place, or those more recent teeth occurring with the older cretaceous teeth? My local creek here has cretaceous material present along with every other age up to Pleistocene.

Edited August 4, 2013 by siteseer

[Carson]

The University of Arkansas Museum used to lead field trips to two different localities referred to as "Shark Creek" (at least in '98 and '99 when I worked for UA. At the first locality, I found parts of a couple of parts of ammonoids and a nice ptychodus tooth. The second site had numerous teeth consisting of numerous Scapanorhynchus and squalicorax, turtle shell pieces, and fish bones. I seem to remember someone finding a mosasaur tooth. I also found a rugosa coral in the chert gravel.