Shark, Ray, Fish And Other Micros From The Albian Kiowa Shale Of Kansas

[MarcoSr]

I normally don’t get to search Cretaceous Albian marine matrix. I have searched a little from Australia. I have tried for years to get Albian matrix from Texas with no luck. So I was very happy when Jamie sent me some Turritella shell coquina from the Albian Kiowa Shale Formation of Kansas.

I broke down several pieces of the Turritella shell coquina using a very aggressive vinegar treatment process that took over three weeks and over 10 individual breakdown cycles. I only broke down a small amount of shale, probably less than half a gallon worth. Although the vertebrate fossil density was low I did find several vertebrate specimens that I am very happy with and made the effort worthwhile. If you place your cursor on a JPEG image you will see the file name which will have the specimen id as best that I can determine and the specimen size.

The matrix was loaded with internal molds of Turritella shells like the one below:

There were also a few shell casts like the one below:

I only found two crowns of shark teeth and one more complete tooth below:

I found 7 fish teeth with two of the nicest below:

I also found a cool dermal denticle:

I found two Onchopristis dunklei oral teeth. One was real nice and one was damaged. Unfortunately, and I warn of this in another post, I disintegrated the real nice one in my ultrasonic cleaner trying to clean off debris. Below is the damaged tooth:

This last ray tooth is why I search matrix. It doesn’t match well to anything that I have personally seen before. Any ideas?

Each matrix that I search makes me more of an avid micro tooth collector. If anyone has or can collect good matrix with shark, ray, and fish micros, especially marine Cretaceous Albian matrix from Texas, please send me a PM.

Marco Sr.

[siteseer]

Marco Sr.,

Those are interesting teeth. The oddball ray is similar to Ptychotrygon though I don't know of the genus extending into the Albian. It looks like a sclerorhynchid in any case. I looked at a few papers on Cenomanian-age material from Europe and North Africa to see if there was anything similar but came up empty. Can you give us more angles?

Jess

I normally don’t get to search Cretaceous Albian marine matrix. I have searched a little from Australia. I have tried for years to get Albian matrix from Texas with no luck. So I was very happy when Jamie sent me some Turritella shell coquina from the Albian Kiowa Shale Formation of Kansas.

I broke down several pieces of the Turritella shell coquina using a very aggressive vinegar treatment process that took over three weeks and over 10 individual breakdown cycles. I only broke down a small amount of shale, probably less than half a gallon worth. Although the vertebrate fossil density was low I did find several vertebrate specimens that I am very happy with and made the effort worthwhile. If you place your cursor on a JPEG image you will see the file name which will have the specimen id as best that I can determine and the specimen size.

The matrix was loaded with internal molds of Turritella shells like the one below:

Internal shell mold 3mm.jpg

There were also a few shell casts like the one below:

Shell cast1 3mm.jpg

I only found two crowns of shark teeth and one more complete tooth below:

Shark tooth1 2mm.jpg

I found 7 fish teeth with two of the nicest below:

Fish tooth1 3mm.jpgFish tooth2 .5mm.jpg

I also found a cool dermal denticle:

Dermal denticle1 .5mm.jpg

I found two Onchopristis dunklei oral teeth. One was real nice and one was damaged. Unfortunately, and I warn of this in another post, I disintegrated the real nice one in my ultrasonic cleaner trying to clean off debris. Below is the damaged tooth:

Onchopristris Dunklei1 1mm.jpg

This last ray tooth is why I search matrix. It doesn’t match well to anything that I have personally seen before. Any ideas?

Ray tooth1 1mm.jpg

Each matrix that I search makes me more of an avid micro tooth collector. If anyone has or can collect good matrix with shark, ray, and fish micros, especially marine Cretaceous Albian matrix from Texas, please send me a PM.

Marco Sr.

[MarcoSr]

Marco Sr.,

Those are interesting teeth. The oddball ray is similar to Ptychotrygon though I don't know of the genus extending into the Albian. It looks like a sclerorhynchid in any case. I looked at a few papers on Cenomanian-age material from Europe and North Africa to see if there was anything similar but came up empty. Can you give us more angles?

Jess

Jess

Here are a few more angles of the ray tooth. The tooth is pretty small and fragile, so I didn't want to use clay or wax for positioning so the angles are a little off. The only teeth that I have personally found that are somewhat similar were from the Turonian Blue Hill Shale Member, Carlile Shale, of Kansas. The only tooth in the literature that I've seen that is close is the Ptychotrygon Agujaensis from the Campanian of Texas.

Some teeth from the Blue Hill Shale:

Marco Sr.

[missingdigits]

Marco,

Thanks for posting your finds. Outstanding as usual. The Kiowa Shale is little researched. Hope you enjoyed it.

Jamie

[MarcoSr]

Marco,

Thanks for posting your finds. Outstanding as usual. The Kiowa Shale is little researched. Hope you enjoyed it.

Jamie

Jamie

I definitely enjoyed breaking it down and searching it. I just don't get to search Albian matrix much at all so it was really nice to have some from Kansas to search. I especially like looking at matrix that others haven't because they couldn't break the matrix down. Thank you again for sending it.

Marco Sr.

[Darbi]

On 8/3/2013 at 10:00 AM, MarcoSr said:

 

I know it has been several years since the last post. I was just searching through the internet to know more about Albian Kiowa Formation fossils because I have few kilograms of Turritella shell coquina from this formation that I want to break down. I saw few tiny shark and fish teeth that is visible in the matrix and I am trying to identify it. Kiowa formation is little known and it is very difficult for me to become familiar with their fossils! Anyway, I do not know if you already knew this: the fossil in your picture, it's probably Pycnodontidae, possibly from Coelodus sp. Your picture is similar to a fish tooth I found in the Kiowa Formation Turritella coquina and if I'm not mistaken, it's Coelodus sp. as well.

[MarcoSr]

1 hour ago, Darbi said:

the fossil in your picture, it's probably Pycnodontidae, possibly from Coelodus sp. Your picture is similar to a fish tooth I found in the Kiowa Formation Turritella coquina and if I'm not mistaken, it's Coelodus sp. as well.

 

Thank you for the id help.  The Turritella shell coquina from the Albian Kiowa Shale is really difficult to break down to get to the vertebrate micro fossils.  The fossil density is fairly low but you can find some unusual specimens.

 

Marco Sr.

[siteseer]

On 8/10/2013 at 1:04 PM, MarcoSr said:

Jamie

I definitely enjoyed breaking it down and searching it. I just don't get to search Albian matrix much at all so it was really nice to have some from Kansas to search. I especially like looking at matrix that others haven't because they couldn't break the matrix down. Thank you again for sending it.

Marco Sr.

 

Hi Marco Sr.,

 

In the past seven years have you heard back from anyone on that first ray tooth.  You should try contacting Bruce Welton, David Ward, and Jean-Pierre Biddle.  It's tough for me to say who out of that group has the most experience with Albian material but each has a lot.

 

Jess

[MarcoSr]

8 hours ago, siteseer said:

 

Hi Marco Sr.,

 

In the past seven years have you heard back from anyone on that first ray tooth.  You should try contacting Bruce Welton, David Ward, and Jean-Pierre Biddle.  It's tough for me to say who out of that group has the most experience with Albian material but each has a lot.

 

Jess

 

Jess

 

I reached out to Dr. Welton and several other researchers.  All thought that the tooth from the Kiowa Shale and the very similar teeth from the Blue Hill Shale were an early form of Ptychotrygon triangularis.  Bruce gave me a very detailed response (unfortunately I lost his response when my computer hard drive crashed several years back) basically saying that P. triangularis show a lot of variation over time.  Two different researchers were going to write a joint paper on these teeth and a number of other teeth that I have from Kansas but that never happened.  At least all of my teeth were returned back to me.

 

Marco Sr.