Pterosaur Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 Hi there, Wondering what this lower jaw could belong to. I've done a little research and it looks like some sort of walrus jaw. However, the deep grooves on each side of the inner, back of the jaw have me puzzled. Very heavy. About 9 inches long. Any thoughts would be much appreciated! Thanks! Lauren "I am a part of all that I have met." - Lord Alfred Tennyson Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Auspex Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 It has to be walrus; the groove is probably a vessel sinus exposed by erosion of the bone. Nice!!! "There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant “Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley >Paleontology is an evolving science. >May your wonders never cease! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fossilized6s Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 Wow, cool piece! I would say Walrus also. ~Charlie~ "There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why.....i dream of things that never were, and ask why not?" ~RFK ->Get your Mosasaur print ->How to spot a fake Trilobite ->How to identify a CONCRETION from a DINOSAUR EGG Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ukll Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 Very nice! I'd say it was definitely Walrus, as someone that collects mammal fossils I've been eyeing up one of these for my collection for a while. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KYAL Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 Outstanding find!!! Congratulations!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lissa318 Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 Great find!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
garyc Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 Did you find that around here? Houston, that is? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pterosaur Posted July 21, 2014 Author Share Posted July 21, 2014 Thanks guys! It was dredged up by a boat off the coast of New Jersey. Any idea what kind of walrus it could have possibly come from or what era? I am not very familiar with ancient walruses...haha "I am a part of all that I have met." - Lord Alfred Tennyson Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Auspex Posted July 22, 2014 Share Posted July 22, 2014 Here's something that might help: LINK It seems, though, that the teeth are important to the ID. "There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant “Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley >Paleontology is an evolving science. >May your wonders never cease! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RyanNREMTP Posted July 22, 2014 Share Posted July 22, 2014 Ok now that is a cool find. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Search4 Posted July 22, 2014 Share Posted July 22, 2014 In the 80's my uncles dredged up many fossils off the coast of NJ and NY. My cousin Francis had a mantle full of mammoth teeth that he had recovered from the dredges aboard a scallop fishing boat. It's hard to imagine the sea having been low enough for prehistoric animals to have roamed the sea floor. When I was a fisherman we had brought up a few whale vertebrae but unfortunate because we were operating in a commercial capacity we could not legally keep any marine fossils without permit. Some verts I saw were over 12 in diameter without processes, some mineralized but we threw them back on captain's orders. Nice find! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichW9090 Posted July 22, 2014 Share Posted July 22, 2014 It is the modern walrus, Odobenus rosmarus. A guy by the name of Kardas named the Pleistocene population from dredged bones off the NJ coast as a new subspecies, but absolutely no one has accepted it since. The plural of "anecdote" is not "evidence". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pterosaur Posted July 22, 2014 Author Share Posted July 22, 2014 Thank you Auspex for the link and thank you everyone for such helpful info! "I am a part of all that I have met." - Lord Alfred Tennyson Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boesse Posted July 22, 2014 Share Posted July 22, 2014 Nice find! You guys didn't even need the resident marine mammal guy for this ID - but to confirm yes, that is definitely Odobenus rosmarus. I thought I'd note that this looks unusually gracile for Odobenus. Those grooves on the posterior part of the mandible are the mandibular foramen, which has a shallow bony roof that has been abraded away here. Normally it's just a small hole. Rich: do you have a full reference for the Kardas naming of the Atlantic Pleistocene material? The problem is is that many of these fossil species are named after isolated walrus tusks, which are highly variable. A recent study by Naoki Kohno and Clayton Ray looked at all Pliocene walrus material from the North Atlantic, and concluded everything fell within the range of variation for a single species, and synonymized nearly a dozen different named fossil species with Ontocetus emmonsi, the oldest published name available for those tusks. Point is, if Kardas named it off of a skull that actually looked different... then we're talking. Bobby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichW9090 Posted July 23, 2014 Share Posted July 23, 2014 It was published in two parts in an obscure journal, Bobby - I'll see if I can find it in my reprint file. He was a very strange bird. Rich The plural of "anecdote" is not "evidence". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichW9090 Posted July 23, 2014 Share Posted July 23, 2014 Sigmund J. Kardas, Jr. 1965, Notas sobre el genero Odobenus (Mammalia, Pinnipedia). 1. Una nueva subspecie fosil de Pleistoceno superior-Holocene. Bol. R. Soc. Espanola de Historia Natural (Biologia), Volume 63:363-380. 1968. II. Calculos estadisticos. Bol. R. Soc. Espanola de Historia Natural (Biologia), Volume 66:45-48.. Established Odobenus obesus antiquus, based on 18 skulls from different museums in the US and Europe, but does not say where the skulls were found, and does not designate a type specimen. Kardas taught high school in Trenton NJ, retired, and operated an antique store in Trenton for many years. Rich The plural of "anecdote" is not "evidence". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pterosaur Posted July 23, 2014 Author Share Posted July 23, 2014 So we are certain that it is of Odobenus Rosemarus, yet it looks less stocky and more slender than what is considered average? Does this mean it is a variation of the line of walrus mentioned above? Or something potentially different? "I am a part of all that I have met." - Lord Alfred Tennyson Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pterosaur Posted July 23, 2014 Author Share Posted July 23, 2014 Again, thank you for the information and the interest. "I am a part of all that I have met." - Lord Alfred Tennyson Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
erose Posted July 23, 2014 Share Posted July 23, 2014 Along with Ice Age mammals, stone artifacts have been brought up by that sort of dredging. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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