Need Help On A Few Finds From Yorktown And Surry Va

[clstead]

I found what i believe to be porpoise teeth but I would like some help with them.(1st pic)

Also found some matrix(2nd pic) with the same looking fossil but they are clustered together which is

making me second guess what I originally was thinking.

And the last has got to be whale bone,I found multiple good sized chunks but this is the best piece!

thanks for any help on this stuff guys!!!!!

Edited May 26, 2015 by clstead

[Auspex]

They mostly look like internal casts of teredo (or similar) borings.

[clstead]

Thanks for the help

There is actually a shell around what looks like an

internal mold on all of these except for the bulbous area

And a small serrated line running down one side

Edited May 26, 2015 by clstead

[Diceros]

Auspex - You're close, but no cupie doll. The borings of the shipworm (Fam. Teredinidae) Teredo (a clam, not a worm) are made as the clam is boring through wood, always with the grain, eating the wood as it goes along (it's a feeding trace). Its boring fillings, the trace fossil Teredolites longissimus Kely & Bromley, 1984, are long and cylindrical, with a rounded ends. These are also clam borings, but the piddock (Fam. Pholadidae) clam boring into the shell here isn't eating it, it's carving out a home for itself (it's a dwelling trace). The vase-shaped boring trace fossil is called Gastrochaenolites lapidicus Kelly & Bromley, 1984. They bore into rock, petrified wood (generally against the grain), thick shells, what-have-you. They're chummy, so you often find clusters of them, as in the shell here. Whatever filled the borings was harder than the shell it bored into, so they stand out, and the shell is degraded.

The two isolated boring fillings in clstead's photo on the left are especially interesting, because if you look cloesly at the thick end, you'll see the ant. ends of the steinkerns of the two clams that made the borings. That means the fossils are half trace fossil (evidence of the clam's lifestyle, not the clam itself) and half body fossil (internal mold of the clam shell). Clstead - What I recommend you do is get a very sharp and sturdy needle, and see if you can "peel off" more of the boring filling which covers one of these two specimens, to see if you can't expose more of the steinkern inside. If you can get most of the clam steinkern exposed, a clam person might be able to ID it (to me, ya seen one boring clam, ya seen 'em all). To paraphrase Forrest Gump, "My Mama always told me that 'boring is as boring does' ".

[abyssunder]

I think you are right,Diceros,looks to be ichnogenus: Gastrochaenolites Leymerie, 1842 ; ichnospecies: Gastrochaenolites lapidicus Kelly and Bromley,1984. http://www.city.mizunami.lg.jp/docs/2014092922773/files/2014092922773_bull39_09.pdf

Here is ichnogenus: Teredolites Leymerie, 1842;ichnospecies: Teredolites longissimus Kelly & Bromley, 1984. http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Roger_Portell/publication/228495609_Teredolites_longissimus_Kelly__Bromley_from_the_Miocene_Grand_Bay_Formation_of_Carriacou_the_Grenadines_Lesser_Antilles/links/00b7d5208d8cdd1c20000000.pdf

Edited May 26, 2015 by abyssunder

[clstead]

thanks much guys!!!

[Diceros]

Clstead - I'll bet you'd find a small clam like the Barnea in fig. 3 of abyssunder's first link, if you can remove the steinkern from one of the isolated boring fillings. A liddle 'ol boring clam.

[Diceros]

A shipworm boring filling frag. - Teredolites longissimus, from the Lt. Cret. of New Jersey, has turned up in this post:

http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/54869-todays-mystery-find/

I also wanted to thank you, abyssunder, for looking up the examples of the two boring types. I'm an old (65) academic, and more used to looking stuff up on library shelves, than online. I'm glad you found, and posted, them.

[abyssunder]

Thanks, Diceros.I`m glad you`re here in this Forum, your knowledge helps much.
BTW,good idea to link the 2 threads.

[Diceros]

Another of the common shallow-water marine trace fossils has turned-up on Fossil Forum, from the New Jersey Cretaceous. It's the distinctive ghost shrimp burrow-filling frag. Ophiomorpha nodosa: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/54932-coprolite/ For reasons of their own, they like to line their burrows with balls of sediment.

Now when we get a pic of the circular hole Oichnus (made by naticid snails when eating a clam), we'll have most of the main Cret. trace fossils.