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Buyer Beware: Fake Mosasaurus Jaws


Dave pom Allen

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bit of a production line here

Unfortunately, fake Mosasaurus jaws are one of the most prevalent and widely available forgeries out there. Hundreds of them can be found all over the Internet, Ebay, rock shops, fossil shows, and I’ve even seen them make their way into collections used for educational purposes. Most of the time they are sold as being “authentic”, and I actually think most of the time the sellers don’t even realize they are peddling fakes.

In nearly all the examples the teeth in the jaw are real fossil Mosasaur teeth from the phosphate deposits near Khourigba, Morocco, but everything else isn’t. Isolated Mosasaur teeth, particularly the smaller ones (<1 ½”) are actually very common fossils, and huge numbers of them are collected by locals as a byproduct of the massive phosphate mining operations.

Jaws and rooted teeth are much more. The bone in these fake jaws are typically crudely constructed out of plaster, animal bone, fossil fragments or a combination of the three and mounted in fake matrix. Even in the case of real jaws, the teeth are almost never found in place and must be remounted.

In most cases these fake jaws weren’t created to be purposely deceptive. One of the biggest segments of the economy in Morocco is tourism and these fake jaws are mass-produced in workshops as cheap trinkets to sell tourists

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I've seen photos of factories that produce these fabrications and its quite an impressive industry and you're correct its a big part of their economy and keeps a good part of population employed..

I'm an experienced collector and shake my head when I walk through the moroccan tents at the Tucson fossil show and see all these people buying these fabrications. Most are shop keepers buying inventory to resell. I just want to get up on a chair and shout "its all junk".

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I have been in tents in Tucson and other shows as well and have seen people walk right past authentic jaws and pick up these fabrications and purchase them. On a few occasions I have even told them that they are reconstructed from plaster and a few teeth but they still buy them because they look better. It is truly ironic that as humans, sometimes we are drawn to things that match our expectations rather than reality.

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Seth

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My experience tells me that a large percentage of the end buyers of most fossils are buying them to display. They want them to put on a table or a shelf and look at it. They aren't trying to replicate a wing of the Smithsonian. Authenticity is important to true dyed in the wool collectors, but the 'average Joe/Judy' doesn't care, nor do they need to care. I know of one of the bigger Moroccan dealers, who shows at Tucson, and he tells people up front about repairs, reconstruction and fake parts. I bought from him, knowing that several pieces were assembled. Once he was upfront with me, without my calling him out on obvious fakes (mosasaur jaws being one of them), I felt at ease to question him further. These Moroccan fossils are mostly brought out of the mines after the use of explosives-how many pristine, perfect 400 million year old pieces would you expect to find? Dealers, whether Moroccan or American, who misrepresent the fakes or reconstructions as being 100% authentic and perfect, well, maybe they should be selling cars, where we expect to get lied to.

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