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Shark Tooth Hill (Ernst Quarry) Hunt on 2016-01-22


digit

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Wow, looks like you two had a great trip! Beautiful teeth and I love that vert you prepped out. Your trip reports are always so detailed and engrossing.

Kara

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Thanks. It's my way of giving back to the forum for all I receive from its collective knowledge. I may not be a font of fossil knowledge but I do have the ability to string words together in great profusion and pepper them with images.

I've got some coral reef survey data processing work to catch up on but when I'm done with that I'm going to experiment with a 70mm macro lens that I borrowed from a fried. My plan is to try to take some higher quality macro images with my DSLR to see if I can approach the realm of quality of such masters of the craft like Julianna and Marco Sr. We'll see how I do with the new setup (and maybe some experimentation with image-stacking software). Stay tuned.

Cheers.

-Ken

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Hey Ken,

I have been given some information that furthers the "cleaning with hydrogen peroxide" information.

Caldigger said....

"After the initial cleaning soak with hot water, dry teeth and then soak in Hydrogen Peroxide for a good 24- 48 hours. Then wet scrub the fossils with a soft tooth brush. Any remaining matrix will come off and leave you with nice clean teeth, free of matrix in the crevices. This is the method introduced to me by Marcos Sr. that he uses on his teeth and I have used it with complete success. It does work...but as a final cleaning process, not to do an initial cleaning. That would be too much for the H.P. to handle."

Tony

Darwin said: " Man sprang from monkeys."

Will Rogers said: " Some of them didn't spring far enough."

 

My Fossil collection - My Mineral collection

My favorite thread on TFF.

 

 

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It was a great trip and a pleasure to meet TFF member Tony (ynot).

I've spent many hours in the co-pilot seat starting with a school mate of mine in college who was there for a "pre-pilot" degree--basically a 4-year degree that was required (and a private pilot's license) to get on the track to be a commercial airline pilot. A family friend was a master pilot for United Airlines (which is based in Chicago where we were at the time). Mike was on track to working his way into that career when I last spoke to him--it's been decades since I've lost touch with him. I fly on enough commercial air flights so I wouldn't be surprised to hear them announce Mike as the pilot one of these days.

I also get to work with a lot of scientists through the coral reef research work I do and the inside joke is that I'm not a marine biologist but that I play one on TV. In fact, I've been seen on the occasional TV program looking for all the world like a real scientist. I call myself a pseudo-scientist which sounds adequately self-effacing but the others I work with say I should call myself a parascientist like a paramedic or paralegal. Pseudo-scientist is more silly sounding though and much more my style. :P

I guess I can say I'm not a pilot but I play on on TFF. ;)

Glad you enjoyed the trip report thus far. I'm busy at the moment with some house maintenance that it occupying too much of my time. As soon as my time frees up a bit I plan on posting some photos of the micros I recovered from the meager amount of micro-matrix I brought back from Ernst Quarry.

Cheers.

-Ken

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Here is the meager amount of micro-matrix I managed to bring back from this trip--all washed and ready to be sorted (won't take long). Will post some photos of my micro finds when I have a moment to get my macro lens setup and lighting worked out. There are several interesting finds which are novel for me--but likely commonly encountered items to those who have the privilege of access to Shark Tooth Hill micro-matrix.

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Here is one of the larger teeth with the pretty orange (pumkin) coloration from near the "fire zone" in the Slow Curve Premium area. This one was on a nice large chunk of matrix and popped into view near the surface. The preparation on this one was quite easy and just amounted to taking down the chunk to reveal the display side which I undercut just a little bit to make the tooth "float" just above the matrix backing.

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I think the color and shape of the attached matrix make this tooth one of my favorite finds (though no way near the size of Tammy's sweet 2" tooth).

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This elongate lower mako with the nicely curved root was sitting in an odd orientation on the chunk of matrix on its side and perched on top of a small chunk of bone. I thought about completely removing this one from the matrix but decided I could always easily pop it off its mount if the prep job did not turn out to my liking. Cleaning the labial side which was mostly exposed already was quite easy. Then I moved over to the normal "display" (lingual) side which didn't take too long to reveal as the tooth was not buried very deep on the matrix. This was one of the most oddly positioned teeth that I've prepped but I am pretty happy with the result.

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This prep was the one I was dreading and left till the end so I'd have a little experience under my belt before tacking it. The corner of the fragile root broke off when a large chunk of matrix detached. I used some CA glue to rejoin the two main chunks--several smaller pieces below the tooth also took their leave when this piece disintegrated but I chose not to try to rebuild the entire original. You can see the the inopportune path that this crack chose to take right though the root.

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I started removing material from the display (lingual) side to check the condition of the remainder of the root. I added additional CA as soon as I had cleared the material off the root to fill the fine cracks that appeared.

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Once the root was stabilized I started removing more of the large chunk of matrix on the right. The thin portion joining the chunk of matrix under the tooth to the larger chunk to the right broke off as I continued to remove material. I considered gluing the chunk back in its original position but the break was not clean and would have required too much CA glue to fill the gap. This suddenly reduced to piece of matrix to a much smaller mount but I went with the flow and exposed as much of the root as I thought prudent--leaving the tooth standing upright on its root edge. I was pretty happy that I was able to salvage this tooth which might have otherwise crumbled to pieces without consolidation with CA glue.

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Cheers.

-Ken

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Hey Ken,

Your matrix pieces came out looking great! Anxious to see Your micro finds!

I have only prepared one of Mine, just been too busy to clean the rest.

I have not even searched the 6 buckets of "mini" matrix that I brought home.

Tony

Darwin said: " Man sprang from monkeys."

Will Rogers said: " Some of them didn't spring far enough."

 

My Fossil collection - My Mineral collection

My favorite thread on TFF.

 

 

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Over the next week or so I hope to find the time to photograph and post some images of the cool micro fossils that I've found in the limited amount of micro-matrix I was able to bring back from the Ernst Quarry. As nobody chose to outbid me on Tony's generous offering of two gallon bags of concentrated Shark Tooth Hill micro-matrix, I'll be receiving more to sort though soon. Tony had mentioned that he had been finding some of the unusual teeth of Horn Sharks (Heterodontus sp.) in the batch of matrix he offered for the auction. As eluded to in the genus name, these sharks have two distinctly different shaped teeth. The anterior teeth are tiny and contain three cusps (a larger central cusp bracketed with a smaller cusp on either side). The more unusual teeth--and Tony's favorites--are the lateral teeth which are elongate little "mini loafs" with a ridge running along the top of the tooth. These sharks feed primarily upon shelled mollusks and where the front teeth are good at grasping slippery subjects, it is the rear teeth that are able to crush the shells of their prey like a set of nutcrackers. Anybody who has never done a Google internet search for "Heterodontus teeth" should amuse themselves for a moment with this most odd dentition.

Tony sent me images of some of his Heterodontus teeth and I instantly recognized the shape as something I puzzled over while searching STH micro-matrix but dismissed as likely a broken root of some larger tooth. Luckily, I had saved the micro-matrix after I had searched through it and was able to go back to it and make another pass looking for this new item of interest with my new expanded search image. It didn't take but a minute or two to find a few examples of these bizarre crushing teeth--tiny though they are. When Tammy came home from work I told her I was searching the matrix a second time to look for any missed Heterodontus teeth and showed her Tony's photos so she could see their unusual shape. She looked at the batch of micro-matrix I had just spread on a paper plate and she said, "You mean like this one?" and pointed to the nicest specimen to be found yet. It just goes to show that a little knowledge can be a powerful thing and a proper search image can make for more fruitful searches. Here's Tammy's find:

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Slightly larger than the tiny micros is the most unusual tooth I think I've found from the Ernst Quarry. This one has me puzzled but I'm sure someone will recognize it instantly and provide me with yet another learning experience courtesy of TFF and the diverse knowledge base contained in the collective memories of its members. This tooth (as hopefully is clear in the photo) has a flat root that is shaped rather like a rectangle--or more accurately a parallelogram. The root measures approximately 7mm x 10mm and the curved enamel cusp on the tooth is around 8mm long. Anybody recognize this? If I get no responses here I'll repost in the Fossil ID section of the forum.

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More micros as I find the time.

Cheers.

-Ken

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Hey Ken,

That heterodontus is a wonderful example! The other tooth is an Angel shark (Squatina lericheii).

Tony

Edited by ynot

Darwin said: " Man sprang from monkeys."

Will Rogers said: " Some of them didn't spring far enough."

 

My Fossil collection - My Mineral collection

My favorite thread on TFF.

 

 

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Ken- I'm thinking your unknown tooth is an upper anterior Hexanchus tooth but would need to see different angles to be sure. I look forward to pictures of your micro finds.

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Bingo! Thanks for the pointer, Al Dente. A little Google image searching with this information turned up several photos matching my tooth to a great degree. Looks like Hexanchus andersoni is the most common (possibly only) Cow Shark species found in the Round Mountain Silt at Shark Tooth Hill. I guess I've got my first Cow Shark--even if it isn't the saw-blade like lower that I still have on my bucket list.

Will try to find some time today to setup the camera and stage some of my micros for photographs.

Cheers.

-Ken

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Anxious to see Your micro finds!

Wait no longer--well, at least here are the first of (hopefully) more images.

I borrowed a friends 70mm macro lens and used it to prove that I could likely get some decent macro images of my micro fossils. I ended up buying (a not very inexpensive) 100mm macro lens for my Canon DSLR in an attempt to produce better micro photos than my cheap "digital microscope" could produce. The problem has always been depth-of-field with that photography setup. Even with a decent macro lens, the DOF is limited to a very thin slice when photographing items on the millimeter scale. I used the focus-stacking software that I learned about on this forum (Helicon Focus): http://www.heliconsoft.com/software-downloads/

This software is impressively easy to use and produces excellent results in just seconds. I've got the 30-day trial running now but I'll surely spend the money on this software.

Here are some of the results of my first efforts with this new lens and software.

Here's a nice Angel Shark tooth and an odd Angel Shark with a more elongated extension pointing down toward the root just under the cusp.

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I'm going to try to find better examples of Basking Shark teeth but here is my first attempt.

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Here is a small cetacean tooth. The curved enamel portion looked like it had side seams and for a split second I thought it might be a Basking Shark tooth with an elongated root. Closer inspection showed this to be as first suspected--cetacean.

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Dogfish teeth are quite alien to me as we have nothing quite like them in the Peace River (or anywhere in Florida). The tiny size and angled primary cusp are reminiscent of Rhizoprionodon (Sharpnose Shark) teeth but instead of being thin and flat these teeth have very chunky roots with an odd lobe pointing down toward the root--kinda like the odd Angel Shark tooth above.

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More teeth micros as I find good examples to photograph.

Cheers.

-Ken

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I have a similar set up, Ken. Your images 'say' you're on the right track. :)

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The human mind has the ability to believe anything is true.  -  JJ

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Here are some of the results of my first efforts with this new lens and software.

Cheers.

-Ken

Ken

Your pictures look really good. Your setup is working very well. Angel shark teeth are especially tough to keep in total focus because of depth of field issues.

Marco Sr.

"Any day that you can fossil hunt is a great day."

My family fossil website     Some Of My Shark, Ray, Fish And Other Micros     My Extant Shark Jaw Collection

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Given the fantastic images you already produce with your current setup, I can't imagine how you could do better.

Your images and those of Marco Sr. have been the Gold Standard of micro-photography on this forum.

Cheers.

-Ken

Edited by digit
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I took a break from doing some data processing to play with fossils. I have already sorted through the meager amounts of micro-matrix I was able to bring back from my trip to the Ernst Quarries but since I won Tony's recent forum-benefitting auction of Shark Tooth Hill micro-matrix (both from the East Quarry and Slow Curve Premium) I have more material to keep me busy. When I can I like to sort through a bit of micro-matrix before putting in my contact lenses in the morning (easier to see tiny things up close without them). I have found some fascinating micros between the micro-matrix I processed from my trip and the bags that Tony sent to me.

I've also been amusing myself with my new 100mm macro lens and the focus-stacking software (Helicon Focus) that I recently purchased to up my game for better photographs of the cool little micros I'm finding. I thought I'd start off this little photo gallery with a better photo of one of the larger (non-microscopic) teeth--an upper Hexanchus.

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I was also able to prop up one of the larger Basking Shark teeth that I've found. There have been some really nicely colored ones in the East Quarry micro-matrix from Tony--many with a cherry red quality to them.

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You can see some hints of the amber to cherry coloration in these fossils in this tiny ray dermal dentical ('thorn').

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Speaking of rays, I finally took the time to take some decent photos of nice examples of the many Dasyatis ray teeth in this micro-matrix. The tiny teeth seem to be sexually dimorphic with the males having interesting hooked cusps on the tops. I need to research more about why the male's teeth are so different.

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Some of the most fun I've been having while sorting through the micro-matrix from Shark Tooth Hill is searching for Heterodontus (Bullhead Shark) teeth. Since Tony clued me in to their existence in this locality I've enjoyed spotting the oddly-shaped lateral crushing teeth of this species. They are called heterodont due to the two distinct types of teeth they possess. Tony showed me photos of the tiny anterior teeth with their main cusp accompanied by a smaller cusp on either side. I had found several laterals but had not reliably found anything I could justify as considering a Heterodontus anterior till sorting some of Tony's matrix this morning. Here are my two morning finds--only a couple of millimeters in size (and a lateral for comparison).

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Really enjoying the time I can spare to pick through this micro-matrix, there are always surprises. Till the El Niño rains and the Peace River water level permit, this is the only kind of fossil hunting I'm likely to get into for some time.

Cheers.

-Ken

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Speaking of rays, I finally took the time to take some decent photos of nice examples of the many Dasyatis ray teeth in this micro-matrix. The tiny teeth seem to be sexually dimorphic with the males having interesting hooked cusps on the tops. I need to research more about why the male's teeth are so different.

Nice photos

The hooked teeth of the male is seasonal. It helps them grasp the female to mate. There is a good paper titled "Seasonal dynamics of dental sexual dimorphism in the Atlantic Stingray Dasyatis Sabina" by Kajiura and Tricas, 1996 in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

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That's one of the things I love about this forum--you can't even hint at a question without receiving an enlightening answer in response.

I'll have a great time educating myself while reading that paper.

Cheers.

-Ken

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