Peace River Whale Tooth

[digit]

Last Saturday I was lucky enough to pull a nice odontoceti (whale) tooth from a favorite little (literally) spot on the Peace River. This location has very chunky gravel and often reveals nice prizes to repay the effort of digging through golf ball to bowling ball size gravel (if gravel is even an appropriate term for pieces that large). I've found the occasional piece of Long-beaked Dolphin (Kentrodontidae) jaw bone with its distinctive long groove punctuated with dental alveoli (tooth sockets) or the rare small tooth from this species.The item I found on Saturday is significantly larger than these small dolphin teeth measuring 8.5 cm (3.3") from tip to tip and 3 cm (1.2") across its widest girth.

Given the size (and searching the few fossil identification books I have) I believe this may be from the family Physeteridae (Sperm Whales). There is a photo near the bottom of page 162 of Frank Kocsis' book Vertebrate Fossils: A Neophyte's Guide that is as close as I've come to something with a similar shape and enamel cap. There is also a nice paper on sperm whale teeth attached to this post from some years back: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/16591-whale-tooth-id-help/?p=184390

In both of these references my find seems to most closely resemble pictured specimens labeled Scaldicetus sp. but I've learned from Boesse on this very forum that Scaldicetus is a poorly applied term referring to species belonging to over a half-dozen different genera. Given my tooth's visual similarity to the poorly defined "Scaldicetus" does it appear that I am at least correct in assuming this tooth belongs to Physeteridae and that trying to take the taxonomy down any further from this with a single isolated tooth is poorly advised? Looking for some confirmation that I'm on the right course (and have not overshot the runway).

Cheers.

-Ken

Edited May 6, 2016 by digit

[Fossildude19]

Whoa! What a beauty.

Looks like your hard work digging the cobbles and boulders is working for ya.

Thanks for sharing it, Ken.

Regards,

[sseth]

beautiful tooth.

[Darktooth]

Sweet find!

[digit]

Thanks.

I must be getting jaded as I had pulled three nice large chunks of mammoth tooth from this spot (all in an area only a few square meters) yet this whale tooth was definitely the trip-maker. I relish novelty both in life in general and fossil finds in particular. Since I now have half a dozen large (over a kilogram) pieces of mammoth tooth and one very special complete mammoth molar, the mammoth and meg finds for the day took a backseat to something that I hadn't encountered before--a decent size whale tooth. Still hoping this post catches the interest of someone like Boesse who can speak with some authority as to the likely former owner of this tooth and give me a more precise term than odontoceti tooth to describe it.

Cheers.

-Ken

[fossilized6s]

Wow, Ken! What a tooth! Congrats.

[digit]

Thanks, Charlie. It certainly made my day. Due to unseasonable rains and my busy schedule I've only been to the Peace River twice last season and (so far) twice this season. I've made those few visits count though. A large (sperm whale type) whale tooth has been on my bucket list for some years and I've scratched that off now.

Cheers.

-Ken

[jcbshark]

Wow Ken, that's one of the nicest whale teeth I've seen from around here: ) Congrats!

[FossilDudeCO]

WOW KEN!

That is fantastic! big congrats!

FOTM?

[digit]

Thanks. Don't know that it rises to the level of a FOTM candidate but it was surely the FOTD on that trip. I loaded the sifting screen with gravel and when I shook out the sand and smaller gravel and hoisted the screen up to balance on my shovel handle, this tooth was just sitting there looking at me. I knew in a split second just what it was (been wanting to find one for some time). Six and a half hours of digging were instantly worth it for that spontaneous jolt of adrenaline.

Cheers.

-Ken

[doushantuo]

while on the subject of cetacean dentition,some neontology:

http://www.lamaq.ufsc.br/files/2013/10/82-Loch-20131.pdf

[Boesse]

Yup, it's a primitive physeteroid whale of the "Scaldicetus" tooth grade. Nice find.

[digit]

Thanks, Boesse. I've been waiting for an authoritative word and I've just received it. Glad to see my research and instincts did not lead me far astray (as is oft to happen). I'll make sure I always use air-quotes when I tell someone it is a "Scaldicetus". I also noticed I've been dropping the first 'c' from that word (likely missed it when reading fine print in my ID book). I've fixed that in my post above so any future keyword searches on the forum will turn up this topic thread properly.

Thanks again for the confirmation. I'm rather pleased with the find and even more so now that it has a proper name.

Cheers.

-Ken

[doushantuo]

More om Miocene cetacea:

Hampe:

http://www.foss-rec.net/9/61/2006/fr-9-61-2006.pdf

http://www.hetnatuurhistorisch.nl/fileadmin/user_upload/documents-nmr/Publicaties/Deinsea/Deinsea_11/08_DSA_Peters.pdf

http://musmed.provincia.livorno.it/fileadmin/museo/Quaderni/22/Review_balaenids_Japan.pdf

and recent ones:

http://jms.org.br/PDF/v32n3a19.pdf

gatesy/geisler/Berta in MPE:

https://www.montclair.edu/profilepages/media/5008/user/Gatesy_et_al._2012_A_phylogenetic_blueprint_for_a_modern_whale.pdf

attention:intricate cladograms ahead

Osteology:

buchholtz(delphinidea,ZJ Linnean Soc:

http://academics.wellesley.edu/Biology/Faculty/Emily/vertebral%20ost.pdf

Cozzi(physiology/anatomy):

http://benthamopen.com/contents/pdf/TOZJ/TOZJ-2-24.pdf

ekdale/BERTA:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3120854/pdf/pone.0021311.pdf

Edited May 6, 2016 by doushantuo

[Khyssa]

Very nice tooth! It's in much better shape then the one I found a month or so ago.

Kara

[digit]

We'd love to see that one too. If you've got a photo of it you can tack it onto this topic.

Cheers.

-Ken

[ynot]

Hey hi,

I just wanted to say that it was a real pleasure to meet and dig with Tammy and Ken! They are the best of people and epitomise what TFF stands for.

Tony

PS I hope that We can do some more digging together!!!

[JarrodB]

Killer find. Congrats

[doushantuo]

To A Dutchman,any fossil is a delight to see.If somebody's got a tooth,show it.I don't care about rarity or collector's value.

[Khyssa]

We'd love to see that one too. If you've got a photo of it you can tack it onto this topic.

Cheers.

-Ken

Here's the tooth I found. As you can see it's not anywhere near as nice looking as yours and it doesn't help that I broke it with the shovel while digging.

[digit]

Interesting. It does seem similar on some ways and yet quite different in others. I know just about next to nothing about the larger whale teeth from our area and so I can't say more than just--whale teeth are cool! Despite the shovel break, I'm sure this one made your day when you found it. Glad you got both pieces.

Cheers.

-Ken

[lissa318]

Wow great tooth Ken congrats!!!! I would fall down if I found one like that!

[Khyssa]

I was very happy when I found the larger portion of the tooth. It wasn't until the next day when I was sorting through my finds that I realized that I had both parts of the tooth. I was even happier after that! I also found several other chunks of whale teeth in the same hole along with a few larger bone chunks so there may be more of that whale somewhere near there. Hopefully I'll be able to get back to that spot in the next couple of weekends.

I don't know a lot about whale teeth either except that that it was a first for me and has been on my fossil wish list for things to find.