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Mosasaur - composite or original?


Aurelius

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The seller of this piece claims that the teeth are not composited onto the matrix, but, judging by this picture, I would say the roots aren't original. They lack texture and the one on the left in the close-up seems 'smudged' up onto the bone.

 

I would imagine the block has original bone but most of the teeth added afterwards, but I may of course be wrong. Can someone more experienced please give their opinion? Either way, it looks like a great piece to me, if a bit out of my price range!

 

Many thanks.

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I would agree, too much sandy matrix in those crown and root areas.

They also have a strange shape, a bit elongated from what you would/usually see.

 

*EDIT*

Looking a bit harder, it also seems like the bones in this piece come form multiple animals, the colour and texture has a larger variance than what I would expect to see.

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For me it's composite in many details.

 

It's a kind of piece that I despise! I do not like at all the Marocco composites. Neither free I wanted these pieces...

 

Sorry for my honest answer... Is my real feelings about this kind of fossils...

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I am wondering if that sharktooth was added in the matrix as well.

Dipleurawhisperer5.jpg

I like Trilo-butts and I cannot lie.

 

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Yes. Most definitely those roots are faked. The join between the teeth and root do indeed lack texture and seem a bit smudgy. The colour is also slightly different from the rest of the bone. Most of the teeth also seem to have a small area of matrix around them. Even when you wouldn't expect there to be that much matrix if cleaned properly. So That is likely to hide the glueing.

So yes I agree that these teeth are likely added in. Though the morphology does seem consistent. So the person who glued the teeth in seemed to have picked out similar teeth. Most of the teeth look like Prognathodon sp.

 

In the closeup photo between the 2nd and 3rd teeth in the row. There's a tooth above that is possible also glued in. but below that tooth there is a genuine root with a tooth crown. Though the crown is lacking any enamel. This may be an indication of what the original state of the fossil was. Many jaws that are found will be missing many teeth. It's possible that it had some or a bunch of these half broken teeth. And to make it more pretty to look at they added a bunch of complete tooth crowns.

 

There are other good things about this piece though. Besides the teeth I think this piece looks like it's entirely natural. The bone placement is nice and random and the matrix is generally messy and varied in colour. I'm seeing a complete? left dentary (lower jaw) and complete? left maxilla (upper jaw) that dips under the dentary. There's the inside of the skull roof on the left with what looks to be part of the braincase as well. Or else it might be a vertebra. On the bottom of the dentary it looks like there could be part of the splenial and there's plenty more bone fragments. This looks to be roughly half a skull. And at the top the lumpy bone very much looks like a humerus and on the right above the lower jaw there is a small thin bone that looks like a phalange. Nice bone quality too with not much crushing going on. There's also 2 fish teeth visible. One shark tooth in the middle and one on the far right which looks like it could be squalicorax or a ray tooth.

 

Who knows what more bones are hidden in the matrix. So it's really a shame about the teeth, which kinda ruins it.

 

 

46 minutes ago, darctooth said:

I am wondering if that sharktooth was added in the matrix as well.

Having shark teeth in pieces like this are so common I doubt that that is added in. It wouldn't be worth the trouble.

Olof Moleman AKA Lord Trilobite

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Thanks everyone for the feedback, that's exactly what I expected. Good to know I'm learning!

Despite the teeth, I would probably still buy it if I had that sort of money lying around (six times more money than I've spent on any fossil before, including two mosasaur jaws).

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I informed the seller of what I thought - he insists that it is absolutely genuine with no plaster whatsoever and has invited me to view it. However, he's £100 miles away and I couldn't afford it anyway, so it's a moot point.

Edit: He seems perfectly reasonable and I am not for a moment questioning his honesty.

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14 hours ago, Aurelius said:

I informed the seller of what I thought - he insists that it is absolutely genuine with no plaster whatsoever and has invited me to view it. However, he's £100 miles away and I couldn't afford it anyway, so it's a moot point.

Edit: He seems perfectly reasonable and I am not for a moment questioning his honesty.

 

If he insist the piece it's totally autentic and genuine, ask him why in every teeth we saw matrix between the tooth and the root... (Because obviously it's to hidding the junction and composition).

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I would agree to composite, but the bones itself are looking quite ok.

So +1 for LordTrilobite's argumentation..

 

Best regards,

Pemphix 

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I sent the seller some photos of my original teeth with roots, and he realised that his were not original and will be withdrawing it from sale and returning it to his supplier. So he was a totally honest guy and full credit to him.

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We need more stories like this where reasonable sellers acknowledge their mistakes after seeing proof.

Looking forward to meeting my fellow Singaporean collectors! Do PM me if you are a Singaporean, or an overseas fossil-collector coming here for a holiday!

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That intire thing looks 'built' to me.  Fake jacket and all.   Put together from all kinds of pieces and teeth.  Oh well, seems like the seller may be honest?

 

RB

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I disagree with that. Imagine you have a number of random separate pieces of mosasaur skull. Cleaning the stuff properly takes a lot of time. But lets say much of it has already been cleaned. You'd want to make the composite as appealing as possible. It looks like the maxilla is complete on this piece. But part of the front is hidden under the dentary. If I was making a composite I'd want to have that part visible to make it more appealing.

There's other things as well. Parts of the skull are turned around or upside down. Limb and skull elements mixed together. Nice and random. This is what I'd expect from a natural piece.

Olof Moleman AKA Lord Trilobite

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  • 4 months later...

I was able to buy this in the end - it seems legit to me, apart from the teeth of course. The bone is piled up quite randomly, and a little bit of prep has revealed some perfect bone and some rather less so. The only bit I was unsure about was the dentary, which almost seems too good to be true and is sort out out on its own, but it is slightly broken and it would be hard to explain the shape of the block, if that piece weren't there originally (the jacket is authentic).

 

Plenty more bone yet to expose, and I have to somehow work out what species this is! I won't be extracting it for a while, because I don't have enough space to do a proper job.

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Assuming that some of the teeth are not composited and actually original. This looks like Prognathodon sp. to me.

 

With roughly half a skull this should be a really fun project to prep and put together. I imagine with would benefit greatly if you'd scan the maxilla and dentary to 3D print mirror pieces for it.

Olof Moleman AKA Lord Trilobite

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  • 3 weeks later...

I've been working away on cleaning this piece, and have now uncovered several original teeth. I think this demonstrates that all of the teeth present on the surface of the block are Moroccan additions, because the originals are a different colour and size. I suspect that many - though not all - of the original teeth were crushed, and the 'preparator' removed all of the existing good teeth so that they could just replace all of them with these consistently coloured darker teeth. I simply cannot believe that all of the original teeth were crushed, when the bone is so well preserved - and when perfect teeth are preserved just below the surface.

 

Here's a good example of one of the original teeth, laying beneath one that has a fake crown (the root may be genuine). Is it possible to say anything about the species on the basis of this tooth? On the left, you can see a fragment of what I believe to be one of the missing jaw bones (or perhaps the ptygeroid) with two un-erupted teeth. One is visible (out of focus) just below the bottom fish vert, and one is in the bottom left corner on the same piece of bone, though it is tiny.

 

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Here's one other tooth, but only a partial. I have uncovered another good root with a crushed crown, too. I suspect there is an awful lot in this block. It certainly looks like something large is waiting for me under the maxilla, since it curves upwards in the middle.

 

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Based on just those two photos I don't think a better ID can be put on this piece yet. But maybe later when those teeth or maybe more teeth are properly exposed does it become more clear which species it could be. It's a shame that all of the previously visible teeth seem to be composited in to the block.

Olof Moleman AKA Lord Trilobite

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It is very unfortunate, but I always suspected it was the case. In the way that I plan to rebuild the skull (using semi-transparent 3D printed parts) it's not really the end of the world for me, especially since some teeth are preserved in the block, and quite a few of the roots are there.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I've found a few more teeth in this block, that escaped the wrath of the Moroccan preparator/vandal. Two loose teeth associated with the dentary that I extracted, and one larger example still in-situ in the maxilla. Thankfully it was hidden below the dentary, and so escaped being destroyed.

 

Two original teeth had been preserved in the dentary, but they were removed so that the preparator could retain conformity in the teeth they were adding, which is enough to make a strong man quiver with horror.

 

I'm wondering if this might be Halisaurus? Any thoughts would be welcome.

 

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It's a shame that someone actually seems to have destroyed/removed some original teeth. I'd say just keep at it and maybe even a quadrate might appear. The quadrate bone has the best diagnostic features in Mosasaur skulls.

 

And I don't think it looks particularly like Halisaurus.

Olof Moleman AKA Lord Trilobite

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