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Please help me ID these Meg shark teeth


dontom

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I was wondering if anyone could help me with these Meg teeth.  The black one was sold to me as a juvenile tooth.  My question is how can you tell if it's from a juvenile or if it's from a grown Meg but just located in the corner of the jaw where the teeth are smaller.  Same question with the lighter colored one.  That one was sold to me as just a Meg tooth but I was wondering if there is a way to tell if it's from a juvenile.

 

Thanks for any help

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The lighter color tooth comes from the front of the mouth. Considering the front teeth of adults could reach between between 5-6 inches a would say that is not an adult tooth. 

I'm not sure of the location of the darker tooth. But I believe this is one way to judge weather adult vs juvenile. Anyone please correct me if I am wrong.

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I like Trilo-butts and I cannot lie.

 

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The black one looks like juvinile but, could be from an adult that the tooth is from position in the jaw where the teeth are like that. The white one does look like an adult. But it is very hard to distinguish between both.

 

"Without fossils, no one would have ever dreamed that there were successive epochs in the formation of the earth" - Georges Cuvier

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To me, the black tooth looks like it is a right lower lateral tooth from fairly far back in the jaw and the pale tooth looks like it is an anterior from the upper left. The black tooth appears to be from a good sized shark, not a juvenile. The other tooth is probably from a juvenile shark. In addition, from the morphology of the teeth, I would say that the black tooth is upper Miocene or Pliocene and the other looks more like middle Miocene. The flaring enamel near the root is pretty common in Pungo Fm and Calvert Fm meg teeth.

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What is your definition of a juvenile shark?  Is it an immature shark? Immature meaning not of breeding age.  What size was a breeding megalodon?  How did shark size relate to tooth size.  There is extreme size difference between megalodon anterior teeth and extreme posterior teeth.  Were breeding females much larger than breeding males?  Too many unknowns and too much subjectivity here.  And truthfully what difference does it make?

 

Edited to add:

To show the variability of shark size from Ebert 2013 Sharks of the World for Carcharodon carcharias, great white shark:

Measurements Born: 110-160cm  Mature: males 350-400cm, females 450-500cm  Max about 600cm

You can see the wide range for size at birth and the difference between mature male and mature female size.  The juvenile teeth for some shark species can have tooth features that are different from mature teeth.  For great whites some juvenile teeth can have cusplets and incomplete serrations.

 

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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