Jump to content

Micro Shark teeth Treasures from the Cretaceous Anthills in Az


Arizona Chris

Recommended Posts

One of the most exciting finds in the giant ant hills in the Cretaceous limestones near Show Low was the hordes of tiny sharks teeth.  Since I am not an expert on such, we called any flat triangular, round with sharp tip, or curved flat with sharp tip tooth a sharks tooth.  Now I want you to try to imagine a bright red fire ant carrying a quarter inch big flat serrated sharks tooth in its big venomous jaws out of its hole and in one mighty thrust - throw it over the sides!  These are our tiny fossil seeking robots, and they do a great job at bringing to the surface many types of microfossils that we never found ourselves even in the nearby layers of limestone.  Here, Im going to highlight the teeth and show you some of the types we picked out of the slopes of countless gravel and sand grains on the sides of the big 4 foot ant hills.  

 

Most of the material was found by first identifying prospective ant hills that were hopefully abandoned that contained plenty of fossils.  Then we scraped the sides into gallon bags to take back with us for washing and sorting.  Unfortunately, some of the best hills were still shall we say - "active" and when you scraped a bit too hard they would all come rushing out to greet you with gaping biting jaws.  There are hazards to micro fossil hunting for sure!  

 

Here are the images I took yesterday of the specimens with a 10x binocular microscope by pointing a digital camera into the eyepiece.  Ive grouped them according to shape and type roughly, so thank you for looking and glad to share them with this group!  The scale on the bottom of each image is in mm.

 

DSC00502.jpg

DSC00503.jpg

DSC00504.jpg

DSC00505.jpg

DSC00506.jpg

DSC00507.jpg

DSC00508.jpg

DSC00509.jpg

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Arizona Chris

Paleo Web Site:  http://schursastrophotography.com/fossiladventures.html

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The first photo looks like it may be a Squalicorax, but the fragment is too incomplete to propose a species.

 

A trick I have read about for dealing with active anthills is to shovel the dirt into a bucket of water.  The ants float (some will grasp legs and antennae to form a "raft" of ants), and then you can pour them off and keep the (wet and heavy) dirt to sieve later.

 

Don

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@MarcoSr will be quite interested in this. He loves micro & ant hill matrix and this has both.

Don't know much about history

Don't know much biology

Don't know much about science books.........

Sam Cooke - (What A) Wonderful World

Link to comment
Share on other sites

FossilDAWG - it sounds good, but then I can imagine having to haul now big buckets of heavy muck back to the car!  Usually, we run away when the ants start coming out.  About half the hills were deserted making it my first choice anyway...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Arizona Chris

Paleo Web Site:  http://schursastrophotography.com/fossiladventures.html

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nice to see Cretaceous fossils from Arizona. What epoch and age are they?

My goal is to leave no stone or fossil unturned.   

See my Arizona Paleontology Guide    link  The best single resource for Arizona paleontology anywhere.       

Link to comment
Share on other sites

They are Turnonian in age, in the Cretaceous Daktota formation.  There is a large area from Show Low to the NM border with such sediments.  We have found both amazing petrified wood, and car tire sized ammonites.  Mostly Exogyra oysters however in the marine stuff.  

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Arizona Chris

Paleo Web Site:  http://schursastrophotography.com/fossiladventures.html

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Arizona Chris

 

Can I please put in a special request for 1 ammonite AND 1 Exogyra, with both being car tire sized?

 

We'll be in western Nebraska in mid-Sept with truck and can shoot on over and pick them up. :drool: :wub: I'll even do the loading.

Don't know much about history

Don't know much biology

Don't know much about science books.........

Sam Cooke - (What A) Wonderful World

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...