My attempt at a one row megalodon and great white jaw

[mattbsharks]

5 hours ago, ynot said:

The real reason behind the shape is dictated before the tooth is exposed. It provides a flat smooth surface inside the mouth so food does not have anything impeding the down throat travel.

extremely plausable theory. I'm still not ruling out the theory of an attempt to troll humans. 

[siteseer]

On September 28, 2017 at 6:39 AM, Doctor Mud said:

Hi @mattbsharks,

 

coming along nicely - seems like your buddy shared his (or her) pink elephant for scale 

 

I recommend looking at this site:

 

http://www.elasmo.com/frameMe.html

 

On elasmo.com there are also reconstructed meg tooth sets.

 

This will help with telling uppers from lowers and how teeth vary across the jaw.

 

For example, you seem to have mostly uppers in your great white. 

 

Looking forward to seeing more in the future.

 

 

 

Doctor Mud,

 

Yes, the thing about assembling an artificial dentition is that you can't go by just one example of a natural dentition.  Experts will disagree on whether one tooth is in position or should be one over.  Of course, the upper teeth are broader-crowned and their roots have more of a U-shape while the lowers have more of a V-shape (longer lobes) but there is some variation there too.  

 

The largest teeth in the Gordon Hubbell dentition from Bone Valley appear to be about 4 inches high.  If you are building a dentition starting with 5-inch teeth, you have to understand that the teeth are not only going to be a little larger but also a little wider with a little more variation possible at each position so using the Hubbell dentition helps a lot with general shapes, both of the crown and the root, but you would also want another natural dentition of a larger animal to give you an idea of the range of shape per jaw position.  It isn't as simple as going from largest teeth to smallest teeth because there is variation at each position.  That third upper tooth could be about the same size as the fourth tooth or noticeably smaller.

 

The posterior teeth are generally harder to find and it's time-consuming to find teeth that go together.  I know collectors who wanted to just find 3-4 teeth that would go together but getting the sizes just right or close enough is tough especially if you want the colors to be close.

 

I think the key would be to start at one jaw position of a species, the first upper on the right for example.  Look at as many examples of that as possible so you see how that tooth can look.  Do that for every position.  You want to look at other attempts at a dentition and you will get an idea where they went wrong - the teeth that seem to stick out.

 

Jess 

 

P.S.  Yes, the teeth look like mostly uppers to me as well.  The good thing about great whites is that you can find more examples of dentitions of that than for megalodon.  

[Troodon]

One other point is that if the roots are reconstructed, as appears to be the case in some of the teeth, it's going to be very difficult to get an accurate artifical dentition.