Micro shark, ray and fish teeth from the Eocene of South Carolina

[sixgill pete]

Very nice Marco. As usual great photos and  great specimens. LaFarge quarry in Harleyville is one of the few places I do not have matrix from in the Carolina's. I do know someone who has some, but getting him to part with it is a different story. 

[MarcoSr]

2 hours ago, siteseer said:

 

Hi MarcoSr,

 

I've seen Pristiophorus rostral teeth from only a few localities and oral teeth from just two:  Pyramid Hill, California (same size range) and at least one of the Atacama Desert sites in Chile.  The Chilean rostral spines were widely available for a while and you can still get them from from a few dealers.  These spines are larger than the ones I had seen out of Pyramid Hill and Peru and the oral teeth are larger too (4-5 mm wide and 3-4mm high).

 

Jess   

 

 

2 hours ago, siteseer said:

 

By the late 90's Larry was really into micro teeth.  He enjoyed screening matrix he acquired.  I think his Harleyville matrix came from the "greencap."  He had some micros from the Chandler Bridge Formation as well.

 

Jess

 

Jess

 

Larry is still really into the micro teeth.  We traded matrix from a number of sites years back.  He really likes the very small specimens (1 mm and smaller) so he always collects very fine matrix.  I typically sample the very fine matrix but prefer larger matrix which is much easier and less time consuming to search.

 

When I sent pictures of my specimens to Dr. Bruce Welton to confirm the Pristiophorus identification, Bruce sent me a reply stating " The teeth you photographed certainly look like Pristiophorus.  I have collected numerous teeth of this genus from the early Miocene of California and Oregon. "  So Pristiophorus specimens must be a lot more common on the West Coast versus the East Coast of the US.

 

I do have Pristiophorus rostral teeth from Chile and they are much larger than my specimens.  I haven't seen the oral teeth from Chile for sale but they sound also much larger at 4-5 mm than those that I found.  I only got very fine matrix from Larry so I don't know if larger matrix from the quarry contained larger specimens than what I found.  I didn't find any Pristiophorus specimens in the larger matrix that I collected from the quarry.

 

Marco Sr.

[Al Dente]

Nice finds. I think both your placoid scale and dermal denticle come from Squatina. Here's a patch of skin from a Squatina I found on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The hooked shaped denticles were described as Squatina denticles by Gerard Case in his River Bend shark paper. I'm guessing they are from the pectoral fins of males. I've found similar hooked shaped denticles from the River Bend Formation and Castle Hayne Formation in North Carolina and the Round Mountain Silt in California.

 

 

[MarcoSr]

19 hours ago, sixgill pete said:

Very nice Marco. As usual great photos and  great specimens. LaFarge quarry in Harleyville is one of the few places I do not have matrix from in the Carolina's. I do know someone who has some, but getting him to part with it is a different story. 

 

Don

 

I really didn't find a lot in the matrix that I personally collected from LaFarge.  I didn't know the layers well enough to know where to take the matrix from.  Larry Martin's matrix was really good but Larry knew the layers.

 

Marco Sr.

[MarcoSr]

8 hours ago, Al Dente said:

Nice finds. I think both your placoid scale and dermal denticle come from Squatina. Here's a patch of skin from a Squatina I found on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The hooked shaped denticles were described as Squatina denticles by Gerard Case in his River Bend shark paper. I'm guessing they are from the pectoral fins of males. I've found similar hooked shaped denticles from the River Bend Formation and Castle Hayne Formation in North Carolina and the Round Mountain Silt in California.

 

 

 

 

Eric

 

I didn't realize Squatina had dermal denticles.  I was thinking they were from a ray.  The one you posted from the Oligocene is very similar to the ones that I found.  The placoid scales that you posted also look like a really good match for the ones that I found.  I wasn't thinking Squatina at all because I didn't find any Squatina teeth in the matrix but that probably was because the matrix was too small to contain Squatina sized teeth.

 

Marco Sr.

 

 

[Plantguy]

Really enjoyed seeing the good photos. What kind of scope/camera setup are you using to produce them? I was messing with some Florida boring sponge galleries and a scrap of a bryozoan over the weekend and what looks like a small tooth but I'm struggling once again with getting good photos of the small stuff. 

Regards, Chris 

[MarcoSr]

On 3/19/2018 at 10:48 PM, Plantguy said:

Really enjoyed seeing the good photos. What kind of scope/camera setup are you using to produce them? I was messing with some Florida boring sponge galleries and a scrap of a bryozoan over the weekend and what looks like a small tooth but I'm struggling once again with getting good photos of the small stuff. 

Regards, Chris 

 

Chris

 

I'm using a Dino-Lite AM4815ZT digital microscope.  It has built in software that does picture stacking and a number of adjustable settings that help a lot with picture taking.  It is fairly expensive but I take thousands of pictures a year so it is cost effective for me.

 

Marco Sr.