What exactly is a benedini tooth?

[Martybc3]

I recently got into buying shark teeth I just bought my first Megalodon tooth this week! I was seeing Benedini shark teeth as well, these are very expensive for their size. I can’t seem to find much information when I google benedini, what is this species of shark, and what makes these so rare?

[indominus rex]

They are a species of shark that lived during Paleogene and Neogene, people call them "false mako's" because they resemble a mako's tooth. Their teeth have been found in USA, Japan, Australia... and they are a species of Otododontidae they are Lamniformes(also known as Mackerel sharks). I don't know why their fossils are considered as very rare and another member should be able to tell you why. I am not an expert on them so I can't guarantee that what I have told you is completely true. Welcome to TFF and I hope this helped you a bit.

Regards, indominus rex 

[Ludwigia]

Parotodus benedini  is the full name of this thresher shark. They are basically scarcer and therefore not so many are on the market. Supply and demand.

[Brett Breakin' Rocks]

25 minutes ago, Martybc3 said:

I recently got into buying shark teeth I just bought my first Megalodon tooth this week! I was seeing Benedini shark teeth as well, these are very expensive for their size. I can’t seem to find much information when I google benedini, what is this species of shark, and what makes these so rare?

Hi There,

 

Just as @indominus rex has said Parotodus benedeni "false mako" is a type of extinct Mackerel Shark.  The teeth are rare to find in good condition and at a large size.  My understanding is that they were a pelagic species of shark that inhabited deep water and only occasionally approached coastal areas. That makes finding their teeth a bit more difficult.

 

You can find plenty of information online.

 

Elasmo has a blurb

http://www.elasmo.com/frameMe.html?file=genera/cenozoic/sharks/parotodus.html&menu=bin/menu_genera-alt.html

 

A great lecture discussing large sharks , including the giant lamniforms and their morphology and evolution.

 

 

[doushantuo]

van Beneden was one of the great 19th century Belgian anatomists/zoologists/paleontologists

[Nimravis]

Here is a pic of a jaw with real teeth that was put together by the Florida Museum of Natural History.

 

[siteseer]

On 4/24/2018 at 10:24 PM, Brett Breakin' Rocks said:

Hi There,

 

Just as @indominus rex has said Parotodus benedeni "false mako" is a type of extinct Mackerel Shark.  The teeth are rare to find in good condition and at a large size.  My understanding is that they were a pelagic species of shark that inhabited deep water and only occasionally approached coastal areas. That makes finding their teeth a bit more difficult.

 

You can find plenty of information online.

 

Elasmo has a blurb

http://www.elasmo.com/frameMe.html?file=genera/cenozoic/sharks/parotodus.html&menu=bin/menu_genera-alt.html

 

 

 

 

It was not necessarily a deepwater species.  It could have been an animal of the open sea frequenting the sunlit zone.  It could have been just a less-common species.  It's tough to say when all you have are teeth to look at.  They are the kind of teeth suitable for tearing into thick flesh and breaking through bone.  It might have been somewhat of a specialist in attacking whales and perhaps even other large sharks.  It's hard to say but when an animal has large, thick teeth it's logical to assume it had jaws powerful enough to use them efficiently and it was feeding on prey requiring teeth of that form.  I have seen Parotodus teeth with wear facets at the tips though not too often.  That means either the shark was biting into something hard on a regular basis and/or the teeth were in the mouth longer than the average shark.  You don't see wear facets on shark teeth too often as they tend to fall out before they start to show wear.  

 

The largest teeth in the jaws could reach three inches which is much larger than the average shark of any species across the whole history of sharks.  The size is on par with the largest known great white shark teeth and exceeded in its day by only Carcharocles megalodon.  This indicates an animal that most likely grew over 15 feet in length with some individuals over 20 feet.

 

The elasmo.com text should be read by every shark tooth collector and every fossil collector for that matter because it's a glimpse into the world of nomenclature.  It gives us an idea why some animals seem to have more than one scientific name and why they can change.  We must remember that every scientific name is an official proposal based on what's known at the time and therefore subject to replacement in light of new information.  In the 1800's fossil shark species were sometimes based on partial or damaged teeth or a group of teeth some of which were later deemed to belong to other genera.  Sometimes, researchers gave different names to teeth that turned out to be just different tooth positions of the same species.  Parotodus benedeni was originally named as a mako (genus Oxyrhina, the name for makos before it was replaced by Isurus) because the teeth looked close enough to mako teeth to put them in the same genus. 

 

I have talked to people who collected shark teeth before I was born and asked them what collectors thought of benedeni teeth.  One told me it was considered the odd mako.  It was a very rare find, but even for those who found one, it was more of a curiosity in a box among other makos than an in-demand species like megalodon. 

 

Even into the 1990's a Parotodus tooth was not considered a must-have among many collectors but the demand jumped around the mid-90's for some reason.  It could have been that increased communication among collectors around the world in the early days of widespread internet use allowed people to see teeth in more collections than they could physically visit.  Collectors became more educated in a shorter amount of time and the newbies saw that the old-timers had a few of those odd makos so they wanted some too.  It was during that time that I noticed more people interested in Ptychodus teeth as well.  It had been a genus still considered a ray by some and less interesting than the classic sharp-tipped shark teeth by others.  

[fossilselachian]

Nice summary Jess 

[siteseer]

5 hours ago, fossilselachian said:

Nice summary Jess 

 

Fossilselachian,

 

Thanks.  You would be someone to ask about what the collectors were saying when Cappetta erected the genus, Parotodus, in 1980 to accommodate the species benedeni separating it for makos in the process.  Were there still people who thought it was still a mako?  Kelley's Guide to Fossil Sharks (Lelley, Jr. 1970) used the name Oxyrhina crassa for an apparent Parotodus benedeni specimen.  I remember one dealer still using that name in the late 80's though Isurus benedeni was the name prior to 1980.  It took a few years for the new name to catch on.  I recall Parotodus being the name everyone was using when I started getting into shark teeth around 1989. 

 

It seems clear that Parotodus descended from Otodus, making Parotodus a genus of the family Otodontidae, yet some question this.  Parotodus appears in roughly the late Early Eocene (I've seen the species called P. priemi with no explanation)  with P. pavlovi and P. mangyshlakensis as Middle Eocene forms.  These last two are always clearly smaller than Otodus and later Parotodus but you see the size increase in the Oligocene as the lateral cusplets disappear completely.as a rule.  Personally, I don't know the difference between pavlovi and mangyshlakensis.  I should have asked Victor Kozlov when I had the chance.

 

Jess

[doushantuo]

Given the title of this thread, this might come in handy

[siteseer]

2 hours ago, doushantuo said:

Given the title of this thread, this might come in handy

 

Doushantuo,

 

Thanks for the page.  For those who haven't seen it before, that page is from the Cappetta article in which he erected Parotodus (Cappetta, 1980).  Basically, he's responding to another researcher's conclusion that the benedeni tooth form is just a variation of the "Isurus" morphology.  The other researcher, M.T. Antunes, also thinks that "Isurus"  hastalis is difficult to distinguish from the modern I. oxyrinchus.  Cappetta states that the 3rd upper file (intermediate tooth) of I. oxyrinchus is always half the height on average of the 2nd upper file and that it's not thicker than the other teeth (as would be the case if a benedeni tooth of the same position were inserted in the dentition).

 

He goes on to say that benedeni teeth show enough variation to reconstruct a dentition distinct from Isurus.  In deposits where hastalis and benedeni are associated, the latter species' teeth are as large if not more so and clearly [labiolingually] thicker than the former and therefore cannot be the intermediate teeth of hastalis.

 

Jess

 

Cappetta, H.  1980.

Modification du statut generique de quelques especes de selaciens cretaces et tertiaires.  Palaeovertebrata 10, 1: 29-42. 6 fig.

 

 

 

 

[doushantuo]

Antunes:

from Vera-Pelaez et al:

[Gritsgal]

This conversation was several years old now but I was wondering how do you tell the difference in these types vs a mako tooth?

[Meatasaurus93]

3 hours ago, Gritsgal said:

This conversation was several years old now but I was wondering how do you tell the difference in these types vs a mako tooth?

 

There are multiple species of mako sharks. The morphology of their dentition is varied. With that said, I assume you're referring to C. hastalis, as it's probably the most common "mako" tooth that collectors will encounter.

 

Carcharodon hastalis (formerly Isurus hastalis) is actually an ancestor to the great white shark, so the morphology of a hastalis tooth will bare a resemblance to that of a great white tooth.

 

Upper anterior teeth (the most common jaw position I see on the market) will feature a wide triangular crown, while being flat/blade-like. Unlike great white teeth, however, hastalis teeth do not feature serrations on their cutting edges. The roots on these teeth will also be somewhat flat and feature short lobes.

 

Here is a nice picture someone put together illustrating this:

 

 

Next, lower anterior teeth have a more robust build than their upper counterparts. Their crowns are needle-like but are somewhat thick in comparison to uppers. The roots are thick and have longer lobes. The reason for this is they were used to hold prey in place, while the uppers would slice up the animal. Thus, these teeth needed to be surdier and more durable.

 

 

Below are pictures showing examples of mako dentition and other jaw positions that I didn't cover above:

 

 

Parotodus benedeni teeth, on the other hand, are extremely robust all around, regardless of jaw position.  The most common benedeni teeth I see are both upper and lower lateral teeth. Their crowns are hooked, and the roots are very thick, especially compared to hastalis teeth.

 

Upper lateral benedeni

 

 

Lower lateral benedeni

 

 

Lower anterior teeth are not curved and resemble a lower anterior hastalis tooth that decided to take steroids, as seen below:

 

 

 

Hopefully this helps a little. It's not a comprehensive guide to teeth from either species, so I'm sure others can add more to it.

 

 

[siteseer]

On 10/27/2022 at 7:18 PM, Gritsgal said:

This conversation was several years old now but I was wondering how do you tell the difference in these types vs a mako tooth?

 

Parotodus benedeni teeth are generally thicker in the crown and root than mako teeth of the same size and they bear a bourlette, a chevron-shaped (or wide "V" shaped) dental band on the lingual side of the tooth where the crown meets the root.  In unworn specimens you might see a difference in shininess between the bourlette and the crown because of a difference in surface tooth tissue types.  The root is duller than the crown and bourlette.  However, in many specimens the dentine is often worn away but the chevron-shaped space where it was is often still discernible.  Carcharodon hastalis has a dental band that is much narrower and not always quickly noticeable. 

 

It's going to take some time for you to be able to notice the difference on a regular basis.  Some C. hastalis lower teeth can be thicker than usual so they can be mistaken for Parotodus teeth.  You have to look for evidence of the bourlette and also look at the root.  On the lingual side of a Parotodus tooth the root has a protuberance (a bump or extension) that is prominent though water wear can erode this feature.  Keep in mind that like with some other sharks, the anterior, lateral, and posterior teeth of the upper jaw are differently-shaped than those of the lower and they change shape in degrees from the anteriors to the posteriors.

 

Also keep in mind that there is variability in tooth shape in every shark species and there is change across the history of a genus especially one like Parotodus which appeared around 50 million years ago and died out around 2-3 million years ago.