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Mazon Creek ID- Braceville Shaft Mine Find


Nimravis

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Yesterday I was cracking open some concretions that I collected from the Braceville Shaft Mine (Essex Fauna) in 1999. I came across this little piece and posted it on my thread - "Sometimes You Have To Whack It". @Peat Burns replied that it looked like a tooth from a Cladodus type shark and I also agree that it looks like a shark tooth. In all my years and thousands of concretions from Mazon Creek, I have never seen anything like this. I would like to get other opinions on this or an exact ID.  @fiddlehead , @RCFossils , @fossilized6s , @Rob Russell - what do you think?

 

IMG_7182.jpg.229af902472676dab4ea70c3ef2e5196.jpgIMG_7183.jpg.28e6b18581f777f3740d86a8b1166e4a.jpgIMG_7192.thumb.jpg.08cf26e67026053133325d4a68d4b46e.jpgIMG_7193.thumb.jpg.c47bb04870e2a220cde7d3d4f232dbe9.jpg5b417d9c8b566_S20180707_0004(2).thumb.jpg.ea69c0438fc20ae693a723213c418543.jpg5b417d9d16bc3_S20180707_0005(2).jpg.4f9fb6b43fbb981bb4375df133031967.jpgS20180707_0005.jpg.a92a0a1c56ff5f779e9fda579887e8a7.jpg

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Interesting. It does look very similar.  I can't confirm. But i can't think of any flora or fauna that looks similar. I would definitely check-in with @fiddlehead or @RCFossils

~Charlie~

"There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why.....i dream of things that never were, and ask why not?" ~RFK
->Get your Mosasaur print
->How to spot a fake Trilobite
->How to identify a CONCRETION from a DINOSAUR EGG

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Very cool!  Like Charlie, I can’t say for certain, but it sure looks toothy to me.  Perhaps Orthacanthus sp. Nice find. Hopefully Jack or Rob will weigh in. 

 

Nimravis, you could tag member “stats”, also. He may be able to weigh in, too. I would do it myself; however, I’m not sure how that’s done on this site. Lol

Finding my way through life; one fossil at a time.

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3 hours ago, Rob Russell said:

Very cool!  Like Charlie, I can’t say for certain, but it sure looks toothy to me.  Perhaps Orthacanthus sp. Nice find. Hopefully Jack or Rob will weigh in. 

 

Nimravis, you could tag member “stats”, also. He may be able to weigh in, too. I would do it myself; however, I’m not sure how that’s done on this site. Lol

Thanks and I will do that now. 

 

@stats

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3 hours ago, Rob Russell said:

. I would do it myself; however, I’m not sure how that’s done on this site. Lol

Type @ and the members user name, You will get a drop down list.

Select the appropriate name from the list.

 

@Rob Russell

Darwin said: " Man sprang from monkeys."

Will Rogers said: " Some of them didn't spring far enough."

 

My Fossil collection - My Mineral collection

My favorite thread on TFF.

 

 

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On 7/7/2018 at 9:58 PM, Nimravis said:

Yesterday I was cracking open some concretions that I collected from the Braceville Shaft Mine (Essex Fauna) in 1999. I came across this little piece and posted it on my thread - "Sometimes You Have To Whack It". @Peat Burns replied that it looked like a tooth from a Cladodus type shark and I also agree that it looks like a shark tooth. In all my years and thousands of concretions from Mazon Creek, I have never seen anything like this. I would like to get other opinions on this or an exact ID.  @fiddlehead , @RCFossils , @fossilized6s , @Rob Russell - what do you think?

 

IMG_7182.jpg.229af902472676dab4ea70c3ef2e5196.jpgIMG_7183.jpg.28e6b18581f777f3740d86a8b1166e4a.jpgIMG_7192.thumb.jpg.08cf26e67026053133325d4a68d4b46e.jpgIMG_7193.thumb.jpg.c47bb04870e2a220cde7d3d4f232dbe9.jpg5b417d9c8b566_S20180707_0004(2).thumb.jpg.ea69c0438fc20ae693a723213c418543.jpg5b417d9d16bc3_S20180707_0005(2).jpg.4f9fb6b43fbb981bb4375df133031967.jpgS20180707_0005.jpg.a92a0a1c56ff5f779e9fda579887e8a7.jpg

Looks like a little rock hammer :)

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1 hour ago, GeschWhat said:

Looks like a little rock hammer :)

Maybe an ice axe for when I climb.

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54 minutes ago, Nimravis said:

Maybe an ice axe for when I climb.

Hah, so it does!

 

I got to use one of these useful little items recently while scrambling around on an outlet glacier in Iceland recently. Found it really useful as a hanger to hold onto my camera backpack while venturing inside a small ice cave. It was also real useful for chipping out a chunk of some of the cleaner ice pieces during the hike--what can I say? (I like chewing on ice cubes.) :drool:

 

P6138446.jpg     IMG_9966.jpg

 

Back to the original topic--I hope @fiddlehead sees this soon and can weigh in on this unusual find. Wondering who else might have the deep knowledge of Carboniferous age "shark" teeth? Do we know anybody (aside from Jack) at the Field Museum who would know enough to give a reasonably certain ID?

 

Cool find, Charlie.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

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That is a very suggestive shape indeed! Does it show any type of texture under magnification? 

 

Zangerl mentions a "concentration of cladodont teeth" found in the Essex Biota in Nitecki's Mazon Creek book, and Johnson and Richardson 1966 mention "isolated cladodont and pleuracanth teeth", but I have never seen any photographs or illustrations of them from Mazon Creek, just Orthacanthus. 

 

Johnson, Ralph Gordon, and Eugene S. Richardson. “A Remarkable Pennsylvanian Fauna from the Mazon Creek Area, Illinois.” The Journal of Geology, vol. 74, no. 5, 1966, pp. 626–631. JSTOR, JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/30059304

 

Mazon Creek Fossils Symposium (1978 : Ann Arbor, Mich.) & Nitecki, Matthew H & Paleontological Society & Field Museum of Natural History (1979). Mazon Creek fossils. Academic Press, New York Link to search results for cladodont in the volume.

 

 

 

 

 

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@deutscheben thanks for the info- I also agree that it is a very suggestive shape. The zoomed up pics I made with a digital (Cheap) microscope, and it is the best I can get. I am working with another member who is looking into something for me and hopefully will get a definitive answer.

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10 hours ago, Nimravis said:

Maybe an ice axe for when I climb.

There's ice in Illinois? Where?

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1 hour ago, jdp said:

There's ice in Illinois? Where?

I climb, but no ice climbing. But to further answer your question, I believe people climb some of the waterfalls that freeze in the winter, like at Starve Rock.

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Here is a cladodus tooth i picked up from the net. It is Mississipian and comes from Upper Silesia in Poland.

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"On ne voit bien que par le coeur, l'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux." (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

"We only well see with the heart, the essential is invisible for the eyes."

 

In memory of Doren

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On 7/9/2018 at 7:29 PM, Nimravis said:

I climb, but no ice climbing. But to further answer your question, I believe people climb some of the waterfalls that freeze in the winter, like at Starve Rock.

Give ice a try sometime. It's good fun.

 

As for the fossil, I'm not sure what it is, but it doesn't look toothy to me. I feel like I've seen something like this before, but I don't remember where. Thinking maybe arthropod, but it might be bone I suppose. But definitely not tooth.

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1 minute ago, jdp said:

Give ice a try sometime. It's good fun.

 

As for the fossil, I'm not sure what it is, but it doesn't look toothy to me. I feel like I've seen something like this before, but I don't remember where. Thinking maybe arthropod, but it might be bone I suppose. But definitely not tooth.

I am mailing it out to a Professor tomorrow so he can take it look at it, it might turn out to be nothing.

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Keep me posted. I'm pretty curious. I've been delving a bit into Mazon work recently, so I've been doing a lot of puzzling at nodules.

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In my opinion it is a shark tooth and should be referred to as Cladodus sp. Admintently this is not my normal cup of tea, but having looked at every major Mazon Creek museum collection  and many large private collections, I do not recall ever seeing this type of tooth from Mazon Creek. This is quite a nice find. Most of these types of teeth are from the lower Carboniferous, but there is no reason they would not have occasionally been found at Mazon Creek as well. This tooth form is known, and I have personally seen them in the younger in age Excello black shale (but not considered Mazon Creek) from Pit 14, just south of Pit 11. One thing to note about Mazon Creek teeth is that unlike the vast majority of fossil sites, the teeth here are poorly preserved. And very often the enamel simply falls off or washed off by the surprised owner soon after the concretion is opened. This reminds me that there is one thing that should be cleared up here, that is what is meant by being from Mazon Creek. My definition is a fossil found in the Francis Creek Shale from northeastern Illinois. 

 

Hope this helps,

Jack

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Helps immensely, Jack!

 

Thanks for the authoritative commentary. The forum is richer for your (periodic) presence here.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

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