David in Japan Posted January 30, 2019 Share Posted January 30, 2019 @Al Dente @ynot When I search for Shark teeth here in Japan, I often find rootless teeth still encased in mudstone. Most of the time teeth have a root but in some case I can find tooth crown nicely preserved but without any root (tooth are kind of crushed just as if they were hollow). Could it be underdeveloped tooth? Is there anyway sure method to identify a underdeveloped tooth (other characteristics besides the missing root). I will post pictures of those tooth later. ~~~~~~~~~~~~〇~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Warmest greetings from Kumamoto、 Japan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ynot Posted January 30, 2019 Share Posted January 30, 2019 55 minutes ago, David in Japan said: . Could it be underdeveloped tooth? Always a possibility. 55 minutes ago, David in Japan said: Is there anyway sure method to identify a underdeveloped tooth (other characteristics besides the missing root). Not that I know of. 2 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al Dente Posted January 30, 2019 Share Posted January 30, 2019 9 hours ago, David in Japan said: @Al Dente @ynot When I search for Shark teeth here in Japan, I often find rootless teeth still encased in mudstone. Most of the time teeth have a root but in some case I can find tooth crown nicely preserved but without any root (tooth are kind of crushed just as if they were hollow). Could it be underdeveloped tooth? Is there anyway sure method to identify a underdeveloped tooth (other characteristics besides the missing root). I will post pictures of those tooth later. They can be undeveloped teeth but if you do some crude statistics, the odds against them being undeveloped are high. I’ve read where a shark can shed 20,000 teeth in its lifetime. These 20,000 will be shed with roots intact. When the shark dies it will have around 100 or less undeveloped teeth without roots. If all 100 are preserved as fossils (not likely because these enamel shells are fragile) then you would expect less than 1% of your finds to be undeveloped teeth. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Plax Posted January 30, 2019 Share Posted January 30, 2019 liking the statistics Al! I'd say that virtually all rootless teeth in the fossil record are simply leached/eroded of roots. Otherwise why would one find entire faunas without roots? If your experience is in buying teeth this would seem strange but why would a fossil dealer sell or collect rootless teeth? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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