Rebuilding fabricated fossil teeth

[Abstraktum]

Hello everybody

 

This here is my little story about bad fabrications and red flags and what to make the most of it.

 

I got my hands on a 8 cm (3.15 in) Carcharodontosaurid indet. tooth from KemKem.

It all started with the breaking of the tip while handling the tooth. It fell out of my hand on the table. Maybe just 3-4 cm falling, but that was enough to break the tip.

 

I asked Matt ( @Haravex ) what to do with it and he suggested to use super glue but also mentioned the hight amount of bad glue and other junk on the tooth.

 

 

His idea was to work with Acetone and see what is real and what is just junk attached to the tooth.

And oh boy this tooth was REALLY bad...

 

This was after a first cleaning with Acentone... you already see the unrelated stuff way better, especially at the tip.

 

 

So I threw the whole tooth in Acetone for several hours.

 

 

 

 

Then it started to really fall apart.

 

Here you can see the glue between the pieces. It was really bad and so much glue all over it and in between.

 

 

After a night in Acetone here are the pieces I could recover. They are now without any glue, matrix or other stuff. The tip definetly doesn't belong to the tooth, because off the different color.

 

And this was the bottom, I big pile of glue and god knows what other stuff....

 

 

 

After a lot of puzzeling I managed to restore most of the bottom.

So this is the final result. No glue, no matrix, no junk, no unrelated bone/tooth parts. I used very very strong super glue. Only a few tiny drops where enough to hold it together. Glue is only in between the pieces and not on the surface. As the tip definetly doesn't belong to this tooth I decieded to not attach it.

This is the actual tooth measuring at around 6,3 cm (2.48 in).

 

Again a BIG thank you to Matt @Haravex for helping me with this tooth. Without him this would not be possible.

 

It was the first time I actually restored a fossil and for what it is I'm pritty happy. I learned at lot about fabrications and red flags with this tooth. Way more than you could ever learn from just reading online. In the end you have to make your own experiences with this. See this stuff with your own eyes and work with the material.

In the future I will know now better on what to look for.

[Coco]

Hi,

 

Beautiful restoration work, very informative. Your tooth is more beautiful now.

 

Coco

[Haravex]

I agree it looks better like this and you know exactly what you have now is all from one tooth and real. I am so happy I was able to be assistance to you and that you have shared your experience with others to help them identify the possible pit falls others may find.

[Abstraktum]

Thank you everybody  

 

Here is a small comparison between a perfect and big Carcharodontosaurid indet. tooth and my reconstructed tooth. 

 

[Abstraktum]

Hello everybody

 

I think it is now the time to do another rebuild. 

This time I decided to go on a very big Spinosaurid tooth from KemKem. Measuring at 5.5 inches this is surley a monster. Or is it?

 

 

Like with the Carch tooth, I threw the whole thing in Acetone for about 16 hours. 

 

 

And like last time it quickly started to fall apart. 

So this was left:

 

I found the bottom very, very weird. It is one soild piece that still got Matrix on ot, but it can't be removed. However no more glue is present on the root at this point. 

So whats going on there?

 

 

Again Matt @Haravex came to the rescue and provided some helpfull information  Thx again Matt!

 

So what we got here is a composite of two Spino teeth. The crown is a fairly normal tooth with still some nice enamel on it. 

For the root I like to quote Matt:

 

Quote

so your root / crown section is a heavily water worn and sand eroded on one side, it also will not match the tip section as the tip has natural sand stuck to it which only occurs on teeth like this that have been carried by river systems.

 

In the end it looks like this:

 

 

I won't attach the crown to the root, as they come clearly from 2 different teeth and don't fit anyway.

This is another example on how teeth can be faked. Especially with large teeth you should always be very doubtful. 

It is really fun to "restore" such teeth to its "true" form, so this won't be my last tooth.

[Mark Kmiecik]

You are well on the way to reconstructing the entire skeleton of most fossils, including museum specimens. Once you assemble a few 3D jigsaw puzzles it is easy to see where and how things would normally fit. I have enjoyed reconstructing several small 100+ pieces fossils of plants where the matrix as well as the specimen were fragmented and broken away from themselves and each other. You very quickly learn that there is a sequence of assembly that works and others that will prevent other pieces from fitting. Some logic (similar to playing Tetris) is involved.

[Abstraktum]

Thank you!

 

At first I had my doubts if I get it right (especially with the Carch tooth), but once you start gluing stuff together it gets easier. With both tooth I didn't had any parts left. So all parts could be put back together.

 

Both teeth were fun to work with. I will definitely do more KemKem teeth in the future.

[Joeri_R]

I'm pretty new to collecting fossils and since I discovered this forum I have learned so much. Reading this topic I discovered that my own Spino and Mosasaur teeth are real but built together out of other teeth. Guess that's why I could buy them so cheap lol. But they are still real so I'm not complaining. Thank you for this most informative post!