Finally...... Jurassic Sharks !!

[fossilsonwheels]

I have not been very active with Fossils on Wheels lately. I took some time off and have been just doing family stuff and working. We did manage to start working on improving our shark education programs though and the first area I wanted to address was our total lack of Jurassic era sharks. We are splitting the 4th grade adaptations into 2 one hour long presentations which allows us to get into some deeper science and introduce more sharks. The big gaping hole was in the Jurassic so I searched pretty hard to find some interesting teeth to add.

 

The first picture is two nice Asteracanthus magnus teeth we picked up. I thought this was a great addition for us. I believe this was one of the larger sharks of that time and the teeth are another example of crushing teeth.

 

I was super happy to add some Cretorectolobrus teeth from the UK. This gives us a chance to point out a modern shark family and introduce the kids to Carpet sharks which become a prominent part of the second presentation. I am pretty excited to see the artwork my son comes up with for these small sharks.

 

Not pictured (the camera on my phone is broken and I am too lazy to get out my Canon), a Sphenodus tooth from Russia. I do not believe these are considered a Cow Shark but they in the order Hexanchiformes so we can at least place the order on the timeline in the Jurassic. Important for us because there is absolutely no way we are finding a Jurassic Cow shark tooth lol It also gives us a chance to talk about deepwater sharks and the adaptations they have.

 

Also not pictured and not in hand yet, are two more additions that put modern shark on the timeline. We are getting a Paracestraction tooth which puts Bullheads on the board and a Spathobatis tooth which will be our earliest representative of the rays.

 

We went from zero Jurassic species to 5 which is as far as we will get for now but I am really happy about these additions. They will really help give us a much more complete program and we can introduce some modern shark orders/families pretty early on in the program.

 

[Anomotodon]

Sphenodus are not Hexanchiformes but rather an extinct order Synechodontiformes, like Paraporthacodus or Synechodus 

[fossilsonwheels]

It was assigned to Hexanchiformes. I did not not know that had been reclassified. Thanks for in the info. Do you know when it was moved ?

[siteseer]

11 hours ago, fossilsonwheels said:

It was assigned to Hexanchiformes. I did not not know that had been reclassified. Thanks for in the info. Do you know when it was moved ?

 

 

Hi Kurt,

 

Yes, Sphenodus is a synechodontiform.  It was considered a hexanchiform back when I started collecting fossils in the late 80's.  The order Synechodontiformes was proposed by Christopher Duffin and David Ward in 1993.

 

Jess

 

Duffin, C.J. & D.J. Ward.  1993.

The Early Jurassic palaeospinacid sharks of Lyme Regis, southern England.  Belgian Geological Survey Professional Paper 264, 53-102.

 

 

[fossilsonwheels]

2 hours ago, siteseer said:

 

 

Hi Kurt,

 

Yes, Sphenodus is a synechodontiform.  It was considered a hexanchiform back when I started collecting fossils in the late 80's.  The order Synechodontiformes was proposed by Christopher Duffin and David Ward in 1993.

 

Jess

 

Duffin, C.J. & D.J. Ward.  1993.

The Early Jurassic palaeospinacid sharks of Lyme Regis, southern England.  Belgian Geological Survey Professional Paper 264, 53-102.

 

 

Hi Jess

 

Thank you for the info. No worries. it is still a really great tooth to add for us ! At least we wrangled some Jurassic sharks. We are not done yet. I am still hunting for more

 

Kurt