Mosasaur Jaws

[Quintius]

Hello, im new to this forum and had a question. Does anyone know if my Mosasaur jaws are real and how much are they worth?

[Macrophyseter]

Welcome to the forum 

 

As a policy, the forum does not give appraisals. But if you want you could take a look at various sellers and see how much people commonly sell them for.  As for the authenticity of the jaws in question, much of both seem real to me, although I personally have a looming suspicion that some of the teeth in the top jaw may have been composited/chimera'ed. However, I am just an enthusiast and it would be best to wait for an actual expert to take a look.

 

 

[Fossildude19]

Moved to the IS IT REAL Forum.

[Bguild]

Agreed, the bone looks good to me, but some of the teeth look to be composited. It's hard to be certain without close ups, but I can see what looks like filler between some of the teeth and the bone. However, all teeth look to be Prognathodon sp. at least. 

[LordTrilobite]

Looks like real bone. But this single photo is completely insufficient to say anything conclusive about the teeth. We'll need better photos and closeups to judge at all really.

[snolly50]

As suggested by the previous responders, making a judgement based on the provided photo alone is an endeavor prone to error. However, given the available resource, I like the pictured jaw sections and think them to be nice, natural specimens. In part, my impression is based on the following. Note the several teeth in the upper piece that display fractures. To my eye they appear to be natural breaks with the pieces remaining properly aligned, matrix infill occupying the small spaces. This configuration would be difficult to reproduce by a person setting in unrelated teeth. In such an incident, it would be much easier to glue fractured teeth together sans matrix, prior to inlay. This would provide a much different appearance. The teeth also have small areas where the matrix overlaps the exposed tooth. Not impossible to fake, but an unlikely time consuming detail for a forger. I count 4 replacement teeth in the larger piece. These teeth partially obscured by matrix and bone are yet another detail that suggests authenticity to me. Such an appearance might be accomplished by a skilled faker, but why would they go into such tedious detail? A spurious jaw section could be produced and sold (and many are) with far less effort. Anyway, from what can be seen, I like the pieces and look forward to seeing other opinions. Perhaps better more detailed pictured would help.