Search the Community

Mammals make up the bulk of my knowledge, but for this specimen I'm clueless. I'm thinking from the locality and the general look of the tooth it could be whale of some sort, possibly a dolphin? Allegedly it was found in Bakersfield California, Shark-tooth hill. I don't own this fossil so these pictures are the best I can get unless I purchase it, what do you guys think it is?

I have detailed our shark education program in previous posts but I forgot the best part. Fossils on Wheels has around 350-400 shark teeth that will be given away to kids. All of these come from donations. My son and I have donated around half and the rest have come from donors on TFF, who we have thanked in previous posts. These are really my favorite fossils because they serve a higher purpose. Getting kids interested in science, natural history, fossils and of course, SHARKS !!! I write a lot in these posts but the core of what we do is summarized above. This is fun and we are feel lucky to be doing this. The donations from TFF members are allowing us to do this and the kids will know it. Thanks to donations of marine invertebrate fossils, these teeth are going to become fossil starter kits with other fossils mixed in. The pictured below are some of the fossils. Some STH mako teeth and about 100 Squalicorax teeth are not in the picture because they are in my laundry room at the moment. Tomorrow, I start bagging these and putting together information cards so I wll know exactly how many fossil start kits we will have in a day or two. We have a nice mix Moroccan Squalicorax, Sand Tiger teeth and Otodus teeth, a significant number of STH mako teeth, teeth from a few smaller STH shark species, a few Ptychodus, and a few Goblin Shark teeth. We are trying to make sure we give away teeth from species we cover in the presentation. THANK YOU FOSSIL FORUM MEMBERS for helping us make this happen

We completed our first trade on the fossil forum recently and it was awesome. We got a great fossil and a cool new friend. I am putting up one of my Stethacanthus altonensis teeth because I want to bulk up our shark education program just a bit. It is really the only tooth we could trade that has much appeal. Here are the details on the teeth we have to offer. I actually think this one of our anvil shark teeth. This one is smaller but has the tip intact. The details Stethacanthus altonesis Delaware Creek Member-Caney Shale Formation Mississippian-Meremacian Pontotoc County, Oklahoma We can also offer some trade filler too but none of it rare or anything. PM if you want pictures of these teeth. 2 Isurus planus teeth from Sharktooth Hill Miocene 1 Ptychodus whippeli from Texas. i have no other information about the tooth. 1 Cretaceous Shark indet tooth from New Jersey ( I think). Scapnorhynchus was the leading opinion when it put it on the TFF for ID. It was not a unanimous opinion though. We are looking for specific things to fill in our education presentation about sharks. Astercanthus teeth and spine. Any Hybodont shark would work but in a perfect world we find an Astercanthus sp. Caseodus tooth Campodus tooth Cardabiodon tooth Feel free to say hello if you are interested. In pic 3, the trade tooth is on the right.

This is our 6th-8th grade fossil program. I was not going to start running these until the fall of this year but thanks to an awesome donation and a few identifications from @Boesse , I am going to do a few with these with displaced students from Paradise really soon. They need creative education and I need a few opportunities to do the lab and make tweaks. I am super excited and extremely nervous about this lab. Marine mammals are so well adapted to an aquatic life that they really present a great opportunity for presenting complex scientific concepts to kids. The difficulty in using fossils is that I lack the expertise to be able to identify a lot of it but at the same time, I have a number of fossils that are perfect for kids to handle. I do have a basic idea of what fossils I have now so I can start working out a presentation. The first part of the presentation is going to be a quick run down on the basics of classification, using mammals, and the basics of marine mammal biology. We are only discussing two orders of marine mammal, cetacea and carnivora because we only have fossils from those orders. I do have a Desmostylus tusk but I am not going to use that yet. I need a considerable amount more knowledge about that species and its relationship to sirens before I present. We do not have any Odobenidae fossils and I am not sure we ever will. I plan on running down the basic characteristics that separate the two orders. Once we have covered the basics of the two orders, we will discuss the whales in bit more more depth. At each point in the presentation we will present them with fossils that represent the two orders. This is only going to be about 20 minutes. The rest of the time, they will be examining fossils ! Then comes the lab. We will have stations set up that feature some fossils from each order and a visual guide in helping them identify the fossils. Essentially we want them to enjoy checking out the miocene fossils and learning through a hands-on approach. We want them exploring and coming to their own conclusions using the tools they have. The final station will be the students getting a chance to test their abilities by determining if a Cetacean ear bone belongs to an odontoceti or mysticeti type whale. This is the basic outline and I have quite a bit of work to do on this but I really like the potential. I would like to get a few more STH mammal teeth so we have more for the kids to examine and a few more cetacean ear bones as they are diagnostic which is a good thing to have in an education program but overall I feel good about the fossils we have. We have some with identifications but also a few things that are not known which is a good mix. Some of the fossils... Pic 1- a number of different vertebra. There is a shark vert, several cetacean verts and at least one that looks like it might be from carnivora. I have a few more that are not in the picture too. Pic 2- 4 STH Allodesmus teeth, 4 small STH Odontoceti indet teeth ( I will probably suggest Kentriodon to the kids), a STH Aulophyseter tooth, a much different STH Odontoceti indet tooth, and just for fun, a pretty wicked looking sperm whale tooth from North Carolina. This gives the students a chance to visualize the difference between carnivora and cetacea. Pic 3- A few ear bones that will be the final part of the lab. The two STH fossils are the key. One is a mysticeti and the other is an odontoceti. The big one from North Carolina is more for visual flair. It is a big ear bone, the kids will dig it I think. not pictured, the box of bones the kids will handle, the majority of which came via donation.

Got this on a hunt today. Mid. Miocene, Round Mountain Silt Member, Temblor Formation. California. It is 5cm long, 3.5cm wide, 2cm thick. I am presuming whale, but don't really know. It seems strange to me in that the channels that would carry nerves or blood vessels are going perpendicular to the way it would set in the spinal column. One of the channel openings looks to be partially fused off which may have pinched nerves or blocked off blood supply. Any thoughts as to where on the critter it belonged and if indeed it is whale or not?

On November 8th of 2018, a wildfire destroyed the town of Paradise and several other small communities. 12,000 homes were destroyed and 85 people died. The Camp Fire was the most destructive and the deadliest wild land fire in the history of California. Chico is located 8 miles from Paradise and we all know people who lost homes. I know 40 plus people who lost everything they had. I have lived in Chico for 20 years and I spent a lot of time in Paradise. It was a beautiful town. All of the schools from Paradise have settled in Chico. Many of the schools started getting up and running in temporary locations as early as December 5th if I remember correctly. I work for a museum a CSU Chico and we volunteered to give some free field trips and presentations for the students from Paradise. I have been an educator for a decade and I volunteered to do programs for the kids. One of those was a trip to a local charter school that had turned its gym into a temporary home for two K- 8th charter schools from Paradise. I took a few fossils from the museum and stood in front of 250 kids. Here is the kicker, every single kids in the gym had lost their home. Every single teacher had lost their home. 275 people in that gym and I was the only person there who had a home. It is fair to say that experience and my other volunteer efforts during and after the fire changed me. I used to be an outdoor science educator and a wildlife researcher. I led hikes with kids, rebuilt habitat, photographed wildlife from all over California plus my kids and I even rescued wildlife. I was snarge good at that job and I loved it. It was a wild life and my kids grew up on trails and around wild animals. In October of 2017, I broke my back and lost the ability to walk for 4 months. The injury ended that career. I was already working at museum but I knew I would never get back outdoors as an instructor. I am an insurance liability. I also stopped educating. I was just a supervisor at the museum. I did nothing with education until I started working those Paradise kids. It fired me up again and I went on a mission. Fossils on Wheels was born. Most of our spring programs are going to be freebies for kids from Paradise. We have some programs with Chico teachers and a few paying gigs too but the focus is on helping get those kids some creative education. The fire was a national news story but the recovery is not. People forget as they get on with their lives. We do not have that luxury. We now share a town with those that lost everything. The conditions for education are less than idea. Some schools landed in nice locations. Other are housed in old buildings that should not be schools. The teachers have it rough as you can imagine a teacher having it yet they are doing their job every day under the worst circumstances. I am writing this to explain further what we do but also to put the spotlight on member here that made a donation that will go to those kids, @JBMugu. He is giving our program a bunch of mammal bones and shark teeth from Sharktooth Hill. The overwhelming vast majority of those shark teeth will end up in the hands of kids who lost homes and everything they had in this world. You may not think a few shark teeth make a difference but they really do. I gave away quite a few of my own in the fall right after the fire hit. The kids were so happy to have some shark teeth. It makes a difference to them. These teeth will be sorted by a group of intermediate schools that first met 4 weeks after the fire. There school is in an old hardware store. They will sort and ID teeth that will be given to the little kids from Paradise and they will also get more teeth. Without the donation from Jesse, we would not be doing this lab and we would not have these fossils to give. His donation has given us the ability to pass on the generosity that he showed to a lot of kids who need good things to come their way. I have learned that The Fossil Forum is not a place for fossil collectors. It is made up of some really great human beings that happen to also collect fossils. It is an honor to be part of this community and it is an honor to among people who are so quick to help fellow collectors and in our case, put fossils into the hands of kids who lost everything. Thank you Jesse and thank you to everybody here who gives their time, knowledge and their fossils to help other collectors.

Fossils on Wheels got our first donations of fossil materials for our education program this week. My son and I have donated some of our fossils and loaned the rest. Since we are applying for a 501c3, we have to keep careful track of our fossils. IF they are paid for by Fossils on Wheels money, they belong to Fossils on Wheels. If they are purchased with our money, we donate and loan. Donations belong to Fossils on Wheels, not my son and I. I think that clarification is a good thing to let people know about because donations come from our new friends private collections and they are given with the intention of being used for education and given to the kiddos we educate. My son and I do not sell fossils. Fossils on Wheels will not be legally able to sell fossils. We will also not be trading donated fossils. They are strictly for education purposes. If you do donate fossils, we can track how they are used and verify where they end up. We had two donations this week and we want to thank our donors. The first donation was from @JBMugu and included a lot of shark teeth and mammal bones from Sharktooth Hill a.k.a Round Mountain Silt. Most of the teeth will be given to students from Paradise and Chico schools. A small number will stay in the program for shark tooth ID labs. A couple dozen of the teeth are headed to the Gateway Science Museum as a separate donation. The mammal bones will be used in our intermediate school education programs that focus on classification and evolution. All of these fossils, except for one ear bone, will be used for hands on exploration of fossils. The ear bone, I think it is from a small Odontoceti, will be used as a presentation piece for the evolution lab. We also got a donation of some super cool shark teeth from @caldigger and information explaining some of the differences in the fossilization process and why different fossils from different locations look different. We do want to explore the process of fossilization and how geology lets us learn about the natural history of the planet. This donation included a super cool split tooth that shows in the process perfectly. These teeth are for the presentation and the kids will get to handle a few of them in ID labs as well. We just wanted to thank our donors and to let our fellow TFF members know how much these donations help us with our goal is bringing fossil education to our local children. The first picture is various verts from STH. The large one, bottom left, is a cetacean. It looks very similar to a couple of Tiphyocetus verts from STH that i have. There is another large one which I would think would be cetacean. The smaller mammal verts I am not sure about. There is also a shark vert. Second picture is STH shark teeth. There C. hastalis, planus, plus a few tiger sharks and a few I am unsure about right now. Some still have STH dirt on them and I am thinking about having kids clean them during a lab. The third picture is the shark teeth from @caldigger including our first Pygmy White Shark teeth from morocco, some beautiful mako teeth and a few others that I need to ID.

Unfortunately I am still waiting to be called back to work. I have been trying to find things to do to occupy my time. Last week was tough due to brutally cold temps. Finally we have hit a warm spell as yesterday and today hit somewhere in the 50's. I tried fishing for a few hours, but the snow melt raised the water levels and made the creeks muddy. Atleast it was a beautiful day to be outdoors. When I got home I decided to finish looking through some Permian micro matrix from Waurika, Oklahoma. I got this from @Fossildude19 who got some from @Jeffrey P . While I did not find a lot of fossils in this batch, I did find a few teeth. I found one very small Orthacanthas tooth, which I was really hoping I would and a few which I am not sure about. Also last night I finished going through the last bit of matrix from Sharktooth Hill, which I got from @caldigger in an auction lot that I won. This matrix was extremely loaded with fossils. First up is a pic of the Permian teeth.

Our final stop in the Shark program is of course the giant Sharks of the Miocene. We wrap our adventure through the timeline of shark evolution by giving the kids what they expect to see, big shark teeth. Truthfully, we do not have many large shark teeth. I went for interesting teeth not big teeth but we have a few that will grab the kids attention. We give a very brief introduction to the giant sharks with a 2 inch Otodus tooth. We can spend too much time on Otodus or the ancestors of Megalodon as it just do not have time ( plus we do not have teeth from Auriculatus, Angustidens, or Chubutensis). After that brief bit, we ask the kids a question.... What shark is the ancestor of the modern Great White ? We give the kids a chance to answer that question for themselves by connecting them to the sharks that swimming in the ocean off the coast of California 12 million years. I want to explore the origins of the most well known modern shark and connect them to the fossil rich area just 6 or so hours south of where they live so we journey to Sharktooth Hill to finish the program. Isurus planus was a fairly large shark and probably reached lengths of over 20 feet. I have not found a lot of material about planus but I would think that based on tooth size, 20 feet seems possible. I have seen 2 inch planus teeth though I have nothing that big myself. We also show the kids a couple Isurus desori teeth only to mention that they MIGHT be related to modern Short-fin Makos. We then jump into another species that is present at STH and the one the kiddos will be most familiar with, Megalodon. This is obviously a super important species to talk about because it is the most popular prehistoric shark. It is the T-rex of sharks. Biggest teeth of any shark found so far. Most likely the largest shark ever and quite possibly the largest fish. They ate whales. They were also common and the apex predator in the worlds oceans during their time. We do not know what they look like but my son is working on his version of Megalodon and it has elements of a basking shark to it along with the traditional Great White like appearance. I will tell the kids that for a long time, Megalodon was thought to be the ancestor of great whites but science has uncovered another possible contender for being the ancestor of great whites. Carcharodon hastalis was a large shark that probably reached 30 feet in length. They had large teeth and were probably fast swimming ambush predators. I remember reading somewhere, that evidence existed from STH that the Broad-tooth White Shark hunted early pinnipeds from underneath, just as modern white sharks do. I can not remember where I read that and I want to track that down again to verify before saying that to kids. Anyway, we explain that they were probably very similar in appearance to great whites and filled a similar ecological role. I will add that transitional teeth have been found that are a pretty conclusive link the chain of white shark evolution but we want them to check out the teeth and judge for themselves. Our presentation teeth Pic 1 I. planus and I. desori. These are not the exact teeth for program. I do have a few bigger teeth but these were in my desk as I am doing this lol Pic 2 Our 5.08 inch Megalodon tooth and the tooth that I suspect will be the most popular in the presentation. Not the prettiest nor the biggest but it is still a really big tooth to me. We also use a 3 inch tooth for the presentation but I did not photograph it. Pic 3 a 2 inch hastalis, a 2.5 inch hastalis, and one that I personally think is cooler than even Megalodon, a 2.54 inch Great White. It is blue. It just looks cool and I think 2.54 is pretty large for a white shark tooth. We wrap it up with questions from the kids while we go around the classroom handing out shark teeth to the students. If you happened to read all of these, you are a good soul because these are long winded posts I know lol Thank you to all who commented and offered encouragement. I will probably start putting up the marine mammal stuff next.

I recently found a small lot of mammal teeth from Sharktooth Hill. I am doing an education program about marine mammal evolution and they looked like cetacean teeth so I bought them. I am new to fossil forum but not new to collecting marine mammal fossils. I know that you can not get a species ID from cetacean teeth but I am hoping I can get a little additional information or perhaps a suspect so to speak. I believe that the first 3 pictures are of an unidentifed Odontoceti, maybe a Kentriodon of some sort. The first two teeth were both right around 1.5 cm. The third tooth was a little over 1 inch. I am fairly certain the 4th picture is of the unidentified Odontoceti species that is mistakenly called Prosqualodon errabundas by some collectors and dealers. I think it was the Coastal Paleontologist blog that said this was an undescribed species of large dolphin. It is about 1.75 inches long and has a very inflated root. The last picture looks more like an Allodesmus than a cetacean to me but I could be wrong. If anybody has an thought or opinion, I would greatly appreciate any information.

Hay hi Folks, Got another puzzler (to Me) for ID. Scale is in millimeters.