Cookie Cutter teeth id please

[Ludwigia]

I recieved these itty bitty teeth enclosed as a little surprise recently from Tony (ynot). All I know about them is that they are out of Cookie Cutter matrix from Florida. They appear to belong mostly or even all to the same species, or at least genus, so I'm hoping that someone here can help me out with the id. Could they perhaps be Gar teeth?

 

[old bones]

Are those Rhincodon?  They almost look like whale shark teeth... I don't think those are from Cookiecutter matrix. 

[old bones]

5 minutes ago, old bones said:

Are those Rhincodon?  They almost look like whale shark teeth... I don't think those are from Cookiecutter matrix. 

Oops, I think I mean basking shark teeth. 

[FossilDAWG]

1. I did not see anything like that in the cookie cutter material I picked through.

2. The preservation doesn't look right either.

@digit might be able to say more.

 

Don

[sixgill pete]

To me they look like Cetorhinus huddlestoni from the Miocene Round Mountain Silt. Sharktooth Hill.

[Troodon]

Looks like Cetorhinus teeth from Shark Tooth Hill, Calif

[minnbuckeye]

7 minutes ago, FossilDAWG said:

I did not see anything like that in the cookie cutter material I picked through.

 

I will second that. Were you looking specifically for a cookie cutter tooth? I could mail you one. At 1/10,000th of an ounce, postage should be minimal. LOL 

 

 Mike

[Ludwigia]

@old bones @FossilDAWG @sixgill pete @Troodon @minnbuckeye Thanks for your help and advice everyone. I guess I must have misunderstood Tony and ended up leading myself down the wrong track. No wonder I couldn't recognise anything.

[digit]

Late to this conversation but I can confirm what has already been stated. Tony collected a lot of micros from Shark Tooth Hill (Round Mountain Silt) in Bakersfield, CA. These are very distinctively Basking Shark (Cetorhinus) teeth which are a very cool taxon as I am not aware of this being a common species anyplace else but in the STH locality.

 

There are a lot of interesting micros in Cookiecutter Creek but Basking Sharks are not one of them. If Tony sent you other taxa from STH, there is a decent faunal list on the Elasmo.com website. Unfortunately, this archaic website (nearly a fossil itself) was built back in the day using a technique called "frames". This makes it virtually impossible to point to any page but the top-level homepage. To see the STH fauna go to the website: http://www.elasmo.com and then in the menu bar across the top of the screen you'll see a link for "FAUNAS". This will take you to a section where the faunal assemblages for several localities are found. Click on the link for "Sharktooth Hill" and you'll have a decent (but dated) faunal list of the micro (and macro) teeth found there.

 

Since that website ceased being updated more research has been done one some of the taxa from STH. In particular, the Basking Shark has been described as a new species (Cetorhinus huddlestoni). You can find that paper here:

 

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308796550_Welton_B_J_2014_A_new_fossil_basking_shark_Lamniformes_Cetorhinidae_from_the_Middle_Miocene_Sharktooth_Hill_Bonebed_Kern_County_California_Contributions_in_Science_522_p_29-44

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[Ludwigia]

@digit Thanks for the info, Ken. I do refer already to Elasmo when needed, but it's good to know that the site is somewhat outdated.

[digit]

It's a great archive of data that frequently proves useful but you do have to be aware that it is no longer being updated. I believe the STH faunal information dates from 2008. It's not often that new research supersedes the information archived on Elasmo but at times (like for the Basking Shark) science moves forward.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

 

P.S.: Basking Sharks and their unrelated but similarly planktivorous Whale Sharks have always been favorites. As a diver, Whale Sharks are a much sought after mega fauna and trips to places where they congregate tend to be at the tops of diver's lists. Whereas Whale Sharks are often found in relatively clear topical waters, Basking Sharks tend to be found only in very chilly habitats with poor visibility. I've had a brief glimpse of a Whale Shark somewhere in the South Pacific (possibly Fiji or Tonga, memory fails) but I never expect to swim with a Basking Shark. One of my "favorite" nature documentaries was on The Discovery Channel's Shark Week several decades ago. This is when this annual programming event was just getting started and there wasn't very much shark-based content available. A documentary group had the idea to go searching for Basking Sharks somewhere off the coast of the UK (as I recall). Though I can find no latent trace of it on the internet using a variety of search terms, the documentary was titled something along the lines of The Search for the Basking Shark. They filled the hour long documentary with many minutes of other creatures they encountered along the way while searching for the ever more elusive Cetorhinus. In the closing minutes of the documentary they show the one and only tail shot (the least interesting angle) of the only Basking Shark they encountered. The blurry clip in low visibility conditions lasts only a few seconds--so, of course, they repeat it several times for full effect. I remember this documentary decades later as it was a perfect example of making lemonade out of lemons (and failing miserably). The documentary group was probably fronted money for the expedition and had to turn in something for their efforts. The new generation of (usually BBC) nature documentaries has learned that sometimes months (or years) need to be spent with multiple filming teams to get increasingly fascinating and unusual scenes. This Basking Shark documentary was so bad that I'd truly enjoy seeing it again if I could only find it.