Restored meg

[patrickhudson]

This root seems super restored to me.  Like a kid used a sharply to make the vertical lines.  Am I right?

thanks!!  

[Northern Sharks]

Those lines are most certainly drawn on, and it looks to me to have way too much of a V shape, even for a lower tooth. The roots were in all likelihood made extra long to increase the overall length, and therefore value.

[thelivingdead531]

Yikes! The lines are definitely drawn on over a badly done sponge painting job. The top half seems to have been sculpted also. Unless it’s really cheap and you want an art piece, I would stay away.

[jcbshark]

probably put that excessively long root on to make it close to 7 incheslots of imagination and putty I would say

[LabRatKing]

I wouldn't be surprised to see this is over 50% reconstructed, and poorly. I get better root rebuilds with an old tooth brush... Also the vascular pits are missing and the root is the wrong shape as others have stated. I would skip this one.

[patrickhudson]

Thanks everybody.  I almost thought about it just to have a “replica” almost 7”er, but I’ll definitely pass now.  

[LabRatKing]

3 minutes ago, patrickhudson said:

Thanks everybody.  I almost thought about it just to have a “replica” almost 7”er, but I’ll definitely pass now.  

There are tons of affordable replicas and actual, properly restored Meg teeth out there for fair prices to meet every budget. Then again, the biggest ones tend to go for more than what one would spend for a weekend trip to find one. Another option is to make your own, as myself and a few others have done that you can see in the paleo recreations threads on here.

 

 

[aeon.rocks]

I'll post these here, because that's one of these fakes. Whenever you see a root like in tooth above, you can be certain that's a file tooth (just enamel preserved) and completely fake towards the root: 

 

[patrickhudson]

3 minutes ago, aeon.rocks said:

I'll post these here, because that's one of these fakes. Whenever you see a root like in tooth above, you can be certain that's a file tooth (just enamel preserved) and completely fake towards the root: 

 

Wow!   Thanks so much for the info.  What a great way to visualize it.  Really awesome (not the tooth apparently - but the drawing).  
 

[aeon.rocks]

Also, cautios with sediment filling the eroded roots, because sometimes people offering these have no idea or don't care if you get a natural tooth with a decent real root or a "natural" tooth with sand, worth 10x less what they are asking for.

 

Many of these teeth hitting the market have eroded real root hidding below sand (sometimes put there by hand to cover repairs, sometimes by nature) or NO root at all preserved under the carved sediment. In some deposits these teeth might have "eroded" prior fossilization process and have been lying on the seafloor for some time after sharks lost them, long enough that the cartilage would start dissipating before the teeth were covered by sediment, in some cases together with shells that left the imprints. 

 

This is not real root. It's sand and you can notice different sand grains. No root there:

 

 

Just enamel and sand! Sand filled the enamel... No root there. On good preserved teeth with real root you can observe bone structure in cross sections, instead of sand grains:

 

[aeon.rocks]

This is not the real root either. Just sand and shell imprints:

[aeon.rocks]

This is how a tooth with completelly eroded/dissolved root looks when (almost) all the sand is cleaned off, but often teeth like this are not sold clean - sometimes are left in matrix or sold with a carved root or fakes made (like above): 

[aeon.rocks]

How to tell a real root from a fake root or just sand "root"? By looking at texture and bone structure on the best preserved indonesian teeth, but you can only notice that when the teeth are completelly cleaned. This is the real root detail, colors can vary and preservation of such "textures" aswell however, but in some cases the "bone structure" is clearly visible with magnification:

[aeon.rocks]

Often what you get has partially eroded root below the sediment and some parts of root preserved. Here the sand covering eroded root areas and the darker areas (possibly preserved real root areas) are clear, but the tooth is not cleaned (and there's brown reddish limonite oxidation on the blades aswell - that's "dirt" not enamel color) so it's not always so easy to tell - don't rely just on colors (example with shell imprints above): 

[aeon.rocks]

The last example, another specimen after quickly cleaning the sand off (but still some left in eroded areas and a few flecks of reddish brown "iron rust" on the blade, which is "dirt", not the enamel color), with a real eroded root (darker areas) and a clearly visible glued part - which is often covered with sand to hide glue.

 

 

:

 

[heZZ]

Is this like that Mega tooth?

[aeon.rocks]

Yes, sorry!