Labeling For Shark Teeth

[meg123]

I've been trying to label my shark teeth and can't come up with a way to do it. Does anyone have any ideas?

[Scylla]

Some people use florescent ink that is invisible until under UV light.

[fossilselachian]

I've been trying to label my shark teeth and can't come up with a way to do it. Does anyone have any ideas?

Are you looking for a label affixed to the actual tooth?

I use the 0.25" circle Avery "dots" self-sticking labels. Using a fine pen it's not problem to enter as many as four numbers

on these labels. In turn, each number relates to a data base which includes some 9 possible parameters for the specimen, e.g., genus,

species, formation, state/country, etc.

However, these self-sticking labels will dry out over time. So I apply a dot of clean finger nail polish on top of the label and size it

just a little larger than the label which allows a small "overflow" on to the actual tooth. If it's necessary to remove the label, it is easily removed with your fingernail.

This works even for very small teeth when the 0.25" dot label is too large. Just cut down the size of the dot and write even smaller. Also, keep in mind that the fingernail polish will cause some types of ink to "run/smear" so look for some of the specialty pens such as those which contain archival ink which is unaffected by the fingernail polish.

Hope this is of some help.

FS

[siteseer]

Most fossil shark species had teeth less than an inch long. You should consider keeping all specimens of a particular species from a particular locality in one container and then label the container or insert a label with the teeth.

It's important for every fossil to have a label with it - most important to have the locality on it because in many cases someone can figure out the ID later based on that. A look through the Fossil ID section of the forum gives us an idea of how many specimens end up separated from their labels if they ever had them at all. This can make the ID problematic-impossible.

I've been trying to label my shark teeth and can't come up with a way to do it. Does anyone have any ideas?

[Haddy]

I've been trying to label my shark teeth and can't come up with a way to do it. Does anyone have any ideas?

I haven't been labeling the teeth, but have been labeling the container. I bought some clear plastic boxes at the Container Store. They're only about $3 or so and have 14 small compartments in each. I just put like teeth in there from each location (p-touch label on the side of each box) and have a print-out of species in each compartment along with teeth. I have a few individual larger / nicer teeth that are in little individual display boxes, and have a p-touch label on the back re: species and location for each. Then I also have some display boxes that have several species for each location -- I've attached to the back a printout of what's in there and where they were found. I'm a relative newbie and don't have a huge collection, and I collect mostly in 4 locations, so that's what's worked for me so far. At some later point, I may do something different, but for now it works.

[Darwin Ahoy]

I mostly collect in one location, so that's pretty easy but Haddy's got the right idea. I use the little hobby organizers for any teeth that are not in my Riker mount.

For small, special stuff (i.e. things you don't have a million of), consider getting a gem jar display. A circular label can easily be fixed to the back of the jars. I prefer this, as I really REALLY don't like putting something on the actual fossil itself, unless it's with mineral tack.