jpc Posted April 8, 2012 Share Posted April 8, 2012 Found this little guy while cleaning some whale verts last night. This is from the Shark Tooth Hill trip I did a few weekends ago. This is my first dolphin tooth from there... matter of fact, my first from anywhere, so I'm pretty excited about it. You may notice that it is rather small. If anyone has any better ID for it, why feel free to let me know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tarheel59 Posted April 8, 2012 Share Posted April 8, 2012 Nice tooth JP. Bobby or Siteseer will be along and lend a hand at ID I am sure... Jeff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boesse Posted April 8, 2012 Share Posted April 8, 2012 Based on its small size, it may be identifiable as a "kentriodontid", or early diverging delphinoid; most of the STH odontocetes are kentriodontids. Other critters like physeteroids and Zarhinocetus errabundus (the thing most people unfortunately call "Prosqualodon") have larger teeth. Bobby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taxman56 Posted April 9, 2012 Share Posted April 9, 2012 In layman terms? Nice tooth Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
siteseer Posted April 9, 2012 Share Posted April 9, 2012 Taxman, It is the smallest of the dolphin tooth forms I've seen from the STH bonebed. If you screen the soft matrix, you will find more of these but they do not appear to be as common as many of the sharks. It is also the tooth form closer to the shape of many modern dolphins than others seen from the Middle Miocene. It's been mentioned in other threads but it's important to keep in mind that the "dolphins" of that time belonged to now-extinct families at best distantly-related to the dolphins we know today. If we could see them as they were when alive, they would look weird to us, resembling to various degrees the various freshwater dolphins of the Amazon or Ganges Rivers (the one in China is probably extinct now). In layman's terms the dolphins of the Middle Miocene were funky. "Early diverging delphinoid" might cover some Middle Miocene group that may be more closely related to modern dolphins than the groups already known (at worst hypothetical or at best represented by material too fragmentary, like isolated teeth, for science to give a name). It could be that a small toothed whale of that time happened to have teeth more like modern dolphins (but was unrelated to them) or it could have been a form that belonged to a group related to, if not ancestral to, modern dolphins. Kentriodontid dolphins died out in the Late Miocene around the time of the earliest members of the modern marine dolphin family, Delphinidae. Bobby has said a few times that whale teeth are not generally identifiable to species nor genus. Whale teeth can show some variation within a genus or species and a lot of whale genera/species have teeth so similar that specialists cannot find a reliably-present feature to to tell them apart. A lot of the Oligocene toothed whales belonging to different families had very similar teeth, and then across the Miocene, the general trend was toward a more simple tooth form in all the families. Jess In layman terms? Nice tooth Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ludwigia Posted April 9, 2012 Share Posted April 9, 2012 "Klein aber fein!!" Greetings from the Lake of Constance. Roger http://www.steinkern.de/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Interpaleo Posted April 9, 2012 Share Posted April 9, 2012 Nice tooth. The STH material just keeps on giving. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Govinn Posted April 9, 2012 Share Posted April 9, 2012 Nice find! I think I ran across something similar on a trade I did with Joe. No root, but the tip was in good condition. Bobby and Jess... Thanks for your insight on this. Great translation, Jess. History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. ~Sir Winston Churchill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jpc Posted April 9, 2012 Author Share Posted April 9, 2012 Thanks for the iput, y'all. Next time out... gonna find the skull... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sixgill pete Posted April 11, 2012 Share Posted April 11, 2012 Congrats. Thats an amazing color!! Bulldozers and dirt Bulldozers and dirt behind the trailer, my desert Them red clay piles are heaven on earth I get my rocks off, bulldozers and dirt Patterson Hood; Drive-By Truckers May 2016 May 2012 Aug 2013, May 2016, Apr 2020 Oct 2022 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fossildude19 Posted April 12, 2012 Share Posted April 12, 2012 JP, That is a right pretty tooth! Glad you're still finding things from your adventurous trips. Regards, Tim - VETERAN SHALE SPLITTER VFOTM --- APRIL - 2015 __________________________________________________ "In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks." John Muir ~ ~ ~ ~ ><))))( *> About Me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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