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Tooth And Bone Pathologies


Harry Pristis

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I was just re-reading a rather recent article on deformed shark teeth (Becker, Chamberlain, Jr., and Stoffer, 2000). The authors examined hundreds of teeth from four Cretaceous localities (Big Brook, NJ; Cape Fear River, NC; Hannahatchee Creek, GA; Trussels Creek, AL) and concluded that the frequency of occurrence varies between 0.015% in Squalicorax kaupi teeth and 0.36% in Paranomotodon sp. The authors also looked at modern lamniform shark and carcharhiniform shark teeth and got results in the same ballpark.

This thread deserves a bump in any case.

Becker, M.A, J.A. Chamberlain Jr., and P.W. Stoffer. 2000.

Pathologic tooth deformities in modern and fossil chondrichthians: a consequence of feeding-related injury. Lethaia 33: 103-118.

Yes, it is nice :D I can only speak for my personal experience on how rare pathological teeth are. I'd like to know what everyone else thinks the frequency is for finding pathological teeth.

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Wear facets on shark teeth are unusual since they are generally not in the jaw long enough to develop a worn tip to that degree. I have one or two Ptychodus like that and have even seen two Parotodus teeth with wear facets at the tip.

Ptychodus teeth with wear facets.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Thanks, that is interesting siteseer.

P. whipplei here in N. Texas seem to have the wear facets often at least from what I find, but I think rare for other P. species. It can be frustrating actually when you think you've found a "perfect" tooth and find the tip of the crown is broken off, although the wear facets add scientific value.

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  • 3 months later...

Unfortunately it has a broken root, but here's a patho' Striatolamia macrota. Found yesterday in the Abbey Wood shell bed material, I collected in Oct 2010.

Tip to tip = 2cm.

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KOF, Bill.

Welcome to the forum, all new members

www.ukfossils check it out.

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Wear facets on shark teeth are unusual since they are generally not in the jaw long enough to develop a worn tip to that degree. I have one or two Ptychodus like that and have even seen two Parotodus teeth with wear facets at the tip.

The last two on the right have compression damage. It happens when it bit into something very hard (could even be the opposing tooth) and punched the tip of the tooth inside.

Edited by Paleoc
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Small whale vertebra with severe pathologic growth (arthritic?). It was found (dug out) with the small meg touching it. The serrations were mostly ripped off one side of the meg and the meg fits perfectly into a cut on the bone.

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A rare 2.5 inch pathological chub that I found in New Jersey.

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Edited by sharktoothboy
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Great Topic :D:)

My almost 90° Cretaceous NC shark tooth

I did also find a tooth that looks a bid like that togther with this one.

Greetings Erik

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Not much compared to some of these pathologies, but here's a wrinkly pristidontis, Cretaceous, from Monmouth County, NJ

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  • 4 months later...

Time to resurrect this thread, because I just secured for my collection a rare pathology. You just don't see broken-and-healed bird wing bones, because 99.9999% of the time the victim does not survive very long.

This is an ulna (the mid-wing long bone to which the secondary flight feathers attach. I think it is from a Pied-billed Grebe; it is a Pleistocene Florida river find from Dixie County. A shout-out to Nate (Prehistoric Florida)!

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"There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant

“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley

>Paleontology is an evolving science.

>May your wonders never cease!

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Very cool, Auspex. That's the first I have seen!

And eric m.. love that last twisted in growth tooth....

Welcome to the forum!

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Here is a pathologic Squalicorax pristodontus from the Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) of the Ouled Abdoun Basin, Morocco.

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  • 1 year later...

I thought I would bump this great thread.

Here is a very beat-up megalodon from the Sharktooth Hill Bonebed that has an unusually thick crown with signs of some weird compression during its development. It also bears a wear facet which tells me it was either in the jaw longer than normal or perhaps it is just postmortem wear at the tip.

The tooth appears to have been sheared off either by biting action of its owner, biting action of another shark, or maybe just by a large sharp object cutting through it during compaction of the sediment by overlying sediments.

Yeah, it's ugly but also interesting.

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Edited by siteseer
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Oh, wow, I forgot about this awesome thread. Here are a few oddities:

1. Mammoth jaw (Siberia) with some sort of growth on the front. Some elephant jaws have a protuberance there naturally, but this thing is differently-shaped and off to one side. Maybe a tumor or healed damage?

2. Cro-magnon jaw with a tooth infection (the alveolus has been "dished" out).

3. Juvenile Jaguar jaw (Florida). The improperly-erupted p4 has been called a "pathology". Not sure if it qualifies, but it's neat.

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Siteseer's recent post of the deformed and bitten meg reminded me of a similar tooth that I have. This is a deformed Yorktown Formation megalodon that has been bitten cleanly off the root.

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Nate, the 'dished' out appearence of your Cromagnon is the crypt of a large abcess - and it looks like there is another abcess under the tooth anterior to it.

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The plural of "anecdote" is not "evidence".

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Oh, indeed. I'll have to get some better pics of it, one of these days. Can you imagine having such a problem without modern dentistry? It could truely be a life-threatening problem if the pain was severe enough to limit eating. We have it so good.

Nick

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Oh, indeed. I'll have to get some better pics of it, one of these days. Can you imagine having such a problem without modern dentistry? It could truely be a life-threatening problem if the pain was severe enough to limit eating. We have it so good.

Nick

Dental infections could kill much faster than just starving you out. Without antibiotics that type of infection could be rapidly fatal due to sepsis.

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  • 1 month later...

I finally got around to photographing this basicranium (the rear of the skull) of a good-size alligator. I am still astonished that the 'gator lived with this abscess long enough to produce this chunk of bone.

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images copyright Harry Pristis 2013

Edited by Harry Pristis
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http://pristis.wix.com/the-demijohn-page

 

What seest thou else

In the dark backward and abysm of time?

---Shakespeare, The Tempest

 

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