Just Curious .......

[Krazy Rick]

does it, or has it ever occur/occured, that a fossil is found in a location that it is not supposed to be ? ......... eg...... a sample is found in a part of the world, where it has not been found & is supposed to be unique to another continent ?

[Kosmoceras]

There is this example on Sheppey Fossils - http://www.sheppeyfossils.com/pages/introductions.htm

"Carcharocles chubitensis tooth found by Pete Norwood washing out of a clay slip on the beach at the Coastguard Lookout, near to Warden Point

An Email interpretation of how this tooth may have found its way to Sheppey from David Ward

Yes a very interesting tooth. Its id is Carcharocles chubutensis, sometimes called sibauriculatus. It is a lineage index fossil for the mid-late Oligocene to mid Miocene. i.e. it is between 10 and 30 million years old. In Europe, we do not have clays of this age (the dark mineralisation suggests a clay rather than a limestone or sandstone. There is no possibility that it is local in origin. Although there is an outside chance that it is from the drift, and is ex-glacial from Belgium, there is a more intriguing possibility. Carchodon toliapicus - from Sheppey - a single tooth - lost in the war when Bristol Museum was bombed. It too was found, ostensibly, at Sheppey, but is almost certainly from the Boom Clay near Antwerp. I have, in Copenhagen Museum, seen Carcharocles, with original C19 labels as from Sheppey, but actually (if my memory is correct) from Belgium/Germany. So what is going on? My suggestion is that it represents one of the specimens imported to sell to gullible visitors. I am not sure where Mud Row was (Bowerbank, 1840), but it seems that it acted as a magnet for fossil collectors, who did not want to get their feet dirty.

Signed David Ward"

Source - Sheppey Fossils