Fish Mouth Plate

[Khyssa]

I found this in some gravel that I brought home from one of the creeks in Gainesville, FL. Fairly certain that this is some type of fish mouth plate that measures about 1/2" x 1/4" x 1/8" thick. Is it possible to tell what type of fish it came from?

[jcbshark]

The teeth look similar to drum teeth but pretty small, could be a sunfish too I suppose: )

[Harry Pristis]

Part of a fish pharyngeal grinding mill (rather than mouthplate). A number of fish species have these mills . . . here is one possibility:

[Carl]

Gorgeous. If we found that in the Cretaceous it would be an oversized Paralbula plate. But I have no real suggestions.

[Raggedy Man]

I found a few of those in the Rattlesnake Creek matrix. I was wondering what those were.

[Khyssa]

Thank you for the suggestions and clarification on what I actually have. I was very happy when this popped out of the gravel! I've found plenty of tiny teeth in the gravel but this is the first somewhat intact grinding mill.

[old bones]

That's a real nice pharyngeal plate, Kkyssa. There are a lot of them in the Gainesville creeks. I too have found some nice intact specimens from Sacha's Rattlesnake Creek matrix. I am getting my 'trip report' together for my latest batch of RC matrix. Check it out when I have posted it (hopefully soon), and you might see some other familiar items.

Julianna

[Plantguy]

Nice.. congrats! I also found a similar specimen on one of my first trips to Venice many many moons ago. They do catch your eye quickly! ...strangely and unfortunately I havent seen another one in a very long time..

Regards, Chris

[Diceros]

When you look at the side view of the partial bony fish toothplate (the pic on the left), you can see that the individual teeth are only crowns without roots, and the crowns are stacked on top of each other like upside-down dinner plates. Such teeth are called phyllodont (for leaf-tooth), and they're found in a variety of bony fish which crush their prey. The best known are the extinct (Lt. Cret./e. Tertiary) phyllodontids - including the mentioned Paralbula, Phyllodus, and Egertonia. As the creeks around Gainesville are mostly in the e. Miocene Hawthorn Grp., Phyllodontidae is out. So are bonefish (albulids) and drumfish (sciaenids), but for a different reason - their toothplate teeth have roots, and are only one-tooth deep: they aren't phyllodont. My guess would be a wrass (labrid) of some kind, which were around in the Miocene (and most are still around today). Next time you're in Gainesville, take it in to the zooarchaeologists at the museum there (one of the best programs in that field is there), and ask them.

Another small point - I suspect the blue color of the phyllodont teeth comes from the alteration of the original calcium hydroxyl apatite (the phosphatic mineral which hardens all vertebrate bones and teeth - dahlite) to the blueish mineral vivianite. Unless it was lit with a blue light.