Lower Cretaceous Shark And Fish Teeth Of Texas

[erose]

Anybody ever work on the shark teeth from our lowest Cretaceous formations here in Texas? I have a few teeth, both shark and fish, that are from the Glen Rose Formation (upper Aptian-lower Albian) and they are not coming up as obvious matches in my reference books. I have Welton and Farish, Finsley, and a few more.

I also didn't find anything at Elasmo.com that matched as his stuff tends to be a bit younger...

In particular I have a small tooth that appears to be a Leptostyrax of some sort. In some of the literature I see various species listed with conflicting age ranges. Have any of you fellow FF folk ever sorted this out?

If this thread goes anywhere at all I'll get out the camera and start putting up photos as best I can.

[siteseer]

Erose,

Welton and Farish covers mostly Late Albian to Maastrichtian sharks and rays because there aren't many good exposures of marine Aptian-Albian rocks in Texas or really anywhere in the US. I would also assume the rocks are not that fossiliferous. Bruce Welton would be the kind of guy to break down matrix for micros even if it wasn't that productive (because that's how you find the weird stuff) but maybe the rocks of that age don't break down well enough for screening.

The world was a lot closer in those days. You might find a match looking at articles on Aptian stuff from France or maybe other Albian formations like the Gault Clay in the UK. If you can post some photos, I'll see what papers I have on Aptian stuff. When you start talking about Aptian-Albian age sharks, you will get some attention - maybe even from a professional shark researcher.

Jess

Anybody ever work on the shark teeth from our lowest Cretaceous formations here in Texas? I have a few teeth, both shark and fish, that are from the Glen Rose Formation (upper Aptian-lower Albian) and they are not coming up as obvious matches in my reference books. I have Welton and Farish, Finsley, and a few more.

I also didn't find anything at Elasmo.com that matched as his stuff tends to be a bit younger...

In particular I have a small tooth that appears to be a Leptostyrax of some sort. In some of the literature I see various species listed with conflicting age ranges. Have any of you fellow FF folk ever sorted this out?

If this thread goes anywhere at all I'll get out the camera and start putting up photos as best I can.

[bone2stone]

I too have found this to be a rather difficult situation to find a resolution on ID.

Glen Rose, Comanche Peak and otherwise teeth.

Jess B.

[erose]

thanks siteseer, the Lower Creaceous of Texas is actually very fossiliferous. Now compared to our Upper K formations it certainly isn't as rich in teeth but they can still be found and are not necessarily rare. I will look at those European papers and see how closely they match.