Tooth ID...any dentists onboard

[scubadog]

Found this a few months ago in the garden. My folks were having a pool put in, and this came from earth which had been removed. It had been lying at a depth of between 1 too 2 metres. The grid is in centimetres, part of the tooth is missing so it´s only a guide line. My first thought was, Shark tooth...but a couple of divers have said it isn´t, as the edges aren´t serrated.
I´ve been searching the web on and off for the past few months with no luck...Does anyone have any ideas ?


Pete...

[Helen F H]

I am babysitting for a couple of vets this evening - i will see if they know.

[scubadog]

Thanks Helen...

[Dr Stevil]

There are fossil shark teeth which look a little similar to yours (assuming that your intact tooth may have had extra features not visible on the current view) and lack serrations, so it may still be a shark tooth - certainly looks shark like to me. Have a look at this article and maybe have a browse through other sections of that site
http://www.elasmo.com/genera/slides/.../ol_intro.html

[Gavin Yates]

Maybe it's a lawyer?

[torbaydiver]

Originally Posted by Gavin Yates

Maybe it's a lawyer?

Or a vampire !

[Helen F H]

Or a manager.





Vet said it was a shark - not that she had ever seen one, it just didnt resemble anything else even close.

[scubadog]

Thanks Steve, very interesting. I certainly thought it came from a shark, doesn´t have the thickness of a tooth from a land meat eater...If I have read the article correctly, do I presume it could be quite old, as it lacks the serrated egdes !

[Scuba1]

what ever it is I for one dont wnt to get in to trubble with the owner . At 5cm it shore is a big one.

Michael ( niot diving tomorrow )

[Dr Stevil]

Originally Posted by scuba 1

what ever it is I for one dont wnt to get in to trubble with the owner . At 5cm it shore is a big one.

You're not wrong about the size Michael, going from the what has been identified as a reliable correlation between the size of a shark tooth and body length of it's owner, you're looking at something in the region of 5 metres long! And that's just going off what's left of the tooth...



This just in, courtesy of one of my shark afficiaonado friends


> This is a large fossil crown of some kind of Lamniformes shark.
> Lacking the root and the age of the rock where it was found, it is
> almost impossible to get a precise identification. However, from the
> very large size of the crown (almost 5 centimetres) and the lack of
> serration, I guess it could belong to an anterior tooth of Otodus or
> to Cosmopolitodus. I would favour Cosmopolitodus as Otodus main
> crown are generally more robust that what I can see from the
> picture.
> Hope this helps.
> Gilles.

> Dr. Gilles Cuny
> Geological Museum, University of Copenhagen

So in layman terms, what you have there is likely to be a fossilised front tooth from an ancestor of either: the Mako shark, (the Mako is usually considered to be The Great White's prettier sister); or it could be from an extinct form of GW.

Agewise, it could be between 2 and 37 million years old but to be more exact the paleontologist would have needed to see the rock and soil etc that it came from.
Pretty cool find eh?