Boesse Posted February 4, 2008 Share Posted February 4, 2008 Hello all, I figured I should go ahead and post some photos of parts of my collection. I've amassed a large volume of vertebrate fossils during undergraduate paleontological fieldwork, including sharks, rays, bony fish, birds, fur seals, walruses, porpoises, river dolphins, and large and small baleen whales. Most of this stuff I'll end up publishing at some point, after I get it curated into various museum collections. Bobby We'll start with some small stuff - here are some sharks: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MOROPUS Posted February 4, 2008 Share Posted February 4, 2008 Hello all,I figured I should go ahead and post some photos of parts of my collection. I've amassed a large volume of vertebrate fossils during undergraduate paleontological fieldwork, including sharks, rays, bony fish, birds, fur seals, walruses, porpoises, river dolphins, and large and small baleen whales. Most of this stuff I'll end up publishing at some point, after I get it curated into various museum collections. Bobby We'll start with some small stuff - here are some sharks: What is that thing that looks like a fishing hook? It`s quite shiny! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kauffy Posted February 4, 2008 Share Posted February 4, 2008 Awesome Teeth Boesse!! i was also wondering about that hook shaped one, extreamly cool! :lol: "Turn the fear of the unknown into the excitment of possibility!"We dont stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roz Posted February 4, 2008 Share Posted February 4, 2008 Really nice teeth you are showing there. I don't know what the hook-shaped fossil is either, unless it is a fish or shark spine of some type. Welcome to the forum! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MB Posted February 4, 2008 Share Posted February 4, 2008 Really nice teeth you are showing there. I don't know what the hook-shapedfossil is either, unless it is a fish or shark spine of some type. Cetorhinus or similar I think http://www.mbfossilcrabs.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gatorman Posted February 4, 2008 Share Posted February 4, 2008 Love the Cow shark tooth that is pristine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boesse Posted February 4, 2008 Author Share Posted February 4, 2008 Hey Guys, The fishook thing is a gill raker of Cetorhinus maximus, or basking shark. Ya, I love that cow shark too - there wasn't much covering it up, either - when I found it the sun was making the tooth glow an orange color. Speaking of cow sharks, here is a slightly younger pathologic cowshark. Enjoy! Bobby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Nicholas Posted February 4, 2008 Share Posted February 4, 2008 Excellent specimens! I hope to see more! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gatorman Posted February 4, 2008 Share Posted February 4, 2008 That is a cool lookin tooth! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Cris Posted February 4, 2008 Share Posted February 4, 2008 Great stuff.. The Pathological Cowshark is very interesting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boesse Posted February 5, 2008 Author Share Posted February 5, 2008 And now for the centerpiece of the Purisima Fm. shark fossils, and one of only two Carcharocles teeth ever collected from the Purisima. One of the only Carcharocles teeth from northern CA, really, and one of the youngest in the Pacific basin. This tooth (as broken) has a length of about 5.6"; go ahead and add at least another inch if it had a complete root on it. Beautiful color to it, too - mottled blue, green, grey, and cream. Bobby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boesse Posted February 5, 2008 Author Share Posted February 5, 2008 Ah lets see... finally some mammals. I still need to get some photos of pinniped and bird material too... Anyway, the first is a posterior portion of a dentary (lower jaw) of a very small baleen whale, Nannocetus (only about 12-14' total length). Sorry, no scale bar, but the photo is only at about 80% of the actual size - its about a 10" long piece of bone. Second is a partial lower jaw of an animal called Parapontoporia wilsoni, an extinct lipotid river dolphin. Anson, that cetacean tooth you had - it is probably from something like this. I'll post a picture of a partial skull soon. Bobby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gatorman Posted February 5, 2008 Share Posted February 5, 2008 Great stuff keep posting Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Northern Sharks Posted February 5, 2008 Share Posted February 5, 2008 VERY nice stuff. That meg is a real heartbreaker, but still, almost as rare as hen's teeth so who really cares. There's no limit to what you can accomplish when you're supposed to be doing something else Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boesse Posted February 5, 2008 Author Share Posted February 5, 2008 Here's a collage of some fossils I collected over thanksgiving, all in two days. The big Carcharodon is about 2.6" long or so. Also, the bird bone is a distal tibiotarsus from a small species of a flightless auk called Mancalla. Bobby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boesse Posted February 5, 2008 Author Share Posted February 5, 2008 ...and here is a skull of Parapontoporia wilsoni. This was actually collected by RJB (Ron), but he mailed it to me to prepare and donate - and probably, I will eventually describe it. This is a partial skull of a river dolphin, minus most of the elongate rostrum (nose), which can be 3-4 times the length of the braincase. This sediment is extremely hard to work with. Bobby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
worthy 55 Posted February 6, 2008 Share Posted February 6, 2008 Great fossils!! :Thumbs-up: It's my bone!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roz Posted February 7, 2008 Share Posted February 7, 2008 Glad to see that you haven't lost your fossil -hunt -touch, for some really good fossils! Welcome to the forum! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boesse Posted March 23, 2008 Author Share Posted March 23, 2008 Here's a fairly new find, and something I'm quite freakin proud of: a pair of associated tusks from the Purisima Formation. About 7 million years old. The straight one is the lower tusk, and the curved one is the upper tusk. These are from an extinct walrus named Dusignathus santacruzensis. The dusignathine walruses (D. santacruzensis, D. seftoni, Gomphotaria pugnax, and Pontolis magnus) are all peculiar walruses that had both upper AND lower tusks. Enjoy!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uncle Siphuncle Posted March 23, 2008 Share Posted March 23, 2008 Boesse Are you familiar with what baleen whales were present in Yorktown and Eastover seas in Pliocene VA? I came home with a partial dentary that was 30" and 45 LB and a couple large articulated verts. Just wondering what mysticete whales lived at that time in the middle to larger end of the size spectrum. I know blue whales lived then but have no concept of scale concerning the jaw fragment, etc. Grüße, Daniel A. Wöhr aus Südtexas "To the motivated go the spoils." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gatorman Posted March 23, 2008 Share Posted March 23, 2008 Awesome Tusks! Where are they from? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Cris Posted March 23, 2008 Share Posted March 23, 2008 One tusk is probably rare....Two associated tusks...Amazing.. Thanks for sharing. Awesome Tusks! Where are they from? This topic is called Mio-pliocene Fossils of Northern California I'll go out on a limb here and saaaay Northern California..? haha Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boesse Posted March 23, 2008 Author Share Posted March 23, 2008 Dan: Volume IV of the lee Creek series just came out (VMNH special publication #12) and there are a couple papers dealing with the Pliocene baleen whales of the atlantic seaboard. Basically, there is Herpetocetus transatlanticus (a very weird little whale; I'm studying/describing a new skull of Herpetocetus bramblei, an even weirder California species of Herpetocetus), Balaenopterid whales (Balaenoptera aff. acutorostrata and B. borealina), and two balaenid whales: Balaena ricei (described in Smithsonian Con. Paleobiology 93), and Balaenula sp. If you like, I can identify the dentary (if you have the posterior end with the condyle/coronoid/angular process) for you. Anson: The tusks are from the Purisima Formation in Santa Cruz County. Cris: I was pretty shocked at finding two associated tusks myself. I was pretty blown away, in fact. Even weirder: I found these only three feet away from the spot I picked up my megalodon tooth! Bobby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uncle Siphuncle Posted March 23, 2008 Share Posted March 23, 2008 Boesse You'll find images of the whale dentary and verts in my recent post entitled "Whale Stuff". http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?sh...post&p=8255 The jaw appears to be a medial section about 30 inches long and 45 LBS or so. There is a quarter lying on the jaw for scale. Since it appears to be a medial section with no ramus intact, I was wondering if it can be identified based on mass. Could this be blue whale? Same general question for the verts, which have 8 inch diameter centra, plus processes. I have no idea whether the verts have distinguishing features, or whether size has some bearing on ability to ID them. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide. I was way out of my element when collecting this stuff. Grüße, Daniel A. Wöhr aus Südtexas "To the motivated go the spoils." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
braik Posted April 15, 2008 Share Posted April 15, 2008 hello my stony-iron http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zatniwr4UGU my site of meteorites http://meteoritesbraik.blog4ever.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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