Lilstock, Somerset find - tooth shape in nodule

[dhiggi]

My daughter just picked up this unusual looking nodule on the beach at Lilstock, it split quite easily to expose a tooth shaped item. Could it be a tooth or perhaps some kind of shell?

Thanks for looking 

[Mainefossils]

@pachy-pleuro-whatnot-odon might be able to help. Neat find! 

 

Regards, 

Asher

[dhiggi]

[Fossildude19]

Looks more like jet, or woody/plant-ish, to me.

If I found it at my Jurassic spot here in Connecticut, I would call it a fish coprolite.

[TqB]

All of Tim's suggestions are feasible, but there's a small chance it could be coleoid related, maybe inky. 

I'm intrigued by the counterpart in the third photo which looks possibly shelly - any chance of a closeup of that?

Edited August 26, 2021 by TqB

[dhiggi]

6 minutes ago, TqB said:

All of Tim's suggestions are feasible, but there's a small chance it could be coleoid related, maybe inky. I'm intrigued by the counterpart in the third photo - any chance of a closeup of that?

The counterpart seemed to have a hint of pyrite about it, we’re at the cricket at the moment but I’ll get a pic up later

[dhiggi]

[dhiggi]

Also found a number of pieces that look like this, this one has what looks like a section of rib, among other bits and pieces. Am I right in thinking that the Rhaetic bone bed can also be found this far down the Bristol Channel? It looks a lot like a piece already in my daughters collection 

[TqB]

Thanks for the new photos. It's hard to tell - the whitish bit may just be a mineral crust in a crack in the nodule or it may be something. The longitudinal lineations are suggestive of coleoid anyway!

 

Yes, that's a bit of the bone bed. It outcrops around there, all the way to Blue Anchor Point.

[dhiggi]

Update; we took it to the kiosk in the Charmouth Heritage centre to see if they could identify it but it had them stumped. We then went to see Chris Moore with it, who prepped it out to reveal more but wasn’t too sure, thinking maybe shark (but definitely not wood). He recommended seeing someone in the Lyme museum (formerly at the NHM) who, with a colleague, were pretty certain that it is a shark fin spine, possibly in a coprolite

[TqB]

28 minutes ago, dhiggi said:

Update; we took it to the kiosk in the Charmouth Heritage centre to see if they could identify it but it had them stumped. We then went to see Chris Moore with it, who prepped it out to reveal more but wasn’t too sure, thinking maybe shark (but definitely not wood). He recommended seeing someone in the Lyme museum (formerly at the NHM) who, with a colleague, were pretty certain that it is a shark fin spine, possibly in a coprolite

That works! Tricky one.

[JohnJ]

3 hours ago, dhiggi said:

We then went to see Chris Moore with it, who prepped it out to reveal more but wasn’t too sure, thinking maybe shark (but definitely not wood).

 

Do you have any new images?  

 

[pachy-pleuro-whatnot-odon]

Sorry for showing up for this so late, but I'm out on holiday with my family this week and have been spending most of my days out in the field looking for fossils.

 

I'm glad this question has been brought to a satisfactory resolution, as this was indeed a tricky one. It was pretty obvious to me from the beginning that it wasn't a tooth, as originally thought, but I couldn't make my mind up about whether this was bone or plant matter - with me inclining towards the former. Then Tarquin threw coleoid in the mix, which also seemed to have its merit - although from my experience with fossilized cephalopod material from Holzmaden ink-sacks are more homogeneous in texture (although I admittedly haven't seen one in cross-section and the "wings" often do have a more lengthwise fibrous texture). I was, in fact, just about to respond that this doesn't look like squid to me either, and that my money would be on bone, when I read it's been IDed as shark fin spine.

 

Great to see a mystery solved like that! It was definitely a tricky one that had quite some knowledgeable people going their money's worth at it. But great detective-work!

[dhiggi]

20 hours ago, JohnJ said:

 

Do you have any new images?  

 

still needs a bit of cleaning up but more of it has been revealed