What Lived In Tennessee

[logan]

hi, guys just signed up so i could ask some simple questions

what prehistoric creatures lived in Tennessee ?

my mother has found a rather peculiar fossil

it is a tooth that is 2.5" long

i suggested that it might have been marine. from what i understand the only dinosaur fossil found in Tennessee are Hadrosaurid fossils.

however i may be misinformed. the tooth is elongated.(looks like its from a predator. however it could possible be that of a scavenger seeing that it is more round than knife shaped.

any suggestion perhaps it is from a mammal? sorry i dont have pictures right now but i will have some this week end .

[fossil fury]

Beats me. I do know of one prehistoric animal in Tennessee, and that is Smilodon Fatilis. I heard that's their mascot or somthing.

[tracer]

well, hi and welcome to the forum

here's a link i found to one person's site who also has links to other sites. link

but you might also use a search engine to search for "tennessee fossils" and "tennessee geology", etc. and just sort of start reading up on it all. you will find info on several "famous" localities, but then other stuff as well. looks like a lot of what's found in tennessee is pretty old marine invertebrate stuff.

good luck with your research. i'm sure you'll find it interesting.

[MarkGelbart]

Tennessee has lots of Pleistocene fossil sites, mostly in the abundant caves in the mountains. There are also many paleozoic fossil sites in Tennessee, I'm sure because the Appalachian mountains are very old.

You can read about Pleistocene fossil sites of Tennessee by going to amazon.com and doing a search of Georgia Before People: Land of the saber-tooths, mastodons, vampire bats, and other strange creatures by Mark Gelbart.

Amazon will let you look inside my book. Do a search of Tennessee fossil sites in my book, and you should be able to find a whole segment on Pleistocene fossil sites of Tennessee that you can read about for free.

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[JimB88]

If you know where it comes from that would help. West of Nashville theres a upper Cretaceous formation where they have found mosasaur remains such as tylosaurus. There are also phosphate pits where Pleistocene material can be found in western and south western Tenn. It also could be a Paleozoic shark tooth (need a photo of it.) From Nashville everything east is Paleozoic (exception being the Grey fossil site which was a Miocene sinkhole.)

Hope that narrows it down a bit.

[logan]

If you know where it comes from that would help. West of Nashville theres a upper Cretaceous formation where they have found mosasaur remains such as tylosaurus. There are also phosphate pits where Pleistocene material can be found in western and south western Tenn. It also could be a Paleozoic shark tooth (need a photo of it.) From Nashville everything east is Paleozoic (exception being the Grey fossil site which was a Miocene sinkhole.)

Hope that narrows it down a bit.

it comes from Pulaski the town is located in the south west it borders alabama

Edited May 22, 2010 by logan

[JimB88]

it comes from Pulaski the town is located in the south west it borders alabama

According to the geological map, Giles county has Ordovician and Mississippian age rock. There may very well be some Pleistocene material in the soil and in caves. A pic would really help. In the Mississippian rocks there could be sharks teeth and fish fragments.