Extant Echinorhinus cookei jaw with symphyseal/parasymphyseal teeth

[MarcoSr]

I stopped buying shark jaws a while back because of the alarming worldwide decline of sharks because of fishing.  This jaw came from a researcher who was selling his entire research collection to help fund a wildlife conservation project in South Africa, so I made an exception.

 

This Echinorhinus cookei jaw from the Philippines is extremely interesting because it has an upper tooth across the upper symphysis and lower parasymphyseal teeth which I don’t often see in Echinorhinus jaws or pictures of jaws, and is why I'm making this post.   Below are my pictures showing these teeth.  Also below are the actual jaw pictures that were taken by the seller.  I took numerous jaw pictures but couldn’t get any picture as nice as or better than the seller’s pictures.

 

Jaw (9x8 inches)  pictures:

 

 

 

 

 

Tooth across the upper jaw symphysis:

 

 

 

 

Lower jaw symphyseal teeth:

 

 

 

 

 

I looked closely at pictures in 66 posts selling Echinorhinus jaws (60 jaws identified as E. brucus and 6 jaws identified as E. cookei) on-line and only saw 1 E. cookei and 3 E. brucus jaws that looked like they might have lower parasymphyseal teeth.  So they are not that common. See the below pictures.  As a cautionary note, Echinorhinus jaw IDs are only reliable if the shark that the jaw was removed from was examined (specifically its dermal denticles).

 

1 E. cookei jaw:

 

 

 

 

3 E. brucus:

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is just another example of shark teeth variability in a shark species.

 

Marco Sr.

[Shellseeker]

8 minutes ago, MarcoSr said:

This Echinorhinus cookei jaw from the Philippines is extremely interesting because it has an upper tooth across the upper symphysis and lower parasymphyseal teeth which I don’t often see in Echinorhinus jaws or pictures of jaws, and is why I'm making this post.

I appreciate that many forum members share their collections and the knowledge gained over decades with me. You are a leader in that group. 

[ynot]

Cool jaw

[Tidgy's Dad]

Very interesting.

And thanks for helping stop the trade in these curiosities.

[MarcoSr]

43 minutes ago, Tidgy's Dad said:

Very interesting.

And thanks for helping stop the trade in these curiosities.

 

I truly regret buying the shark and ray jaws that I bought.  I never bought what are called trophy jaws.  These sharks are fished solely to get their jaws for sale.  The bigger the jaw, the more valuable.  Over 100 million sharks get caught worldwide each year for food.  People do have to eat, but the shark populations just can't recover from this magnitude of yearly fishing.  Fining is a truly disgusting fishing practice where the shark fins are kept to be sold for soup and the live finned shark is thrown back into the water to die.  This practice should be outlawed worldwide.  I bought extant shark and ray jaws to help me to understand extant shark and ray dentitions/teeth, which help me to better understand the fossil shark and ray teeth that I collect.  I at least tried to buy the jaws of food sharks, but you never know for sure.

 

Marco Sr.

[jpc]

5 minutes ago, MarcoSr said:

Fining is a truly disgusting fishing practice where the shark fins are kept to be sold for soup and the live finned shark is thrown back into the water to die.  This practice should be outlawed worldwide. 

Amen. 

 

[Tidgy's Dad]

I still feel bad about some of the shells I bought or had bought for me as a child. Especially the Nautilus shells I had, Three of'em. Makes me shudder now.