What Is Your Favorite Shark Tooth?

[sixgill pete]

OK folks, let's see what everyone's favorite one or two shark teeth are. And a pic or two of the teeth and tell us why.

 

I love teeth from the Eocene. The variety, especially the cusped teeth are so awesome. My two favorites without a doubt are Hexanchus agassizi and Otodu (carcharocles) auriculatus. One so small (17mm wide is a large tooth) and one so big (I have one that is right at 4 inches, 102mm long).

 

The saw-like teeth of the Hexanchus (sixgill cowshark) are just so cool, hence my screen name sixgill pete. The O. auriculatus, a megalodon predecessor big robust and lethal. The serrations and cusps are amazing. But yet it is some of the smaller ones that are my favorite. Every time I find one of these two species, I get a thrill. No matter how many I have.

 

Hexanchus agassizi:

 

 

 

 

auriculatus

 

 

 

 

Now let's see yours!

[Fin Lover]

I love posterior angustidens but I rarely find perfect ones, so I guess if we're talking about my favorite shark tooth that I've found, it would have be an Isurus retroflexus.  The ones I've found here often have some sort of cusps, and each one has been different than the others.  

 

Here is my favorite, with crenulated cusps:

[Ludwigia]

I love 'em all of course, but my personal favorites are the ones I found myself at a site near to home.

 

Notorhynchus primigenius

 

Carcharodon hastalis

 

Carcharhinus priscus. (I think)

 

Hemipristis serra

 

[Vinnies fossils]

Great teeth! My favorite species are mostly found in the cenomanian. One of my favorite species has to be Archaeolamna aff Haigi. But recently I’ve gotten an affection for deep sea sharks and their teeth. Oxynotus centrina and Dalatias licha are high on my bucket list. I do own two very nice teeth of Somniosus microcephalus. Some of my other favorite are the mysterious benedini and a parasymphyseal auriculatus. I can’t choose…. 

[Anomotodon]

5 hours ago, sixgill pete said:

 

I love teeth from the Eocene. The variety, especially the cusped teeth are so awesome.

 

The saw-like teeth of the Hexanchus (sixgill cowshark) are just so cool, hence my screen name sixgill pete.

I agree that 1) Eocene sharks were incredibly diverse and 2) the shark in my screen name is the best

 

Teeth from Anomotodon sheppeyensis and A. novus are just so elegant and are always a pleasure to find complete. In the Lutetian of Kyiv clay, a deposit I collected the most in my life probably, they are not super common and also not as rare as some other species, you can expect to find one every 2-3 trips. Here are a few of my favorites, including a pathological tooth.

 

 

My other favorite group have to be hybodonts, their teeth are also very aesthetically pleasing. In the Mesozoic deposits in Ukraine they are quite rare, here are a few “Hybodus” bidentatus from the Albian Burim formation of central Ukraine:

 

 

And a Callovian hybodont from Trakhtemyriv:

 

 

[Jared C]

Surprised no one has mentioned the diverse and beautifully ornamented genus of Ptychodus 

 

The best I've ever found, an extremely well preserved P. occidentalis (Cenomanian)

 

 

 

And the best I've ever seen, online or anywhere. A stunning Santonian P. mortoni found by @Foshunter

 

[ThePhysicist]

Hard choice, but I'll select these two:

 

A young-of-the-year great white. I acquired it last year and it comes from the desert of southern Peru (exported prior to the ban ca. 30 years ago). It's fantastically preserved with those characteristic lateral "cusplets", good color, rare, and comes from an early GW given the geologic age; not to mention the GW is my favorite species. Comparing it with several young juvenile dentitions, I'm fairly comfortable calling this a "neonatal" individual < 1.5 m TL.

 

Example neonatal dentition from the collection of Gordon Hubbell

 

And, my next-favorite species, Cretoxyrhina mantelli. I have a couple of really nice teeth from the legendary Cretaceous chalk in Kansas that I acquired about 5 years ago when I began "seriously" collecting, and they still are among my favorites. The preservation is as if it was lost yesterday, and the edges are still razor-sharp. 

 

 

[Mikrogeophagus]

Love what people have shared so far. Thanks for starting this thread!

 

My favorite genus to find when hunting has to be Cretodus just because of their size, strong striations, and menacing cusplets.

 

As for which two shark teeth I would save from a house fire (excluding Petalodus bc Holocephali), I would first have to go with my big Paraptychodus washitaensis medial file tooth from the Albian Duck Creek Fm. It's the oldest member of the family Ptychodontidae:

 

 

Second, I would choose my Pleistocene (last interglacial) Hawaiian Negaprion acutidens lemon shark. This is extra neat because despite only being just over 100k years old, this tooth represents an extant species of shark that has since gone locally extinct from the Hawaiian islands (probably due to environmental changes during the last glacial period). Sea levels were a bit higher back then, so the deposit is a preserved reef along the beach.

 

Although, they have yet to return to Hawaii in the modern day, scientists have noted the use of Indo-Pacific islands as "stepping stones" for shark populations to gradually traverse great lengths of ocean. Here's an interesting article on a N. acutidens recent "colonization event": doi:10.1017/S175526721400116X

 

[LSCHNELLE]

My faves are multiple. But, my latest favorite is the new Turonian ptychodus species. Hopefully it will soon be named and a paper done by Shawn Hamm. It has been delayed quite some time. These teeth are about 14 to 15 mm wide. Other tooth files in the dentition look very strange compared with the other species.

[rockinout]

This one is my favorite - from the Eocene Weches of East Texas.  Maybe someone here can ID genus and species,

 

 

 

[Mikrogeophagus]

@rockinout Looks like a rare Otodus auriculatus. Uncommon in the TX Eocene, though I have seen some out of East Texas before.