Little Tooth, Big Root

[Northern Sharks]

Most sharks are continuously replacing teeth; the replacements develop in rows, lingual to the row in use and ready to move into place. One of the reasons that there are so many fossil sharks teeth is that individual sharks shed many hundreds of them during their life. My thought was that the teeth that are in a shark's mouth when it dies might have a different looking root, compared to a shed tooth.

As I know it, teeth that are shed are fully developed, front row teeth only. Any teeth in the sharks mouth when it dies would be either these fully developed teeth or teeth in various stages of development as you get farther back in the file. The enamel is pretty much the same in each stage, but the root is different. I can't see a tooth with an "over-developed" root like this staying in while a smaller, but fully developed tooth, is shed. I don't know what your tooth is (yet ) but I can't find a record of any angel shark teeth coming from Florida

[eddie]

I've found several pointy "lemon like" teeth that had a more knobby root that I figured were from a different species but didn't think I could ID, but this one has a much more distinctive look to it so I thought I'd post it hoping someone would recognize it.

Hmmm, that's a strange tooth. Is the root really all root, or is it possible it's hard matrix? If the former,

my guess would be it's deformed/diseased, it's doesn't look "normal" to me. One thing that crossed

my mind was whale shark, so I went to look at my small stash of Rhincodon teeth from Lee Creek, and

I found a tooth that I think looks pretty similar. Problem is, while it was with my whale shark teeth, I don't think

it is a Rhincodon. I'll try to come up with a better guess after doing some reading. Cool tooth.

Thanks,

Eddie

[Northern Sharks]

Hmmm, that's a strange tooth. Is the root really all root, or is it possible it's hard matrix? If the former,

my guess would be it's deformed/diseased, it's doesn't look "normal" to me. One thing that crossed

my mind was whale shark, so I went to look at my small stash of Rhincodon teeth from Lee Creek, and

I found a tooth that I think looks pretty similar. Problem is, while it was with my whale shark teeth, I don't think

it is a Rhincodon. I'll try to come up with a better guess after doing some reading. Cool tooth.

Thanks,

Eddie

Oooooh. You might be on to something there. Now that I look at that first pic again, the lowest part of the root, right at Washington's ear, looks to be a slightly different color. If that's the case, the tooth could be something as simple as a lower jaw Carcharhinus. Good eyes (and nice whale shark tooth as well)

[hybodus]

Nice tooth... looks like a posterior Negaprion to me.

[Serack]

Hmmm, that's a strange tooth. Is the root really all root, or is it possible it's hard matrix?

I am confident that there is no matrix on this tooth but just root.

]Nice tooth... looks like a posterior Negaprion to me.

Other than the root structure that is what it most resembles to me, however, I have been told that many sharks with distinct upper teeth have lower jaw teeth resembling them, and I even have a modern shark jaw that I got when I was 12 that illustrates that. (it's not on me at the moment and I never tried to ID it but I think it was a tiger of some type)