fossilover Posted March 10, 2009 Share Posted March 10, 2009 I am quite puzzled right now and am hoping someone can help me on this. On a recent trip to the beach I found what looks like a horse tooth. I believe that's what it is but it's worn down quite a bit. The thing that gets me is, this beach used to be over 100 miles out to sea. I don't recall ever seeing a horse with fins, so how in the world can a horse end up over 100 miles away from any land?? I will post a pic here shortly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest bmorefossil Posted March 10, 2009 Share Posted March 10, 2009 I am quite puzzled right now and am hoping someone can help me on this. On a recent trip to the beach I found what looks like a horse tooth. I believe that's what it is but it's worn down quite a bit. The thing that gets me is, this beach used to be over 100 miles out to sea. I don't recall ever seeing a horse with fins, so how in the world can a horse end up over 100 miles away from any land??I will post a pic here shortly. well if the beach was 100miles off the shore i guess it could have been moved by someone in the past or just washed out there haha. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebrocklds Posted March 10, 2009 Share Posted March 10, 2009 2 words bloat and float.????? not that i think this is what happened but it is possible not likely Brock Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barefootgirl Posted March 10, 2009 Share Posted March 10, 2009 A ship could have sunk that was carrying horses. Or maybe an ancient tsunami victim. In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of defeat: but in the evolution of real knowledge, it marks the first step in progress toward victory. Alfred North Whithead 'Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia!' Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fossilover Posted March 10, 2009 Author Share Posted March 10, 2009 This tooth is pretty fossilized. I'm not sure if there were boats or ships around during that time, but I like your tsunami theory. Here are pics of the tooth. A ship could have sunk that was carrying horses. Or maybe an ancient tsunami victim. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tracer Posted March 10, 2009 Share Posted March 10, 2009 two words, transgressive/regressive. don't fix a point in time, because there have been both cooling and warming periods. to make a long story longer, it is likely that during the last period of glaciation, the land was further out, and the ponies pranced where the sea now stands. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest solius symbiosus Posted March 10, 2009 Share Posted March 10, 2009 How do you know that the beach used to be 100 miles out to sea? If it was, it should be under water now. If you were diving... due to water locked up in ice during the Wisconsin(Würm) glaciation around 15 thousand years ago, sea level was about 100 m below its current position. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest solius symbiosus Posted March 10, 2009 Share Posted March 10, 2009 This map is pretty much self-explanatory. Light blue/dark blue line was the sea level at the maximum extent of the glaciers. The light green/dark green was the shore line at the start of the glaciation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fossilover Posted March 10, 2009 Author Share Posted March 10, 2009 100 miles out to sea and under water is what I meant. Sorry. I was told by an employee at the Aurora Fossil Museum that at one point the shore line came in as far as Raleigh, NC. How do you know that the beach used to be 100 miles out to sea? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fossilover Posted March 10, 2009 Author Share Posted March 10, 2009 Thank you, the glacier theory makes sense. And thank you for the map, solius. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest bmorefossil Posted March 10, 2009 Share Posted March 10, 2009 100 miles out to sea and under water is what I meant. Sorry. I was told by an employee at the Aurora Fossil Museum that at one point the shore line came in as far as Raleigh, NC. oh well there is your problem haha yea stuff makes its way around like that. I found a bison tooth in Delaware never expected to find that there but you never know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Auspex Posted March 10, 2009 Share Posted March 10, 2009 100 miles out to sea and under water is what I meant. Sorry. I was told by an employee at the Aurora Fossil Museum that at one point the shore line came in as far as Raleigh, NC. Well, if that's a Pleistocene horse tooth, the animal could have been 75 miles from the ocean when it died. "There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant “Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley >Paleontology is an evolving science. >May your wonders never cease! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaleoRon Posted March 10, 2009 Share Posted March 10, 2009 Horses have been around that area for millions of years and the ocean level has changed many times. Eastern N.C. has both off shore and near shore deposits and there are also river channel deposits where terrestrial animal remains can be found. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fossilover Posted March 10, 2009 Author Share Posted March 10, 2009 I also thought, too that maybe something ate the horse while it was near water and it's body was inadvertantly drug out to sea via the predator's stomach Horses have been around that area for millions of years and the ocean level has changed many times. Eastern N.C. has both off shore and near shore deposits and there are also river channel deposits where terrestrial animal remains can be found. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harry Pristis Posted March 10, 2009 Share Posted March 10, 2009 2 words bloat and float.?????not that i think this is what happened but it is possible not likely Brock I didn't make that up, Brock! LOL They're called "floaters." I've read descriptions of a large Eocene mammal (I forget which one) -- a floater totally out of place in marine sediments. Dino's can be floaters in the Interior Sea. Florida phosphates are loaded with them -- it's a marine deposit with a mix of marine animals and floaters washed into the paleo-embayment by rivers in flood. No kidding!! http://pristis.wix.com/the-demijohn-page What seest thou else In the dark backward and abysm of time? ---Shakespeare, The Tempest Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest solius symbiosus Posted March 10, 2009 Share Posted March 10, 2009 ^^Other things also have floated out to sea in the geologic past. http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2008AM/finalprog...ract_148859.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Auspex Posted March 10, 2009 Share Posted March 10, 2009 ^^Other things also have floated out to sea in the geologic past. Sea-going erratics; how cool is that? "There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant “Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley >Paleontology is an evolving science. >May your wonders never cease! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fossilover Posted March 10, 2009 Author Share Posted March 10, 2009 Very cool. definitely not something I was expecting to find on the beach. And it certainly could have floated out to sea. I've seen plenty of "floaters" in my previous line of work. Sea-going erratics; how cool is that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaleoRon Posted March 10, 2009 Share Posted March 10, 2009 There was a quarry in Belgrade, N.C. that had a river channel deposit that was so rich in terrestrial animal remains that the quarry owners set up a collecting area for the local Boy Scouts complete with picnic benches and screens. There were a lot of really nice specimens removed from that site including several mastadon teeth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fossilover Posted March 11, 2009 Author Share Posted March 11, 2009 There was a quarry in Belgrade, N.C. that had a river channel deposit that was so rich in terrestrial animal remains that the quarry owners set up a collecting area for the local Boy Scouts complete with picnic benches and screens. There were a lot of really nice specimens removed from that site including several mastadon teeth. That would be awesome, but if it's the same quarry in Maysville I tried to get into a year ago, it's been closed to the public since 9/11. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fossilover Posted March 11, 2009 Author Share Posted March 11, 2009 And since you mentioned it, I do remember someone I know finding a horse tooth at another quarry nearby. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boesse Posted March 11, 2009 Share Posted March 11, 2009 As far as bloat and float goes, its probably a very common phenomenon. Jack Horner did a paper in the late 1970's about occurrences of fossil ankylosaurs, and found that the majority of ankylosaur skeletons found up until then had been recovered from marine rocks (e.g. the Pierre Shale). Additionally, ankylosaurs beat out every other type of dinosaur found in marine rocks. There are many dinosaur skeletons that have been recovered from marine sediments, including some from the Cretaceous of California. Modern terrestrial mammals can be observed bloating and floating in rivers, sometimes even ending up floating out into the sea. Additionally, marine mammals are observed to bloat and float for long distances and long periods of time (days to weeks). This process has the potential to deliver skeletal elements of an organism to areas outside the geographic range of the species. Bobby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tracer Posted March 11, 2009 Share Posted March 11, 2009 i always picture ankylosaurs biting my ankles, for some reason. i've heard of cats bloating and floating past scuba diapers before. but series lee, folks, the westin inferior see way was prolly just full of such snarge because there were no twisted people around with sharpnesses to pop the bloatednesses. i think i read about dino blones an egg dotedly found in the north sluffer ribber, and we all know that was under water during the crete aceshush. there was a point in here somewhere - well, there should have been anyway. i'm guessin', when i really think about it, that people who are sure of what they found and where it came from are probably full of bull and wrong 77.7 percent of the time, but can't nobody prove 'em wrong, so they get to just go on all high and mighty until the cows float home. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eddie Posted March 16, 2009 Share Posted March 16, 2009 That would be awesome, but if it's the same quarry in Maysville I tried to get into a year ago, it's been closed to the public since 9/11. Some friends of mine and I hunted that mine (assuming it's the same one) last fall. They allow collecting on Fridays if they are not blasting. I found a small meg and what I think is a G. mayumbensis (which I didn't know could be found in North Carolina.) Thanks, Eddie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harry Pristis Posted March 16, 2009 Share Posted March 16, 2009 As far as bloat and float goes, its probably a very common phenomenon. Jack Horner did a paper in the late 1970's about occurrences of fossil ankylosaurs, and found that the majority of ankylosaur skeletons found up until then had been recovered from marine rocks (e.g. the Pierre Shale). Additionally, ankylosaurs beat out every other type of dinosaur found in marine rocks. There are many dinosaur skeletons that have been recovered from marine sediments, including some from the Cretaceous of California. Modern terrestrial mammals can be observed bloating and floating in rivers, sometimes even ending up floating out into the sea.Additionally, marine mammals are observed to bloat and float for long distances and long periods of time (days to weeks). This process has the potential to deliver skeletal elements of an organism to areas outside the geographic range of the species. Bobby Let's take it one step further. Let's assume for the sake of argument that, in any large drainage basin during the Pleistocene, an equid horse carcass was swept out to sea only once every 100 years (you know, in the near-proverbial 100-year flood). That would come to 20,000 horse carcasses swept to the sea during the Pleistocene. (2,000,000 -/- 100). Further, let us say that every horse skull fell to pieces, scattering the cheek teeth. That would come to 480,000 equid cheek teeth littering the region of the river-mouth within say a week's float. (20,000 x 24). Let's say that, during the same period of time in the same drainage, one additional equid horse falls dead in a stream once every 10 years. None of these horse carcasses makes it to the mouth of the river. Still, that comes to parts of 200,000 horses resting in lag deposits in that drainage. (2,000,000 -/- 10). In our 10-year model, all of the horse cheek teeth fall out of the skull elements. That would come to 4,800,000 loose cheek teeth in those fluviatile sediments.. (200,000 x 24). (Our model ignores the sub-adult horses which may have two teeth -- one deciduous, the other unerrupted -- in a single alvoelus.) It's easy to lose perspective when we're picking up horse teeth one at a time and wondering about the individual horses. It's difficult to comprehend the time involved. http://pristis.wix.com/the-demijohn-page What seest thou else In the dark backward and abysm of time? ---Shakespeare, The Tempest Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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