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Hi, I found this tooth on a beach in eastern Havana (Tarara), Cuba. I have no idea what animal could it be, can anyone please help me to identify it?
Hi Rene, this is from an invertebrate. It’s either the part of a hinge of a clam or part of the feeding apparatus (called aristotle’s lantern) of a sea urchin. I’m sure with some photos from different angles, we could say which of the two it is.
@jbauer do you agree / can you tell which it is?thank you, for your quick anwser Mr Perez. i send you more pictures. i’m a software developer so I do not have experience on fossil identification (or living sea animals identification either) <span lang=”en”>but I have to notice that the piece was on the seashore in an area of hard waves with many stones around it, I guess a non-vertebrate structure could not resist such hard waves. Also the piece have almost a conic shape, i have seen pictures of aristotle’s lantern of sea urchin they have a lot of irregularities on his shape maybe erosion give it that shape? i thinks it’s difficult because it’s almost a perfect cone. also the size of the piece is 5 cm in lenght it’s hard to imagine such a big sea urchin or clam so close to the seashore. Any way as i tell you i have no experience on identification fossils or animals pieces and i know it’s very hard only using a picture. Thank you again for your help.
</span>Hi, Lee Cone from http://www.paleosoc.org has identify the piece as a predentary bone of a marlin or some other billfish i attached some pictures of that bone. he also said that it’s not a fossil but just a modern bone. One question i have is how can i decide if a founded piece is a fossil or just a regular bone? thank you again for your help.
I agree with the bullfish predentary bone from a modern fish. It is definitely NOT from a sea urchin. That must’ve been a good size fish!
It looks modern, because it looks mostly made of bone, with little of no mineralization. If it was from a fossil fish, you might expect it to have more of the bone replaced with rock minerals like silicates.
A modern bone will usually be white or sometimes stained and be fairly light as it is porous. A fossil will be mineralized and often stone-like with increased density due to mineralization. Here is a fossil billfish rostrum. Note less porous appearance, the colorization and more stony texture.
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