Evan Walsh
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It’s the molar tooth of a mastodon (Mammut americanum) and a relatively complete & nicely preserved example of one at that. Excellent find!
Do you know the age of the rock. The impression looks like it could be the mold of a horse tooth, but since that tooth morphology, did not appear in horses until the pliocene, I would need to know that it would be that age, or I would say just a mineral.
they are probably from a juvenile. Young megalodon sharks likley hunted in the shallows, while the full grown adult fish were living in the open ocean, although they ocassionally ventured into the shallows. This may be an explanation as to why the small teeth are much more common the regular giant ones.
Looks like rock too me. I don’t think that would be trunk tissue, since fossilized tissue almost never fossilizes, esspecially in a coarse rock like that. The impressions look like they are probably from erosion or fracturing, and this rock looks either igneous or metamorphic. Some fossils including the hollow mold of the body of a pliocene rhinoceros which drowned in lava, have been found, but those are incredibly, incredibly rare.
I would most likley just say a rock. It looks mostly inorganic and since you stated it is an area without fossils, I think it might just be a “chunk” or granite, or with the holes, maybe pumice, but neat rock
intresting about what you are saying with the stratigraphy. I have several oreodont jaw/skull fragments from the Brule Formation (another name for White River Fm.) and was labeled as Merycoidon. My oreodont specimens look typical of that genus, but I am not nearly as good at identifying mammal fossils as those of dinosaurs
Definitely mammal. To me it looks like it comes from the Oligocene horse genus Mesohippus, or from Merycoidodon, the most common genus of oreodont mammal. The white bone and brown tooth preservation looks identical to mammal fossils found in the White River Formations of South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Nebraska. Do know where the specimen is from?
If its Paleozoic, there are few possibilities for the age. It could be Mississippian (Early Carboniferous) limestone, similar to the one which makes up Wind Cave in the Black Hills, much farther west. But more likely I think it could be the Cambrian Deadwood Formation, which is most common in the Black Hills, but is found as far northeast as North Dakota and Manitoba. However if these are echinoderms, I think that they are much more likley middle Palezoic crinoids, than Cambrian eocrinoids or cystoids. The most likley possibility is that if its Palezoic and echinoderm, than its probably Orodvician, a small remainder of the Pleistocene glacier carving.
I have been on one dig with PaleoAdventures, Walter’s company. It was pretty fun and I got to keep some really neat stuff. However I unfortunatley cant do that kind of stuff regularly, since most dinosaur digs, even a few on the western slope in CO, are at least 6 to 8 hrs away from where I live
Most of my specimens I generally purchase, since I specialize in vertebrates, are there are not many open private land sites with those in colorado, and are from locations such as the Hell Creek Fm. of SD, WY, and MT. When I do field hunt, I have a few sites I like to go to. One really neat one I have been to was a Lower (Early) Ordovician site near Pikes Peak, CO, where there are small to medium sized trilobites in pinkish orange dolomite rock. I generally collect all the trilobites since they are somewhat rare, but most of the brachiopods and cystoid echinoderm stems, I left.
