Victor Perez
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Hello,
Thank you for sharing! Unfortunately, it will be difficult to verify this is a fossil without some more information and photos. Since it is a landscape boulder, it will likely be very hard or impossible to determine where the rock originated from. Knowing where it came from would be extremely important for determining the age and what potential organisms would have been around. It is also helpful to provide something for scale in the photos. Even when you provide dimensions in the text, it is much easier to conceive the overall size if there is some kind of scale for reference in the photo(s).
While the impressions do have a resemblance to a dinosaur track, my gut feeling is that it is not what it is. Most likely, there was another type of rock embedded into the larger boulder and what we are seeing is that secondary rock eroding out.
I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help, but I hope you will continue to share your finds with us!
Hi Pete, I think you are correct. The tooth appears to be from the marine crocodile, Thecachampsa. The fossils at Holden Beach come from multiple stratigraphic layers, so it is difficult to narrow down the age of your tooth and the specific identity.
You may also want to compare your tooth with mosasaur teeth, which can also be found at Holden. Based on the image you uploaded, I’m still leaning towards crocodile, but mosasaur would be worth looking into as another possibility.
<span class=”atwho-inserted” contenteditable=”false” data-atwho-at-query=”@bm”>@bmacfadden</span> Hey Bruce, can you confirm the ID on this tooth?
Honestly, some parts of it look like a limestone or dolomite and other parts of it look like chert. It may not be from the Avon Park Formation, but it could be from a unit that is the same age in Alabama. This website mentions the “Claiborn/Jackson Group” which include “fossiliferous chert and limestone boulders”. https://mrdata.usgs.gov/geology/state/fips-unit.php?code=f01069https://mrdata.usgs.gov/geology/state/fips-unit.php?code=f01069
I think this is a chunk of dolomite, possibly from the Eocene Avon Park Formation. The molds/impressions seem to mostly be bivalves, but the second photo you posted looks like a partial echinoid (sea urchin). I don’t know the invertebrates well enough to give you any species names.
Hi Todd,
My best guess would be that it is either an ichthyosaur or dinosaur vertebra, given that the Cretaceous interior seaway cut through Phillips County, Montana.
There is a small museum you could visit/reach out to for more information: https://mtdinotrail.org/phillips-county-museum/
Best,
Victor
I don’t think they are teeth. It looks like you’ve got a conglomerate, which is a rock composed of rounded grains of varying sizes.
Hi Nathan,
This tooth is from an extinct mackerel shark, Otodus obliquus. It is likely around 60 million years old and is the ancestor of the popular megatooth shark, Otodus megalodon.
I don’t really know what you mean by real or fake. It’s a real rock… Specifically it’s chert (a variant of quartz).
Hi James, thanks for sharing your finds! Unfortunately, these all appear to be rocks rather than fossils. The one you thought is a coprolite is actually a rock called breccia.
