Description
The perfect gift for curious minds or starting a collection! This Squalicorax Tooth (Crow Shark) is a wonderful slice of history.
A wonderful Fossil Collection Case featuring a Squalicorax Tooth (Crow Shark)
Squalicorax, commonly known as the crow shark, is a genus of extinct lamniform shark known to have lived during the Cretaceous period.
These sharks are of medium size, up to 5 m (usually around 2 m) in length. Their bodies were similar to the modern gray reef sharks, but the shape of the teeth is strikingly similar to that of a tiger shark. The teeth are numerous, relatively small, with a curved crown and serrated, up to 2.5 – 3 cm in height (the only representative of the Mesozoic Lamniformes with serrated teeth). Large numbers of fossil teeth have been found in Europe, North Africa, and North America.
Squalicorax was a coastal predator, but also scavenged as evidenced by a Squalicorax tooth found embedded in the metatarsal (foot) bone of a terrestrial hadrosaurid dinosaur that most likely died on land and ended up in the water.
Other food sources included turtles, mosasaurs, ichthyodectids, and other bony fishes and sea creatures. Tooth marks from this shark have also been found on the bones of Pteranodon, but whether the shark actively snatched such large pterosaurs out of the air, attacked them as they dove after prey, or was simply scavenging is not known.
Geology :
Complete skeletons are known from sediments of the Western Inland Sea of the Cretaceous in Kansas, South Dakota, and Wyoming, all in the USA. The teeth are also found in France, the Czech Republic, Canada, and Morocco.
Given the small teeth, this species is considered a hunter of small prey. However, teeth marks on the bones of marine reptiles are evidence that these shark also fed on carrion. The body shape and structure of the trunk placoid scales indicate the ability to swim quickly.
A fully articulated 1.9-m long fossil skeleton of Squalicorax falcatus has been found in Kansas, evidence of its presence in the Western Interior Seaway.
Product Details :
9 available, you will receive 1 per order intuitively selected for you!
Box 5cm
Teeth approximately 2cm each
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