Dog Community

Shark Teeth

Posted : 1/25/2007 2:10:01 PM

I just watched the news story about the rare shark Very interesting. One of my favorite hobbies is picking up fossil shark teeth on the beach in Port Aransas. Over the years i have found thousands. About 95% are gary or black and are thousands of years old. My son, the m arine biologist tried to explain to me why they turn black over the years, but i don['t understand it all that well. Every once in a blue moon I will find a white one.

Sharks lose teeth every day. They have several rows behind the ones in front and they are almost like on on conveyer belt. Lose a tooth, the one behind pops up. They lose thousands in a life time. And each shark has a different shaped tooth. Some are very much alike --sand tiger & mako for instance, even the great white and bull sharks have similar teeth. The tiger shark (not the sand tiger)_ has a very distict tooth It burves and almost has a 'hook' on it. I love to find them and do have a couple in the below picture.

Many times shark attack victims end up with a tooth left in their arm, leg, etc and the type of shark can be identified. I have caught several small black tip sharks and bonnet head (a type of hammerhead) off the jetty and hooked into one unkonw kind while wade fishing and it scared the doo-diddle-squat out of me. Was about 4' long according to miraine biologist son that was wade fishign with me, but it looked 10 feet long to me as it sawm by be before my line snapped. But that is a story in it's own.

Anway, here are a few of the thousands of teeth i have found.

Michelle

Posted : 1/25/2007 2:12:48 PM

What an interesting hobby! Have you identified most of the teeth? What's size is the biggest one you have?

espencer

Posted : 1/25/2007 2:50:55 PM

Imagine one of those getting into your leg or arm [&:]

dubilpie

Posted : 1/25/2007 2:51:28 PM

I spent a winter in florida a few years ago and the kids and I collected sharks teeth, we had a big jug of them, some of them pretty big too. The kids brought some in for show and tell. I don't know what happened to them now. They were all over the beaches we went to.

sandra_slayton

Posted : 1/25/2007 3:36:00 PM

I have given a lot away and also donated a lot to the Texas State Aquarium where they sell them in gift shop. I am not good at identifying them, but those dagger ones are from mako and sand tiger, and of course the "hooked' ones are from tiger and the triangle ones are from bull sharks. I can usually identify hammer head and lemon shark teeth, but didn't put any on the scanner. By the way, the bull shark is the leading shark for shark attacks here on the Texas coast.

EDITED Recently a mako shark was found dead in Corpus Christi Bay and that is extremely rare as they are usually found WAT WAY out and never in water like the bay. Had not been dead long.

Xebby

Posted : 1/25/2007 3:48:28 PM

I have a few in my own collections as well, one I found on a field trip during one of my Paleontology labs (back when I was a geology major) I picked up a few trilobites and brachiopods as well as an interesting shark tooth. I#%92m having a hard time identifying it but I do know it#%92s from the Permian era, Ill have to post pics, maybe someone can help me identify it.

For something more alive, I know I already posted this but here is a reef shark that was swimming around the group I was scuba diving with in the Bahamas. Was only about 6 ft away, I wasn#%92t scared at all but that was one of the closest experiences I had with a shark.

sandra_slayton

Posted : 1/25/2007 4:32:47 PM

I am SCARED of sharks. Wheneve i am fishing over in port Aransas on the jetty and I see the helicopter flying up and down the beach i know sharks have been spotted and they are keeping an eye on them.
On a different note, i am not partial to sting rays either, and do the "sting ray shuffle' when wade fishing or throwing my bait casting net. My next door neighbor stepped on one a few years ago and I suspect it was a cownose ray because when she stepped on it, it took off and popped her in the leg at the ssame time. She ended up on her butt. This woman has to weight in at at least 250 pounds and for the ray to throw her, it had to be big and the biggest ones in these bays are cow nose rays. Anyway, she was on crutches for over 2 months.

Xebby

Posted : 1/26/2007 2:20:30 PM

Here is my fossil shark's tooth from the Permian; it's in a limestone matrix. Sorry the quality of the pic is really bad, it's the best I could get with my camera phone