Monster of the Deep - FOS 002

FOS 002
Mosasaur Tooth in Matrix
Location: Unkown (Probably Morocco)
Details: Acquired at the Royal Ontario Museum

So I finally received my photo studio, to help with cataloging all of the collections. To start with I'm going to put up one piece from each of the collections, to give a little taste of what is here. To start off I'm going to be posting a newer specimen in the FOS collection. It's a Mosasaur tooth, theoretically that is.

You see, while I did acquire this fossil at a museum gift shop, I'm not too sure of its authenticity. As you can see from picture there is a severe lacking of pores/deep pockets in the matrix and the fossil, which leads me to believe that it may actually be a replica. Not to fear though as most of the real museums have many casts of fossils on display and not the real thing, so despite its questionable nature it still adds a bit of excitement to the collection.

A little bit about Mosasuars though to go along with the post. Despite ending in -saur, Mosasaurs are actually not dinosaurs. You can think of it this way, if it lived in the water it wasn't a dinosaur, this is also true for pterosaurs and their kin. It's technically all in the hips (the way the bones in that area are). Obviously from the size and shape of the tooth you can clearly see that this was the top sea predator of its time.

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