Figured I'd share some photos of my shark fossil collection!
This is the oldest fossil in my collection dating back 347 million years! It is from an early chimera/shark called Lagarodus. The smaller image in the corner is the actual size.
Possibly the most bizzare tooth in my collection is this one from a shark called Edestus - the scissor tooth shark. Their jaws were shaped like a pair of scissrs with just one row of teeth in the upper and lower jaw that crossed like scissors.
One fossil I always wanted was from the shark Stethacanthus, a shark that was instantly recognisable from the strange ironing-board style dorsal fin of the males!
Of course, no shark fossil collection would be complete without the toth from the largest shark ever know to have existed, Megalodon, which dwarfs the tooth of it's cousin, the great white shark (both photos are actual size)!
Millie & Fly the Border Collies
My goodness that's impressive! what got you started on your collection? My husband and son have mineral collections and the odd fossil but no teeth. Well full sets in their mouths of course but none in their collections (lol!)
There is something new to learn everyday...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/skylark58/
Sharks are one of my favourite groups of animals. I got a few small sand tiger shark fossils about 8 years ago and then through the powers-that-be-the-internet found a much wider variety of fossils! My aim then was to get a megalodon tooth, and that was the first big tooth in my collection but at the time there was a lot of variety left. It's been well over 2 years since anything new has been added to my collection though, I like getting teeth and fossils that are a bit different to the ones I've already got and many of those I do spot I already have a fossil of that type lol I'm not into collecting hundreds of teeth that all look pretty much the same and a lot of the fossils that I would like now are on the expensive side!
That's the probelem with collecting things, you get to a point when anything you want is rare and expensive. Very sensible though to not collect them just for the sake of it. It takes up so much room! I like all wildlife of course but particularly bats and birds, my favourites being owls. I used to collect owl related things and people gave me all sorts of weird and wonderful things for my collection but it got rather out of hand and now I am more selective. Luckily as far as bats are concerned there is very little to collect although there are a few halloween type things about at the moment!
So true! I collect shark ornaments and things as well, but there isn't a lot out there to collect lol I used to collect other fossils as well- I had dinosaur teeth and bone, mosasaur teeth, ammonites etc that I sold off to focus on the sharks as they were my main interest.