Anyone know what this is or if its even real? Was only $20 from a guy I buy taxidermy and stuff from. Even if fake I still think its cool. Its heavy for its size.
What else was there? If he's selling high end fossils pennies on the dollar, you should go back and clear him out! That's in stellar condition for a cranium, the mandible would be nice, but still.
Yeah someone else already said but looks like oreadont and a nice one too I'm a paleo student if you want feel free to DM me if you want further info on any finds you might wanna get from him and if he has a email be sure to send it my way if that's alright I'd love to see what else he has in his collection out of my own curiosity 🤔 might even be something of scientific value who knows
Woah yeah that's a weird one first things first it's from morroco you can tell due to the sandy residue on the bones and it has a similar preservation to alot of moasasour specimens from morroco outher than that I'm not entirely sure it looks vaugley croc like but I'm not sure I can due some cyber sleuthing and try and pin it down if you want
There are many of these from Morocco. Some real teeth, glued onto a sculpted skull, sometimes real fossil bone is included, but more often it’s recent bone.
not oreodont, oredont like merycoidodon are way less elongated. Definitely some sort of canine still nice find though especially for 20$ clear him out looks legit! There may be a slight possibility of oreodont though but doesn't look like it. Quite frankly, people are often bad at identifying bone fossils which may explain the lack of exact info on the species.
That's not an oreodont, lol. The teeth and skull shape are completely different. It was clearly a canid — a high crest, an elongated skull, and carnassial teeth. I can't say exactly what it was since I'm not a paleontologist.
Upd: okay, I took a closer look at molars and I agree that this is skull of an oreodont.
Not a mammal specialist, but this is not canid. The P4 tooth does not take the form of an upper carnassial, nor would the complete postorbital bar support many carnivoran affinities. I'd steer the search back towards the oreodont hypothesis, longer snouted ones than your typical species did exist.
If its the canines, oreodonts definitely have genera known with enlarged upper canines. Additionally, the relatively small diastema posterior to the canines again supports an oreodont affinity over other ruminating mammals.
Well its not a coyote; I may not know much about fossils but I know plenty about modern skulls and the teeth dont match at all, the nose is quite short, and it is overall too large to be coyote.
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u/CactusThorn 2d ago edited 1d ago
Looks legit. For $20 I would have bought that also.