Product Description
Collected from an Oligocene deposit in South Carolina, USA, this is a 30 piece set of fossil vertebrae from shark and fish. It is impossible to say what species they came from but Angustidens shark teeth were found in the same vicinity and deposit as these vertebrae were. Some may be vertebrae from the end of the spine of a large shark so you cannot judge the size of the sharks just by an isolated vertebra. Compared to teeth which a shark sheds hundreds upon hundreds of in a single lifetime, and easily fossilize, a shark's vertebra is not bone but made from cartilage which rarely fossilizes. The number of vertebrae a shark has are set for life, making them considerably more rare to find in fossil form, than teeth!
The varying colors of the vertebrae are due to the different layers of substrate they were found in and the chemistry of these various substrates. Better preserved examples were found in clay layers. This set makes a great display, either alone or alongside fossil shark teeth.