This week I’ve decided to give you something that’s a bit of a change from the usual skulls:
Any idea what these objects are?
As usual you can leave your questions, comments and suggestions below and I’ll try to respond during the day. Good luck!
Zygoma
Adventures in natural history collections
Zygoma 
Mmmmm, chocolate.
Now we’ve got that out of the way, I’ll have to wait until Monday to find out how edible they really are.
Chocolate truffles… I wish
Coral ?
I like that idea, but they’re not corals
Fish teeth, possibly type of shark
Jaws with a predilection for oysters perhaps?
I’m tempted to say Walrus &/or Carpenter, but perhaps a Ray is closer?
a tooth?
The white material that they are attached to looks like plaster.
They’re not in plaster
A bit of the Cretaceous?
Some sort of mollusc shell perhaps?
Looks to me like snails who’ve accidentally come out without their shells on and are curling up in embarassment at their nudity.
I can totally see that!
Yes, I thought they looked molluscky … they do look very familiar but can’t place it … are they fossilised?
Ptychodus mammilaris?
That gets my vote
Nail, head, hit
Well played Sir!
Yay! It’s geological! Why didn’t I look first thing?
They’re teeth, palatal teeth to be specific. They’d sit along the roof and floor of the mouth of something, and provide a nice crushing/grinding surface.
The matrix is chalk, so we know we’re in the sea. We’re in the neoselachii, the sharks and rays. But one of those odd things that hasn’t quite got a settled place in the tree of life, probably Ctenacanthida. But certainly, as others have said, Ptychodontidae. Ptychodus mammillaris sounds good to me, but there are quite a few species in the genus so I wouldn’t swear to it.
Pretty big fish. Bigger than Basking Sharks (usually, there has been the odd freakishly large Basker that hits 12m).
Lovely things.
A quick Google Image search (a scientific technique if there ever was one!) strongly suggests Metal Dave has it right-o…
I knew this was Ptychodus from the first glance. I’ve only been to Big Brook, NJ a few times, but I’ve studied it extensively and know the fossils pretty durn well. Ptychodus happens to be one of them. The crushing surface is the big giveaway.
Just out of curiosity, where were these teeth found?
I’m going to guess Folkestone, or somewhere near there. See what Paolo says tomorrow.