I found this partial jawbone while walking on the beach. I have no idea what manner of creature it belongs to.
Why the hollows where teeth meet jaw?
The bud-shaped teeth are growing two-deep in places.
My friend Ellen showed this to her father, who is a biologist, but he didn’t know what it was. His specialty is tunicates. While they do have mouths of a sort, they have no jaws. (Tunicates are distant relatives of all of us, our spinal columns having evolved from a structure similar to the tube that makes up a tunicate’s body.)
Any ideas?
P.S. Melissa just took lots of good knitting-related photos for me, so stay tuned.
The ‘hollows’ are usually channels where the blood vessels, nerves etc. go in a bony structure.
But I have no idea what kind of critter. Those teeth are so rounded; very unusual-looking to me. But I just know people and pets! Looking forward to someone solving the mystery.
The teeth may have been pointier at one time, depending upon how long this bit of bone was washing about in the surf—but they really are quite odd-looking, aren’t they?
Cathy-Cate sent me over here…. I’ll look at this more closely when I get home… Looks very interesting!