04915 - Top Grade 0.80 Inch Notidanodon loozi (Cow Shark) Tooth

This type of shark teeth is one of the most beautiful from the assemblage in the phosphate rocks in the Paleocene of the Oulad Abdoun Basin (Morocco). This tooth has an outstanding preservation. The enamel in each of the cusps has a beautiful beige color. The details of the osseous structure of the root are astonishingly well defined. 

It is a tooth of the upper jaw of a cow shark. Specifically it is the species Notidanodon loozi (Vincent, 1876). This species belongs to the Hexanchidae family.

It is a quite rare species within the huge shark assemblage present in the phosphates of the lower Paleogene of this region of Morocco. Its structure is very delicate and fragile, and it is worse preserved than the teeth of other more common species.

This species has quite a lot of synonymies (sister taxa): Gladioserratus, Heptranchias, Hexanchus, Notidanoides, Notidanus, Notorhynchus, Notorynchus.

The cow sharks are considered the most primitive ones because they preserve a skeleton anatomy very similar to the ancient and first types of sharks.

The Ouled Abdoun Basin (or Khouribga Basin), located in the central sector of Morocco, is an enormous sedimentarian basin represented mostly by a vast filling of phosphate sediments. Apart from having a relevant raw material to be extracted, it has a series of very important paleontological sites in which amazing assemblages from big and small marine vertebrates are present. The basin has a so great continuity in its stratigraphic record that both the Upper Cretaceous as well as the two first epochs of the Paleogene (Paleocene and Eocene) can be studied.

The main assemblage of vertebrate fossils of the Paleogene sector present there is composed by sharks, fish, turtles, marine snakes, rays, crocodiles, other types of reptiles and even marine birds. In the Cretaceous part we can add Mosasaurs, Pterosaurs and Plesiosaurs.

Next you can visit a link with very interesting information about this sedimentarian basin rich in fossil vertebrates: Ouled Abdoun Basin