12.3" Fossil Shark (Asteracanthus) Dorsal Spine - Giant Specimen!

Fossil Shark (Asteracanthus) Dorsal Spine - Giant Specimen! #244535

This is a giant, 12.3" long, fossil, dorsal spine of a shark (Asteracanthus ornatissimus). It comes from the Late Cretaceous, Kem Kem Beds near Taouz, Morocco. There are two hybodontiform sharks whose spines are found in this formation with Asteracanthus being the rarer of the two. At over a foot long this spine is absolutely gigantic, by far the largest example I have seen.

It has several repaired cracks along it's length as these spines are fairly delicate and typically are found fractured.

The Kem Kem Group is famous for yielding a diverse Late Cretaceous vertebrate assemblage, including fish, reptiles, and dinosaurs such as Spinosaurus. These fossils are found in a thin bed that outcrops around the edge of a large plateau near Taouz, Morocco. Local miners collect these fossils by digging narrow tunnels by hand into this plateau, following the layer.

A paper on this assemblage can be found at: Vertebrate assemblages from the early Late Cretaceous of southeastern Morocco: An overview

One of the tunnels dug into the Kem Kem beds by local miners following the productive fossil beds.