9.3" Cretaceous Crocodile Jaw with Composite Teeth - Morocco

Cretaceous Crocodile Jaw with Composite Teeth - Morocco #61487

This is a 9.3" long jaw section of a Late Cretaceous crocodilian, collected from the Kem Kem beds of Morocco. There are at least six genera known from the Kem-Kem and it is difficult to assign a taxonomic identification because some of the genera are not well described. The genus Elosuchus is the most likely candidate though.

Many teeth from this area are labeled Sarcosuchus but this is highly unlikely. The Kem-Kem Beds are late Cretaceous (100.5-66 mya) deposits, while Sarchosuchus is from the early Cretaceous (145-100.5 mya) and appears to disappear from the fossil record millions of years before the deposition at Kem-Kem had begun.

Comes with a display stand.

The complete teeth within this jaw are composite. They have been mounted within the jaw and stabilized with glue and rock from the area. There are two broken teeth with visible roots within the jaw section which are not composite. There are repaired cracks through the jaw and most of the jaw has been heavily stabilized with glue.

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.