Description

Cetorhinus huddlestoni
Middle Miocene
Round Mountain Silt, Sharktooth Hill Bonebed
Bakersfield, Kern County, California, USA.

Excellent 5mm basking shark tooth.

Cetorhinus is a genus of basking shark that dates back to the Middle Eocene.  Teeth, gill rakers, and vertebrae have been collected from scattered localities around the world (Oregon, California, Belgium and Antarctica).

Teeth have been known from the Sharktooth Hill Bonebed for decades but went undescribed until Bruce Welton formally described them as C. huddlestoni in 2014.  He named it in honor of Richard Huddleston, a fellow paleoichthyologist who worked at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History.

Today, the modern basking shark, C. maximus, is the second largest shark in the world.

This tooth exhibits a small side cusp which is not a common feature of Cetorhinus teeth.