Description

Dasyatis sp.

Middle Miocene

Round Mountain Silt, Sharktooth Hill Bonebed

Ernst Ranch, Bakersfield, California

2mm male stingray tooth.

Ray. Batoid. Fish.

Dasyatis is a genus of stingray that appeared during the Cretaceous.  Their teeth tend to be uncommon relative to other ray teeth but Dasyatis survived while a lot of other ray genera died out during the K/T mass extinction.   Stingrays diversified during the Paleocene and Eocene becoming quite successful worldwide across the rest of the Cenozoic Era.

In general the male teeth tend to be more pointy while the teeth of females tend to have a more rounded or flatter biting surface.

This is a good fossil to add to a beginner fossil collection while learning about different kinds of teeth.