Trichechus Fossil Tooth Manatee Prehistoric Megafauna Pleistocene Quaternary Collection

Description

Origin : Florida (U.S.A.) - Santa Fe River

Geological era : Late Pleistocene

Age : 125,000 - 10,000 years ago

Size : mm 11 x 10 x 6

Rare! Fossil Manatee Tooth Sea Cow mm 11 x 10 x 6 Trichecus sp. Prehistoric Megafauna Mammals Sirenians Trichechids Extinct Pleistocene Quaternary Collecting Paleontology Museum.

Lophodont Tooth, difficult to find, remarkable fossil collectible specimen, with clear details of the enamelled ridges of the crown cusps and the root. No restored at all. Only a piece, as in photo.

The Sirenids (Sirenia) are an order of herbivorous aquatic mammals, which currently live in coastal marine environments or in fresh waters of the tropical zone. The specimens still living, which include the Dugongs and the Manatees, are divided into two families:
- dugongids (Dugongidae) which include only the species Dugong dugon, the dugong;
- trichechids or manatids (Trichechidae, not to be confused with the Walrus, Odobenus rosmarus, family Odobenidae), which includes three different species of manatees: the manatee or common manatee, the Amazon manatee and the West African manatee, sometimes known with the name of sea cow or oxfish.
These animals developed in the lower Eocene, about 55 million years ago, from a group of primitive mammals from which other very different animals also originated, including elephants themselves. The most primitive ones bear some characteristics of a terrestrial animal, such as the body, supported by four short robust limbs, not yet transformed into fins, and the very short tail.
Subsequently, many forms developed, increasingly closer to the strictly marine environment: the dugongid family is well known through the fossils of many primitive specimens. The trichechid family, however, is less known in the fossil state: a primitive specimen, Potamosiren, lived in the lower Miocene in South America, another, the gigantic Ribodon, dates back to the Pliocene.
Trichechus manatus possessed an average of seven teeth on each side of its jaw at any one time. The teeth are lophodont, meaning their cusps are connected by ridges. Like elephants, walruses replace their teeth with new ones emerging from the back of the jaw which progressively move forward to replace the worn teeth, which are expelled from the mouth. This method of continuous tooth replacement allows manatees to chew and feed on abundant sea grasses.