New Mexico museum of natural history and science The collaboration of Troll’s artwork and fossils is brought to the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science by the Idaho Museum of Natural History. The fossil will be part of the museum’s exhibit and join a wide array of fossils of the 270 million-year-old shark. Until now, only fragments of teeth had been found, according to Marino and a museum news release. The partial tooth has five large, serrated teeth and is the most complete fossil of a buzzsaw shark that has been found in the state. Recently, physicist and paleontologist Wayne Itano and museum Chief Paleontologist Spencer Lucas uncovered part of a tooth whorl from a buzzsaw shark east of Socorro in rocks from the Pennsylvanian Subperiod, which dates to about 310 million years ago. New Mexico once had a tropical climate and was located along the western margin of a broad seaway that extended from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean, according to Williamson’s article. Williamson, whose article on sharks of New Mexico appeared in a past museum newsletter. It’s hard to believe that sharks once inhabited the now landlocked New Mexico area, but the landscape was extremely different during the Late Cretaceous Period, about 65 to 100 million years ago, according to paleontologist Thomas E. … It keeps its teeth on its lower jaw, and basically the upper jaw has flat teeth like a cutting board.” As the shark is growing larger, it’s growing larger teeth, and some of these whorls are really big. Basically, it’s keeping its teeth, it’s cheating the tooth fairy, so it keeps its teeth in its lower jaw. People want to know, how in the heck and what? It doesn’t make sense because it doesn’t operate like any other vertebrate. “This spiral of teeth kind of invites inquiry. “It’s kind of mind-blowing,” Troll said of the buzzsaw shark.

The whorl tooth shark is referred to as the buzzsaw shark due to its spiraling coils of teeth that resemble the circular saw. 5, at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. Troll’s art and the fossilized teeth of the spectacular whorl tooth shark will be part of the “The Buzzsaw Sharks of Long Ago” exhibit, which begins Saturday, May 14, and runs through Sept. The remarkable existence of a unique prehistoric shark is brought to life through the art of Ray Troll. Artist Ray Troll, whose art will be featured in the exhibit “The Buzzsaw Sharks of Long Ago” at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, also wrote the children’s book “Sharkabet: A Sea of Sharks from A to Z.” (Courtesy of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History Science)

Sharkabet by Ray Troll