Dinosaur age shark teeth discovery in Dutch Maastricht

This photo by Frans Frenken shows a Cretaceous fossil shark‘s tooth from the Dutch Maastricht ENCI quarry.

Translated from Dutch ANP news agency today:

Old shark teeth in Limburg ENCI quarry

Five teeth of an extinct mackerel shark were found in the ENCI quarry in Maastricht. According to conservation organisation Natuurmonumenten the animal was about 4 to 5 meters long. It lived about 66 to 68 million years ago.

Just before the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event which killed the dinosaurs and many other animals.

South Limburg was then a shallow subtropical inland sea.

Mackerel shark

The triangular teeth are about 2.5 centimeters. The mackerel shark used to eat sea turtles, fish and other animals. The first tooth was accidentally found during a guided tour of Natuurmonumenten volunteers on 17 November. On December 1 someone else found four more shark teeth.

The ENCI quarry has been used since 1926 to extract limestone. That stopped this year. The area is now being transformed into a nature and recreation area, to be opened in 2020. In the limestone layers in the quarry are many remains of prehistoric animals, such as sea urchins, corals, cephalopods and seashells.

Fossils

Fossils are often found in the ENCI quarry, such as sea urchins, but also a gigantic dinosaur age marine predator, a mosasaur.

This dinosaur age shark species is called Squalicorax pristodontus.