Dinosaur Teeth

Unless you are a top executive in a major corporation, or was born with a platinum spoon in your mouth, it is highly unlikely that you'll ever own a complete dinosaur fossil (with a few exceptions). This is because there are very few of them (with a few exceptions) because: (1) there really weren't very many dinosaurs, compared with other life forms; (2) they were terrestrial vertebrates, making in situ preservation of whole dinosaurs a rare occurrence (see the fossilization section, you might be a fossil if - to learn more). There is hope however, since the fossil record is replete with dinosaur teeth that were prolifically grown and shed by dinosaurs, and were easily and preferentially preserved (again, see the fossilization discussion). Consequentially, dinosaur teeth generally range from cheap to affordable. More of a financial stretch are dinosaur claws. The price of dinosaur fossils depends on many factors, and locality is one of them. Dinosaur teeth and claws from within the U.S. tend to be relatively pricey, as do any dinosaur fossil. Dinosaur teeth and claws from Morocco, however, are extremely good values because there are a lot of them, and they are collected as a cottage industry by individuals of modest means; the same cannot be said for complete dinosaurs from Morocco, as few of them have been found and described. The phosphate deposits in the Kem-Kem Basin, South of Taouz, Morocco, produce prodigious Cretaceous dinosaur as well as reptile teeth and much more. Examples are shown below. A friend promises to compile data on fair prices that I will include at some point to help you gauge what you should and should not pay.

Size matters with dinosaur teeth, not just because bigger is more impressive, but because bigger teeth are also scarcer. Dinosaur tooth turnover (i.e., growth and shedding) was very fast, and teeth were often broken off, even before having grown into place. You do not need to be a paleontologist to correctly surmise that it was a tough world of “eat or be eaten” in the Jurassic and Cretaceous, and living long enough to grow to be a large dinosaur producing large teeth was not the most probable scenario.