S231 - Large Rooted Spinosaurus aegyptiacus Dinosaur Tooth - Cretaceous KemKem Beds

A fairly large and well-preserved specimen. It has a beautiful orange-brown enamel typical of the "Red Sandstone Beds" from which it comes from. One of the most remarkable features of this specimen is that it is almost fully rooted. It is very common to find Spinosaurus teeth on the market with heavily restored or even composite roots. But in this case, the root is completely natural. This is a rather difficult feature to preserve since it is hollow. It only has a few small fractures that have been glued and filled. These restorations basically consist of filling the fractures. In this case, the root is authentic. The fractures have been glued and filled, but unlike other cases, the root is real. This is a typical technique used by local excavators to restore teeth.

Very interesting paper about the Geology and paleontology of the Upper Cretaceous Kem Kem Group of eastern Morocco

The teeth with strong and vivid fossilization colors such as red, orange and black come from small paleochannels composed by thin layers, in the intermediate and upper stratigraphic levels (Red Sandstone Beds), from the Aoufous and Ifezouane Formations (Kem Kem Basin, South of Morocco). The lithology of this body of sediment is characterized by the dominance of sandstones (also known as arenites) and fluvial gravel, of siliceous nature. Sometimes large concentrations of iron oxide are present, and then a small sample of that is usually present at the base of the tooth.

These mineralizations are responsible for the wide range of beautiful reddish color tones, slowly drawn during millions of years via fossil-diagenetic processes. The complicated sedimentarian architecture of the layers where most large vertebrates are found makes the excavation methodology a real challenge. Sometimes the local miners have to excavate long tunnels that follow the distribution of the fossiliferous layer.