5I; Georgia’s Oldest Shark Tooth

By Thomas Thurman
Posted; 07/April/2026
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​As we all know, the shark tooth is Georgia’s official State Fossil.
 
In 2014 Professor Brad Deline PhD of the University of West Georgia, discovered a single Stethacanthus shark tooth in the Lavender Shale Member of the Fort Payne Formation of Northwest Georgia. John-Paul Hodnett of the Maryland Natural and Historical Resources Archaeology Office led the team which published the find in 2023. That team included Brad Deline, Cam Muskelly, and Ryan Shell. Their paper dates the Lavender Shale to the Upper Tournaisian Stage of the Lower Mississippian. The Tournaisian extends from 346 to 358 million years ago, so this tooth is roughly 347 million years old. That’s the oldest published shark tooth from Georgia. It’s also the oldest unambiguous reported vertebrate in Georgia.  

The next oldest, unquestioned, report of a Georgia vertebrate comes from a 1985 paper by William Schneck and Willaim Fritz on amphibian tracks of a Cincosaurus cobbi dated to the lower Pennsylvanian, Whitwell Shale of the Crab Orchard Mountain Formation. This would between 315 and 323 million years ago. 

Why “unambiguous”? There is a questionable report for an older vertebrate. The Smithsonian holds scales tentatively identified as the coming from the 450 million year old jawless fish genus Astrapsis. (See Section 4 of this website.)  These were collected from roadcut in Bartow County two miles north of Taylorsville during the 1970s. They’re rough and of questionable value. 

At my request, David Bohaska, Vertebrate Collections Manager at the Smithsonian, looked at the samples in April of 2013 and reported. “They consist of five pieces of light tan shale with some small specks circled with ink, and a small glass vial with sand grain sized samples.” Bohaska additionally forwarded an October 1976 report from Dick Lund of Adelphi University. He’d reviewed the Astrapsis material for the Smithsonian; his report begins… “The Georgia samples, which are being returned by mail, are pretty grim. They are so badly altered that it is all but impossible to convince myself that they are even vertebrate. But, an occasional chip seems to indicate that the structures visible are composed of isolated odontodes.” Odontodes, or dermal teeth, are hard structures found on the external surfaces of animals. (Wikipedia).

So, Georgia’s oldest vertebrate is questionable.
 
Georgia’s oldest shark is not, good work Brad. 

The genus Stethacanthus is a shark-like cartilaginous fish. Species ran from 1.5 meters (4.9ft) to 3 meters (9.8ft) in length. All sharks and rays and cartilaginous fish. The male Stethacanthus had a distinctive, prominent, anvil-like, flat-topped forward dorsal fin structure on their backs, just behind their head, the top of which was encrusted with dermal spikes. There were also dermal spikes on top of the male’s head between his eyes. There was a more typical rear dorsal fin. Females did not show the anvil-dorsal fin feature, so visual mate selection seems indicated. Both males & female possessed fin whips, long extensions behind their pectoral fins.   

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​Previous Discoveries
​by Hobbyist and Avocational Fossil Clubs
The paper’s Introduction states; “Social media posts of chondrichthyan fossils collected from the Fort Payne Formation by hobbyist fossil collectors and reports from avocational fossil clubs demonstrate the potential for a rich chondrichthyan and perhaps other vertebrate record.” So it seems that the researchers were aware that amateurs and organized societies previously recovered vertebrate material from the Fort Payne Formation but these remained unreported for whatever reason. 

Of course, Cam Muskelly, one of the authors here, is an advanced amateur (avocatioanl) palaeontologist active in both research and education. He’s an avocational paleontologist and he’s representing the Paleontology Association of Georgia in this paper. That association is an amateur/professional group. I have great respect for Cam and celebrate his participating here. 

For the record, this author (Thurman), is also an amatuer, un-degreed paleontologist.   

Amateurs & hobbyist have made major scientific discoveries in Georgia, Bill Montante’s trilobite nest comes to mind, the oldest known nest of any kind ever reported globally. It was discovered by Montante, a hobbyist and amateur. He shared it with Dr. David Schwimmer and it was published jointly in 2019 by Schwimmer and Montante. (See section 2B of this website.)     

The Fort Payne Formation
The Fort Payne Formation is geographically widespread and crosses northwest Georgia. It reaches as far north as Illinois, and west to Mississippi.
 

To quote the paper
“The specimen reported here was collected by one of us (Brad Deline) during a University of West Georgia class field survey, and is reposited in the Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville, Georgia.” It was collected from a small and isolated road cut exposing the Lavender Shale Member of the Fort Payne southwest of Rome, Georgia near the Catoosa River in Floyd County.  

“The Fort Payne Formation (also known locally as the Fort Payne Chert) in northwestern Georgia consists of approximately 60 meters of thin and thick bedded chert in highly siliceous carbonate to the west of the state and grading laterally into and becoming intertongued with calcareous shale and argillaceous limestone of the Lavender Shale Member (Cressler, 1970). The Fort Payne Formation overlies the Chattanooga Shale and is overlain by the Tuscumbia Formation (Cressler, 1970; Thomas and Cramer, 1979; Fig. 1B). In the area of the fossil site, the Lavender Shale Member can be as thin as 3 m or as thick as 38 m (Cressler, 1970). The Lavender Shale Member can only be found in the northwest corner of Georgia (Cressler, 1970).”

The researchers explain that the Fort Payne was deposited on a shallow, evaporative marine shelf suggesting a sabkha environment. (A sabkha is a flat, salt encrusted area found along coasts or within deserts, where evaporation exceeds water inflow leading to the accumilation of evaporate minerals.) The Lavender Shale was an eastern sediment dispersal that was most likely deposited in deeper water off the shallow shelf. The Lavender Shale consist primarily of disarticulated crinoid columns, solitary corals and occasional trilobites. 

“Within this locality, the calcite and siliceous fossils are largely preserved as molds. The chondrichthyan tooth presented here is the first record of a vertebrate fossil for the Lavender Shale Member. The local age of the Lavender Shale is approximately upper Osagean (Cressler, 1970), placing it approximately at the Tournaisian/Viséan boundary (Early/Middle Mississippian).” This would more accurately place the tooth at 347 to 348 million years old.   

The authors credit Timothy Chowns and Randal Kath from the University of West Georgia for discovering the locality and alerting the authors of the fossil assemblage. 
 

References;

• Hodnett, John-Paul M.; Muskelly, Cameron O.; Shell, Ryan C.; Deline, Bradley; Early-Mississippian Stethacanthus (Chondrichthyes; Symmoriiformes) From The Lavender Shale Member of the Fort Payne Formation, Northwestern Georgia; Bulletin 94, Fossil Record 9, New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science; 2023 
• Schneck, William M.; Fritz, William J.; An amphibian trackway (Cincosaurus cobbi) from the Lower Pennsylvanian ("Pottsville") of Lookout Mountain, Georgia; a first occurrence, Journal of Paleontology, 59(5): Pgs 1243-1250, 01/Sept/1985