If you ever find yourself in Texas, heaven forbid, with a day to spare, I recommend a trip to the Dinosaur Valley State Park, where you can spend a pleasant day in the sun, dabbling your scorched toes in the footprints of ancient mega-beasts, cooled by the soothing sweet waters of the Paluxy River.
I had to look up, "barmpot" but, in spite of that inconvenience, you write really well! Aren't dinosaur bones fossils? I doubt they dug up an actual tooth of a dinosaur, more likely a mineralized one. Even more likely, the tooth of a saber toothed cat or something. Some mammals as recently as 10K years ago were huge.
The first description is interesting for two points. First he says that the tooth is 'greater than' a foot long, which is not useful really, but let's say 12 inches (a Roman foot is slightly less than a modern one - about 296mm). Second he mentions that the plan to reconstruct it was so they could avoid being accused of sacrilege to the dead, which means they assumed it was a human tooth. He calls it the tooth of the 'hero'.
Obviously, no human ever had 12-inch long teeth, but Sicily, where this tooth came from, was home to the Sicilian dwarf elephant (Palaeoloxodon falconeri), and the tooth might either be one of that animal's molars, which is vaguely human in shape, or not a tooth at all but a tusk. Although they would have been able to identify a tusk.
I had to look up, "barmpot" but, in spite of that inconvenience, you write really well! Aren't dinosaur bones fossils? I doubt they dug up an actual tooth of a dinosaur, more likely a mineralized one. Even more likely, the tooth of a saber toothed cat or something. Some mammals as recently as 10K years ago were huge.
Yes, they would be fossils.
The first description is interesting for two points. First he says that the tooth is 'greater than' a foot long, which is not useful really, but let's say 12 inches (a Roman foot is slightly less than a modern one - about 296mm). Second he mentions that the plan to reconstruct it was so they could avoid being accused of sacrilege to the dead, which means they assumed it was a human tooth. He calls it the tooth of the 'hero'.
Obviously, no human ever had 12-inch long teeth, but Sicily, where this tooth came from, was home to the Sicilian dwarf elephant (Palaeoloxodon falconeri), and the tooth might either be one of that animal's molars, which is vaguely human in shape, or not a tooth at all but a tusk. Although they would have been able to identify a tusk.
And thank you for your kind words.