| Premaxillary teeth from the extinct giant spike-toothed salmon (also called the sabertooth salmon) Oncorhynchus rastrosus, which lived roughly 12 to 5 million years ago during the mid Miocene to early Pliocene. The roughly 5 million year-old specimens came from a locality in the early Pliocene section of the upper Miocene to late Pliocene Mehrten Formation approximately 55 miles south of Angels Camp (turnoff point for the fossil plant bonanza in the High Sierra Nevada, Alpine County, California) in a transition zone between the Great Central Valley and the western Sierra Nevada foothills. Size-reference vertical bars in image are one inch long, by the way. Letters A, B, and F are left teeth--the remainder are right teeth. Estimated size for the giant spike-toothed salmon is six foot three inches long; probably it weighed in excess of 375 pounds. Photograph courtesy a specific scientific document. |