Fossils

I have finally received my fossils from the middle east. Stacey brought me 4 medium sized theropod teeth, probably from Deltadromeus, a Carcharodontosaurus tooth, a Spinosaurus tooth and a mosasaur tooth and a theropod claw (probably from an ornithomimid). All of the teeth are in excellent condition with all of the points intact with at most minor but invisible repairs. The deltadromaeus teeth are each about 2 cm long, the Carcharodontosaurus tooth is about 4 or 5 cm and the Spinosaurus tooth is about 10 cm. For these I paid $100.00 canadian dollars. As I am obsessed with the value of things, I checked out ebay to see what my new collection might be worth here in north America. A similarly sized but inferior quality collection was for sale for $250.00 US dollars while another seller with a large Carcharodontosaur tooth but smaller Spinosaur tooth was selling the two for $299.00 US dollars. I certainly got my money's worth. I know from experience that the mosasaur tooth would sell retail for between $15 (trade show) and $40 (mall rock shop) USD. But what if I were to try and buy these individually? At FossilMall.comhttp://www.fossilmall.com/index.htm I saw deltadromeus teeth for about $45 each and spinosaur teeth for $250+ each. And I have yet to see an ornithomimid claw for sale anywhere.
As a matter of fact, i have no recollection of mention of any ornithomimids from north Africa ever! While writing this, I've done a quick check of the literature with Georef and have come up with Elaphrosaurus which apparently occurs in North America and Africa but is late jurrasic in age and is found in the Tendaguru beds of East Africa, specifically Tanzania as well as elements from Tegana Formation, Province de Kasr-es-Souk, Morocco. It is known from fragmentary postcranial remains and has recently been allied with the ceratosauria not the ornithomimosauria. So either I've miss-identified the fossil, it is a claw from Elaphrosaurus or there could possibly be an ornithomimid from north Africa which nobody has previously noted. However, having only one claw would make it impossible to correcly identify it, especially if there is conflict righ now over the affinity of Elaphrosaurus. I'll have to check what elements have been ascribed to that genus. I'll be contacting Paul Sereno of the Chicago Field Museum to see what he thinks.
If you were wondering why I haven't gone off about the fish I received from Lebanon it is because i simply don't know enough about them. From Matt's e-mail I had anticipated a single large plate with a rather spectacular fish. Instead, I received several smaller fish plates, a shrimp, a cray fish and an ophiroid. While not particularly spectacular compared to much of the material available on the market here in Canada and the US, it is nice to have some fish from the late cretaceous. The ones here in North America are mostly from the Eocene of the Green River fm in Wyoming.