Anyone fancy trying to identify these things I found by the Thames?

[TheWayTheLightFalls]

I suspect the answer is teeth because teeth is all I seem to find, but perhaps you’re a mudlarking expert or veterinary dentist on a coffee break.

Oooh how fascinating! That's not part of a spine is it? (Probably not, I'm rubbish at this kind of thing!)

Vertebrae?

They're teeth, molars it looks like. Not sure of animal but almost certainly domestic. Look too small for an adult cow, possibly sheep or pig maybe?

The cream one I'd say is something like a cow tooth,maybe another large animal. Similarly the second photo I think is an animal tooth but maybe something more like a sheep or deer.

No idea about the other one though.

I am not an expert at all, but I did do a module on zooarchaeology at uni and found it fascinating.

Yup teeth , I got a horse tooth that looks just like the bigger one in your pic, smaller could be a bridge or false teeth? I can't work out the size

Uneducated question - why are you finding teeth at the side of the Thames? Where do they come from and how do they get there?

Do you have a mudlarking licence? Do you need one?

Most likely cow or horse teeth. The Thames is full of them. Many are from the meat trade, at low tide you'll fund cut bones everywhere under the bridges near St Paul's as butchers and many other traders once used the Thames as a rubbish tip. Some will be from Ice Age mammals but they are more likely found further out around the estuary entrance and up the coast.

London has been a populated area for thousands of years. All that butchery, food waste, old ceramics, building materials, broken items etc etc had to go somewhere. The river banks are full of ancient rubbish and lost items. You can stand on the foreshore and hear the clinking of all the old pottery and brick as the waves come in.

If you're lucky you can find jewellery, shoes, coins, hat pins, dice of any age, tokens and jetons...

You must have a mudlarking licence to search the river banks. And certain areas of particular historical sensitivity are absolutely out of bounds.

Most are from where butchers used to dump waste in the river in the city in old times. Others are remnants from the Ice age animals that once roamed what is now the North Sea and English Channel.

The big one looks like a horse tooth, and the smaller ones look like sheep teeth to me. Not a vet, but had horses and have seen the inside of sheep's mouths.

Look more like vertebrae than teeth to me.

Thanks all. I'll go with yet more teeth. I find nothing but teeth.

I didn't know you needed a licence! That's useful. I have a two year old in a rock phase; we tend to go down to the river at low tide so he can throw an endless supply of rocks in the water. It's popular with local kids on sunny days.

There’s some info on it at https://pla.co.uk/thames-foreshore-permits