GLOSSOPETRA, in natural history, a genus of extraneous fossils, so called from their having been supposed the tongues of serpents turned into stone; though they are really the teeth of sharks, and daily found in the mouths of those fishes, where-ever taken.
The several sizes of teeth of the same species, and the several different species of sharks, furnish us with a vast variety of these fossil-teeth. Their usual colours are black, bluish, yellowish, or brown. In shape they are usually somewhat approaching to triangular; some are simple, and others have a smaller point on each side the large one. Many of them are quite straight; but they are frequently met with crooked and bent in all the different directions, some inwards, some outwards, and some sideways. They are also of various sizes; the larger ones being four or five inches long, and the smaller less than a quarter of an inch. They are found with us in the strata of blue clay, and are very plentiful in the clay-pits of Richmond, and some other places; but they are nowhere so common as in the island of Malta.