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I am hoping to use a solution to consolidate wet bone specimens that I find immersed in mud, water or on sand bars. Speaking of mega fauna bones in general most of them will fall apart in a few days when drying. Wondering if the acetone based Paraloid could be applied to displace moisture and to consolidate the bone or tusks. The tusks are a real problem. Most are lost after being in the environment for a few days. Ideally I would like to apply something to them as I am removing them from the mud.

Hey all! New to the site, found this while kayaking over the weekend in the Santa Fe River, near Rum Springs Park launch, upriver a bit, it was just down from a smaller spring boil, off the side of the main river way. Any idea of what it is? At first I was alarmed, then upon closer inspection, realized it probably belonged to an animal. Thanks in advance for the help!

Hello! I recently came back from a trip to the Netherlands, and while beach combing in the North Sea, I found this bone. I've been really curious as to what it may be, and even joined this site in hopes of discovering what it may have belonged too. I believe it's a phalanx bone, possibly of a bison from the pleistocene? That's really just a guess based off of others' pictures, so please, any info you can give would be wonderful! Sorry I don't have a ruler on hand for proper measurements, but it is roughly 8 cm in length and 3 cm in width. I put the lighter there to maybe give an idea of size

I found this eroding from a wall about 8 feet deep at a creek in Austin, Texas. There are many artifacts scattered about suggesting ice age fauna. Thanks

I went back out to see my bison and with some help removed the skull! It is mostly intact too! A few pieces came apart but they are in good condition and can probably be restored. Thanks for looking!

Hello, I have a femur and metatarsal and thanks to this forum, I've been able to use plenty of reference to ID Bison as opposed to Bos with decent confidence. However, I'm wondering if there are any references or tips on identifying species. I hear B. antiquus is tricky to tell from B. bison, but are there consistent size differences? Both were found in Ames, IA in Squaw Creek in sandbars after spring flooding. This femur is 45 cm (~17.5 in) long and the distal is 11 cm (4.5 in) wide. The metatarsal is 20 cm (~8 in) long and 8 cm (3 in) wide.

Hi everyone, I found what I think are a lumbar vertebra and an astragalus bone. I'm not sure how old they are, but they both seem pretty weathered and possibly mineralized. Both appear to be from bovids(?). These were found on a river sandbar around Ames, IA after recent spring flooding. Does anyone know how to distinguish bison from cattle bones? The vertebra is 35 cm wide, 10 cm long, and 8 cm tall. The astragalus is 7.4 cm long, 5.5 cm wide, and 4 cm deep.

New to this forum and fossils. Found this on a shoreline of river after river thawed and flooded while looking for rocks for my son to polish. Not completely sure if it is completely fossilized.

I found this tooth in a cave in southern Missouri. It's obviously very old. We found this sitting on the surface, but with some digging we found bones from deer and other mammals. I can't tell if this is a bison tooth or just an old cow tooth.

I have been planning to go out to the bison site today to see if I could find any pieces of bison in the collapsed material from the bank. I got ready and loaded my car. When I opened the garage to leave I realized there was a steady rain. I can handle a steady rain, but not when it is in the 30upops. High 40s is kind of my limit. I closed the garage and went back inside. The forecast the day before hadn’t mentioned rain. I looked up the weather. It said the rain would diminish to 20% at 2:00. I determined I’d go then. I got on the road and halfway there it broke out into a fairly heavy rain again. I decided to continue on. This is a view of the area. The bison site is in the creek beyond the tree line. When I got there it was in the mid 30s with a slight drizzle. Needless to say I’ve had better conditions for fossil hunting. I got my boots on and grabbed my gear and headed out. As I rounded the corner to where I’d get on the trail I saw a coyote come trotting out of the forest into the clearing in front of me. He saw me and ran off some distance. I stopped in my tracks. I wanted to enjoy the moment and watch him. I pulled out my phone to snap a pic. He stopped on top of a grassy hill and watched me for a bit. Sorry, he was too far away to get a sharp, clear pic. There is some utility pipe in the pic. I love seeing wildlife. Since this site is actually in the city limits there is actually more wildlife than I’d expect to see. There is quite a bit of undeveloped land in the area though. This is the area of the bison site. It’s a beautiful shady spot with the water running over rocks. So you get the delightful sound of creek water flowing. I put down my gear and determined where I was going to start. I bought the screen I built, but J was pretty sure it would not work well with the dirt being wet. It didn’t. So I just determined I was going to dig. I was there for about 2.5 hours or so. I found 3 pieces to my bison. The first was a lumbar vertebrae transverse process. I think I have the vertebrae that it belongs to. Here it is after I uncovered it. The next was the patella. I was sitting in the same spot as when I found the piece above, which happened to be right below where the femur was. I looked up and saw something in the bank. I forgot to take a pic. It was actually right where it should have been. This is the femur. The Tibia is to the left of it, perpendicular to it. With the way they are oriented I assumed the patella had been lost, but it was deeper in the bank there where the two bones met. I worked there a bit longer with no success. So I moved to the left when I came across this. To the left of my very muddy chisel you can see a hint of red. It’s a phalange or phalanx. I haven’t looked at it to determine which. I worked a bit bit longer with no success. My arms were tired. Because the dirt was wet almost every swing or every other swing of my tool I had to stop and remove the clump stuck to it. I decided to walk down the creek a bit. I had planned to walk to the high bank and look for fish fossils, but my socks kept slipping off my foot. It was very annoying. So o decided to not walk down the creek that far. I found a piece of turtle bone a piece of turtle bone almost exactly where the horse bone had been. I am falling asleep trying to type this trip report. I’ll post pics of them cleaned up tomorrow and finish my story.

Good evening fossil folks, I found a small bone on a Tampa Bay beach on the west coast of Florida. After doing some research I saw similarities to a cave bear toe bone and/or bison. It's approximately 1" x 3/4" and very worn with a baseline crack. I have 7 photos of different angles. Can you ID? Thanks all!

I have spent more dollars on my pet bison than I have ever spent on fossil related tools. I’ve purchased: - A poster on bovine skull anatomy. I couldn’t find a decent free one online. - Butvar 76 - Paraloid B72 (auto correct kept wanting to “paranoid” LOL) - Cyanoacrylate (More of it. Ran out during extraction) - A couple books. One is on “consolidants, adhesives and coatings” in conservation. It is somewhat more technical than what I was expecting. Not beyond my comprehension, but definitely a more in-depth study kind of read. Its detailed chemistry of all the materials we hear about and use. Including those listed above. The Cow and Bison book by Finsley And now what every gal with a pet bison needs is: I’m definitely going to need this when I go trying to prep the skull.

Hey everyone! Here is the new look of the Cave Lion! With smaller mane as u see. This is something new for me,to draw animal in the other position.Also, at the end of the paper is a bison skull, example of his diet. Enjoy Darko

I made a trip to bison creek yesterday. Not it’s real name, but where I found the bison. So it seems an apt name. I packed my backpack and hip waders in my trunk and headed out. I got a half mile down the road and realized I’d forgotten to bring a change of pants. I told myself “I’m running late. I’ve got my hip waders to cover my pants. I’ll be fine. I only had 2.5 hours to explore, splash around the creek and play with any new fossils or rocks I might find of interest. I needed to leave by 3:00 so I could go to a send off party for a friend who is going to go minister to the Lakota tribe in South Dakota for 2 years and hopefully establish a thriving Celebrate Recovery group there. Anyway, as I was putting on my waders I could see sunlight passing through in a few places. I guess they weren’t made for kneeling and digging and excavating fossils. I got my gear and headed down to the creek. It was bright and sunny and in the low 50s. Great weather for hunting. I stopped by the bison dig on my way downstream. The last cavity I had dug the articulated leg out of had collapsed in on itself. We had rain one day last week so I’m sure that helped it along. I thought I’d dig through some of the old collapsed dirt where I’d found bones before. I found one more vert. Hard to tell, but there is bone there. I moved on down the creek. There aren’t many obvious fossils in the creek, but there are lots of cool rocks, concretions and minerals. If you know me I’m fascinated with concretion. Here is a view of the creek. Notice the layers on the right. The gray extends 3-4 feet up into the bank. Then the Pleistocene layer begins. There is s small tan layer. I think the Pleistocene begins above that. Here is a cool looking septarian concretion. I call these turtle rocks. They’re aren’t turtles, but that’s what they reminded me of. It has strong mineral veins of brown, most likely aragonite running through it. The other side. I like the richness of color. It’s probably just iron stain, but I like it. Most septarians around these parts are a dull gray. I walked a little further and came to this part of the creek with a high bank. This area seems to be a geological irregularity of some kind. This may be one of those instances where it lies in unconformity or something like that. I know for sure the dark gray is Eagle Ford Group, Arcadia Park Formation I believe. The light layer above it up to the next gray layer is either Austin Chalk or Eagle Ford. It could be a layer of Austin Chalk, which becomes more dominant to the east. The Austin Chalk overlays the Eagle Ford. Then above the tan a thin layer of gray where it is Pleistocene. The tan layer thins out to the right and disappears altogether a few feet to the right of the pic. There is a big chunk of light gray shale that had fallen from the bank. Concretions are scattered along inside the bank. Some quite large, very cool and pretty. There are frequent avalanches and here you see evidence of that on the left. There is a concretion in the creek probably from the avalanche. I think I’d be just as happy sitting curiously breaking open the concretions and studying them. They’re just fascinating! Of course then I’d want to take them all home. The creek bed is a slippery shale. I think this is so cool looking! The cavities are filled with a druzy type calcite with some aragonite too. I’m not use to seeing small little ones like that. The ones I find near Dallas are huge and not druzy. The size of these overall though are huge. Here is s close up of part of it. I didn’t attempt to take any of it. I couldn’t carry it, but it sure is pretty. Also, this is s high avalanche risk area. It concerns me more than the NSR in terms ov avalanche risk. In this area there are lots of minerals oozing out in places. It colors in the shale. I have been told there is fish fossil material in this creek. I haven’t found the exposure yet though. This piece on the bottom right looked fishy to me. There are other parts that looked like it had scales and also the pattern of fish scales was scattered across the piece at the top center. I’m not sure what it is. It is in fine delicate shale though. There was this white gelatinous substance that looked to be oozing out of the rocks in places. Very weird looking. I don’t recall seeing such a thing before. The bank is streaked with minerals that have been in solution and flowed down. Some looks like sulfur yellow. Some orange and white. There are also fine calcite and possibly gypsum crystals in the layers. Some like fine needles. They may be some other mineral too. Anyone know what the white stuff is? It was oozing out of a long vein across the creek. There was another area where the rock and water were stained orange from what looked like iron leaching out. This septarian is over 5 feet long. I moved on down the creek. There was a large gravel bar just down the creek filled with septarian nodules both whole and fragments. This one isn’t too pretty, but I think it has potential. Maybe a weak acid wash would brighten it up. It looked predominantly aragonite. You don’t see many like that this big. I kept moving. On my left was a sand bar where the Pleistocene layer was at the surface. I spotted an odd looking thing that looked a bit like an exposed root. I went to check it out. Woohoo! A bone or a fragment of one. I put down my pack and pulled out my chisel to remove the dirt around it. Bones can be fragile. I could just pull it out, but I risk breaking and losing some of it. So I always dig around bones or fossils to free them up before pulling them out. It kind of looks like the distal end of a humerus, but I’m not sure from what. The epicondyles are broken off the other side and it’s pretty worn. Ill post more later. I’m not half done yet.

I have a few mystery bones from my bison that I don’t know what they are. I’m hoping some of you will know. I found this Monday in situ with bones. It doesn’t have the same texture as the other bones. It feels very different. It was found near the scapula if that is of any help. It kind of has an epiphyseal feel to it so I’m wondering if it’s ossified cartilage, but from where I’m not sure. These are all pics of the same thing from different angles. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

I took some pictures of all the bison leg bones last night. After I was done taking pictures I was sitting on the couch next to where the were on the floor. Out of the corner of my eye I saw something odd that I hadn’t noticed before. There are lots of chips and breaks on these bones and I have just passed them all off just breaks, however this one is different. Have a look and tell me what you think. It kind of looks like something took a bite out of it. This is the angle that caught my eye. It is the lower end of the femur. The lateral epicondyle. If the bison were standing this would have been a bite to the back inside edge of the knee, kind of where the hamstring would attach in a human. It would be a good way to take a large animal down. Take note of the bottom edge. That is the lateral epicondyle. To the right of the big chunk missing there is a cluster of 4 small punctures into the bone. On the medial epicondyle there is another cluster of 4 puncture marks into the bone. To the right of them is a gouge in the bone. Close up pics below. Lateral condyle. Note the 4 punctures and possibly a 5th or it didn’t quite get a grip and it slid or something. Lateral condyle surface. You can see there is another puncture mark top left near the break (gray with mud in it). The other little holes are where blood vessels passed into the bone. The hole I speak of is a bigger hole with 2 tiny holes on its edge at about 3 and 4 o’clock. I probably should have put arrows or a circle. Diagram of human femur blood vasculature from googling so you can understand bone vasculature. The veins shown in the diagram are larger ones. There would be many little ones as well. That’s what all the holes are in the pic above, besides the largest hole on top left near break. A little bone anatomy explanation. The broken edge at back you’re looking upon is the lateral condyle. You can see the 4 puncture marks there. The other side facing away is the lateral epicondyle. The inside edges are condyles. The outside edges of these structures are epicondyles. The edge closest is the medial epicondyle. It also has 4 puncture marks and a gouge. This shot is ooking down on the break. It is a different texture than parts of the bones I have found that broke recently from falling off the bank, broken while in situ prior to extraction, broken during extraction. . . So the break happened a while back postmortem and had time to weather and smooth the bone a little or it happened while the animal was alive and it didn’t die immediately and the body tried to heal a little. I don’t know which. I tend to think the latter. This is the other femur for comparison that looks completely healthy (besides being dead). That remind me me of Bones from the original Star Trek. “It’s dead Jim. I’m a doctor not a magician.” Or something along those lines. Close set up of the marks on the medial epicondyle. If the marks are from a bite mark, it’s a strange tooth pattern. Puncture marks on the lateral condyle surface. What do do you all think? Maybe cleaning out the puncture marks better would shed more light. Thoughts and comments would be appreciated.

Hello I found this sticking out of a wall alongside a creek here in Travis county, Texas. I was hoping to get the specific type of vertebra this is and maybe what it belonged to. Thanks

This bone was found at Isla Blanca Park on South Padre Island about 2 months ago. Could you please help me identify what it is and age? I am a sheller and I am finding some fossils lately and I don't know anything about them, so I really appreciate any help. Thanks so much. (I am calling this a caudal because that is the guess my brother made)

Found this tooth while ago.Still not sure to which animal this belongs to.I know that it could be one od these two : Bison or Cow.I Found it last year in a Stream in the middle of the forest when i was looking for Oysters (Gryphea gingensis) in Paraćin,Serbia.People do not live near that forest but maybe they lived in some past.

I can’t be 100 percent sure of the age of the deposit from where these Bison tooth came from. But it would almost certainly fall into a late Holocene early Pleistocene era. Continued :

Complete prehistoric buffalo skull found in Cambridgeshire quarry by Jamie from Fossils Galore in March By Sarah Cliss Fenland Citizen, January 16, 2019 https://www.fenlandcitizen.co.uk/news/complete-prehistoric-buffalo-skull-found-in-cambridgeshire-quarry-by-jamie-from-fossils-galore-in-march-9059305/ Yours, Paul H.

Does anyone have any info for how to determine a species of bison? I have a mandible with teeth and many of the other bones. I have the full skull too, but no horns. I haven’t prepped the skull yet. That’s going to take me months probably. Here is a lower right mandible with a radius. A view of the teeth. Thoracic vertebrae. The longest is about 22 inches. Some cervical vertebrae and rib fragments and unknown bone fragment. The atlas and axis vertebrae. A metacarpal Skeleton in situ.

I bought this fossilized bone at a flea market for my son. I'm not very knowledgeable on the subject but would love to tell him more information about this piece. The original owner did not know what it was, other than suggesting it could be from a woolly mammoth. It measures about 4.5" x 3". The bottom is naturally completely flat with two smaller flat spots nearby. I'd love to learn more about what this could be, some other people have suggested dinosaur but I'm in Florida and I'm not sure if this piece is local or not.

Hey all. This jaw might find itself in my collection, soon and I was hoping I could get a positive ID on it. Probably from Texas. Thanks