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I was out hunting yesterday on the Peace River. I returned to a spot I had hunted last Thursday, Feb 28th, It rained over the weekend. Many /most locations were too deep to dig. I LIKE deep water because it is aerobic exercise for my lower back but I prefer not to be holding my breadth as I did. I did not find a large volume of fossils, many were bones, especially Dugong ribs which I tossed back. Small Shark teeth, Turtle Osteoderms, an Alligator Osteoderms, Deer tine, Broken Equus tooth, One question is that Bovid tooth... It is really nice... I would certainly like it to be Bison.. I like this Medial Phalanx... I do not think it is Horse, Might be Tapir... It is definitely small I found a Carpal that is smaller than I am used to finding for Camelids. I may indeed check the Tapir carpals. Same thing with this Ear Bone, too small to be Equus but similar to Equus . Both Horse and Tapir are Perissodactyla. I have never identified a Tapir ear bone. Then there were more unusual bones... unusual in the sense that I have no clue.. This bone has articular facets...like a carpal or tarpal, but the following 2 Photos of the same bone does not look like any carpal I have seen.. Time for me to do a lot of looking All assistance and suggestions gratefully appreciated... Jack

Hey Gang, Happy New Year! I'm not sure this is exactly a fossil prep question but it relates to Identifying an unknown supposed Pleistocene fossil from Iowa so here goes. I'm trying to put together a comparative collection of extant/extinct mammal inner ear bones. I've got a number of fossil fragments from a number of critters and about to work on removing a couple of petrous bones/bulla (highlighted with red arrows) from a couple of extant skulls. Ive got to cut them out of 2 extant bovid skulls/cap--see photo below: The smaller example on the left is from a sheep and the other a much larger bovid I'm assuming a cow/Bos. I am thinking I can take my dremel with a cutting bit and remove the sheep petrous bone fairly easily by removing a surrounding section thru the skull cap along the blue line i've drawn. The larger skull on the right is more stout so I'm looking for any easy/cheap ideas from Harbour freight, hacksaw ideas or other to cut the ear bones free. Perhaps the dremel will have no problem cutting thru it as well. i've seen some pretty cool dissection equipment but I'm doing this on the cheap to satisfy the curiousity of how these bones are positioned/attached and identify their components and take some photos along the way. Any simple solutions for removal are welcomed. I'm ok with up/experimenting one side as I can always work on the opposite petrosal of each. Here's an unknown petrosal that I have that I want to compare against to compare the two extant bones too. I was told it might be possibly bison from the Pleistocene of Iowa. That ID has not been confirmed Thanks! Regards, Chris

I try to keep hunting year round. Sometimes it is difficult. The Zolfo Springs USGA gauge was at 8 feet today. Although I have occasionally tried, I can not breathe river water. Our temperatures were cold starting out. My car thermometer had readings as low as 53 degrees Fahrenheit. I have not been out for a week, which means muscles and joints are hurting more now. It is always nice to get rewarded. Only time for a few photos.. I generally average 6 or 7 sieves an hour and I hunted for 6 hours. Whatever I find, I am always pleased. For the 1st 5 hours, mostly small shark and ray teeth, a few ray dermals, a broken shark vert. Going into the last hour, a nice Bovid tooth, Bison or modern cow. The APL is 30 mm. I'll figure it out. The above tooth came off of clay and so I stay there trying for a Meg.. I was at the point where I should have left 2 sieves earlier in order to get home for dinner. So, I told myself that this next sieve was absolutely the LAST sieve. and... It was not a Meg A tad broke , size 55 mm. Hastalis. I'll figure out a tooth position... It always somehow feels better when the best comes last.

Hi everyone! I narrowed this down to a bovid phalange and was hoping to get some insight into the classic bovid fossil question, bison or bos. It measures 5.8 cm long Proximal end is 2.7 cm wide and 3 cm tall Distal end is 2.5 cm wide and 2.1 cm tall So what do you all think?

I am assuming this is bovine but not certain, I have never found a tooth in this condition and not sure how to read the smooth surface. Is it old and worn or young and just emerging? The pristine part of enamel showing makes me think young animal. Came from creek with Pleistocene and modern material.

Found on river gravel bar in Sothern Minnesota. I know its a partial bovid skull - any ideas on species? I'm thinking young male bison. Sediments in the area range from cretaceous to holocoen with a good amount of Wisconsin lobe glacial till. Previously we have found bison, mammoth, and ancient horse...

My collection of teeth I have tried to ID and want to see if I got any of them right, all came from creek that is QAL. First group I think is bovid, maybe little one on end deer? Next 2 teeth I'm not sure about, last group thinking might be bison. Wasn't sure if pictures of root end are needed.

Hey y'all! Was wondering if I could get some help ID'ing this tooth that I found in Post Oak Creek this evening. I asked the Dallas Paleo Group on FB and a couple of people said it looked maybe human (also pig), but I am not that lucky lol (not that I am saying they are wrong or that I don't value their ID! I don't know enough on the subject to draw a conclusion) I thought I would come here for some second opinions <3 Please ignore the dime. And thank you in advance. I fully expect it to be a deer or cow or something xD (I only just posted in the FB group about an hour ago so the discussion is still going)

What position is this molar from? Am I correct in thinking the m3 molar is the only molar with a third lobe? As shown below. I believe its bison bison m3?

Found on a river gravel bar in southern MN.

Found in SouthWestern Pennsylvania. I’ve been told this is probably an Elk Astragalus definitely Bovid. How can I rule out cattle? What are the measurements of an Elk Astragalus?

I was thinking I could keep a running update on my bison prep, discoveries in learning, general happenings. . . Maybe a bit like Ralph’s aka Nimravis’ “Sometimes You Have to Whack It”, only my bison prep style if it isn’t too dull and boring. A recap. I found an almost complete, articulated bison with the skull in January 2019. I have collected the majority of it. I’m working on processing stuff still and prepping it. I’m totally new to vertebrate paleontology type stuff. So there is a big learning curve. I still have bits sitting in bags or small plastic boxes that I haven’t processed and removed the dirt from. That stuff is still moist for the most part. This post will be embarrassingly honest at times about how I messed up something out of sheer ignorance or how something didn’t work as planned. I’m not beating myself up over anything. Lesson learned and I move on all the wiser. I’ll be sharing my trials and errors for 2 or 3 reasons. 1. So someone else will know what worked or didn’t. 2. Hopefully give others the courage or motivation to just try and not be afraid to make mistakes. 3. Show how blond I really am. Noooo! Not really. 4. So others with more experience can chip in and give me guidance and insight. One thing I found out the wrong way is when you rinse the bones off with water and then let them dry, you’re not supposed to get them wet with water again. Never ever. I had no clue, but it makes sense. These specific type of bones are still like very old bone with little to no mineralization. So they’re fragile. When I rinsed the dirt and mud off I did a general, not a thorough cleaning where I got all the dirt out of the nooks and crannies. So I took one of the femurs that had thoroughly dried and went to rinse it again and clean the nitty gritty parts. After I was done I had it sitting next to me on the couch when I heard a very loud crack noise come from the bone! That was not good! I couldn’t find a crack, but clearly somewhere inside a crack had occurred. It was because the bone was dry. When wet it adsorbed the water, swelled and cracked. So no water. If I had known that I would have been more thorough on the initial cleaning.

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.

Ok as if the clam wasn’t enough excitement for the day, not that this is exciting I also found what I believe is a very old, but modern cow skeleton, which I believe is most likely fully articulated. I just want to confirm it is cow. I went fossil hunting yesterday, which was almost a complete and total bust for me. Rarely happens, but that was the case fossil wise. However that does not mean I didn’t find some really cool, very, very cool, want so badly kind of stuff, but I couldn’t carry them out because they were too big and heavy. Anyway, it was miserably hot. I believe I found the hardest, most difficult, poison ivy overgrown path I could possibly find into the creek. First attempt was a 25 foot drop straight down into the creek. I scouted a small section of the creek out, found lots of very cool stuff, but only a coupe of oysters and that was it fossil wise. I was hot and wanted to check out another place before dark so I looked for an easier way out. I found one I thought I could manage. Problem was I was in my flip flops. I had no traction. If I’d been in my boots I’d had no problem at that spot. I couldn’t make it so I went further up creek. The creek water was like warm bath water and offered no relief from the heat. I came to a spot in the creek where a pool of water was divided off from the sandbar. I stepped into it and too my surprise the water was cool and sooooo refreshing. I splashed it all over myself to cool down and walked on. I walked maybe 10 feet and saw this on the edge by the creek bank. It seemed to have recently fallen about 4.5 feet from the middle of the creek bank above. There was a large clump of bank to the right that had more bone in it. I have to mention that I was a few hundred yards from a cemetery so it gave me pause. I had to process it a moment and determine that these were not human bones. Wouldn’t that be horrible! The cemetery could be 100 yrs old. The creek changes course over the years and encroaches upon the cemetery and graves start washing out into the creek!! Yikes! I’m sure it must have happened somewhere once upon a time. Didn’t happen here though. Moving on. This was embedded in the bank about 4.5 feet from the portion of the creek I was standing on and about 5 feet down from the top of the bank. No way it could have been redeposited since it seems largely articulated. I’d been seeing concretions in the bank of the creek so initially I thought the ball to the right was a stone. I was taking a pic of the broken bone. Rib maybe? The ball and one above it I think are heads of femur or something. Here is the bank. You can’t really see the other bones in the bank in this pic. They are there though. Bad quality pic, but I removed some of the dirt from the bank to expose the bone. There is more bone to the right and left. Some of the bones that had fallen from bank. A vertebra Anyway, do you think it is cow or could it be bison? That’s about all the pics I have. It’s modern, but I’m curious. I am assuming the cow must have gotten stuck in the mud and died. The cool water in the creek had to be coming from an underground spring. This was maybe 10 feet from there. Maybe it made the soil very soft and contributed the the bovid’s demise. I have come across cow skeletons on numerous occasions that died in a field and are completely disarticulated from wild animals scavenging them. That didn’t happen here. It must have been mud or something.