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We have read many posts of members wanting to know the age of a bone found in a river because it looks really old, only to be shot down with the news that it is a modern bone. So I decided to conduct an experiment to see just how long it would take for a bone to take on an aged look enough to look like fossil bone. This past winter, we had some tremendous storms that our shores haven't experienced in a long time which deposited many things upon the beach including a bloated beached whale and many dead cattle along with their bones. As I was walking the beach I came across several cow bones and gathered a few. I took a nice white vertebra and wanted to do the experiment on it. All it took was a small plastic tub filled with water and a handful of dead leaves. The vert was placed in the tub, along with the leaves and water. It was then sealed with the lid, left sit for a month and shabam! An instant fossil. So the purpose of these little test was to prove that it doesn't take very long for tannic acid to do its thing and change the look of modern bone. Hope you enjoyed this project, I did. The last picture has another leg bone showing what the vertebra looked like originally.