Real Mosasaurus paddles?

[heZZ]

Found it on online. Please tell me these are not fakes?

[Pterygotus]

Looks real to me but I could be wrong.

[Troodon]

Look real but a number (lots) of bones have been composited.  The two paddles are probably not from the same animal and have been composited into one jacket.

[glu]

 

2 hours ago, Troodon said:

Look real but a number (lots) of bones have been composited.  The two paddles are probably not from the same animal and have been composited into one jacket.

Wich ones? I don't see sign of composition

[Troodon]

22 minutes ago, glu said:

 

Wich ones? I don't see sign of composition

I believe the phalanx bones

[LordTrilobite]

I mostly agree with Troodon.

Some of the phalanx bones look a bit too neat on the one paddle. The area between the two paddles also looks suspect.

Overall, it looks like a decent piece with much original material with likely some compositing work done. It's at least a nice display piece.

[glu]

I do believe there are no composition on that piece. You can see some brown shades in matrix that seems to indicate that the two paddles have not composited.

I do not see any sign of composition neither in phalanx, those paddles are very often find complete (an incomplete speciment is more rare) and their position looks ok

[Aurelius]

I'd buy it if I could afford it. It's a beautiful piece. I always expect a certain amount of messing about with Moroccan fossils like this, but if there's anything composited here then I think it'd be minor.

[Pemphix]

On 6.3.2020 at 11:12 PM, Troodon said:

I believe the phalanx bones

Indeed, i think so too.

They are lying into a "straight order" and the size seems not to fit, too...

 

[pachy-pleuro-whatnot-odon]

On 3/6/2020 at 11:52 PM, LordTrilobite said:

I mostly agree with Troodon.

Some of the phalanx bones look a bit too neat on the one paddle. The area between the two paddles also looks suspect.

Overall, it looks like a decent piece with much original material with likely some compositing work done. It's at least a nice display piece.

 

I agree with both @Troodon and @LordTrilobite in that certain bones seem to have been composited. This is most obvious in the bottom paddle, where the bones just have an entirely unnatural and still way too orderly arrangement. But some carpalia seem to also have been rearranged to meet a supposed natural pose - but in doing so have been rotated 90 degrees!

 

On 3/6/2020 at 8:01 PM, Troodon said:

The two paddles are probably not from the same animal and have been composited into one jacket.

 

Again, I agree with this too, as the position of the two paddles vis-à-vis each other is just not natural, especially without any material in between... Another give-away is that paddle bones such as radius, ulna and humerus don't seem to morphologically match up too well between the two paddles.

[pachy-pleuro-whatnot-odon]

On 3/7/2020 at 7:31 PM, glu said:

I do believe there are no composition on that piece. You can see some brown shades in matrix that seems to indicate that the two paddles have not composited.

I do not see any sign of composition neither in phalanx, those paddles are very often find complete (an incomplete speciment is more rare) and their position looks ok

I'd say the below specimen has definitely been tempered with. I mean, it starts with what appears to be a coracoid in place of a propodial (humerus or femur); then has propodials and epipodial bones to serve as the hand bones; a single true carpalial; and the wrong spacing and placement for the 1st digit.

 

 

Also, I'm currently preparing a mosasaur paddle to extract the bones for 3D-presentation. And though my specimen looked good when I first acquired it, I've by now encountered numerous anomalies that make me wonder how much of the piece has actually been composited. For starters, there are various glue-lines running throughout the matrix - easily recognizable for their difference in colour and their great hardness compared to the actual rock matrix. Obviously, these lines are not visible from the outside... This to me begs the question whether they just repaired a broken jacket-piece or rather mashed a couple of paddle fragments together to create a marketable one. In addition, some bones turned out to not lie on top of matrix, but, instead, had hollows underneath, resting on what appears to have been a column of glue. In other words, what I think has been done in such cases, is create a hollow to fit the bone, then apply a good dab of glue, and stick in the bone. Also, as the whole piece has copiously had glue applied, with some sand added to the edges of most bones, it's not even always clear to tell from the surface of the piece where bones begin and end. A lot has been done together with the glue to give the piece and overall uniform appearance. Of course, parts of it are authentic, as are the individual bones... It's just a bit of a guess which parts - if any - belong together...