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Please help ID this


astrojack

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The is the first time I am posting here.  I went on a fossil hunt to the Whiskey Bridge on the Brazos River near Caldwell, Texas.  The fossils in this area are from the Crockett formation during the Eocene time period.  I found many snails and marine fossils but also came across this.  It LOOKS like bone.  Any thoughts?

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I'm not sure.  It certainly has an interesting pattern on the top portion of your last picture.   The one thing that for me makes me think not bone is the inner part of the object on the second picture.  I don't think that looks like bone matrix to me.  That being said...I may be totally wrong on this.  Maybe concretion but if it is a most interesting one at that.

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Though I wouldn't necessarily regard the inner section of the fossil as evidence for this not being bone - some large marine reptiles like plesiosaurs have very porous/vascular inner bone that, when filled up with crystals, may end up looking rather rugose - there are two reasons why I still think this would be less likely. Firstly, you'd expect more cortical bone around the core - a lot more, to be honest - and secondly, the section seems too rugose to actually be bone. So, I guess the "no bone"-vote from me too ;)

 

The next thought that came to mind, though, is the same as @Rockwood offered: may be something crustacean? Seems rather large for a claw initially, but large crab- and lobster-species do exist. So, why not?

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'There's nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fibre and, in some cases, backbone' -- Terry Pratchett

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Yes, I need to do that.  I was also trying to find more of what has been found in this area that would be that big and have an outer covering like that. Cuttlefish bones have been found.  I was then thinking maybe the bone from inside organisms like that.

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So I took it to a geology professor here at Texas A&M as the locale is about 20 mins. from here.  Just so happens he is studying that organism right now.  It is a member of the pinnidae family.  The white blob-like structures are calcite crystals formed later on.  I only have the top half.

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21 hours ago, astrojack said:

So I took it to a geology professor here at Texas A&M as the locale is about 20 mins. from here.  Just so happens he is studying that organism right now.  It is a member of the pinnidae family.  The white blob-like structures are calcite crystals formed later on.  I only have the top half.

Cool. It's always easier to ID something firsthand than from photos.

FYI -- Cuttlefish don't have bones. The "cuttlebone" is an internal porous body structure composed of aragonite (calcium carbonate), that the animal uses to control its buoyancy.

 

 

Mark.

 

Fossil hunting is easy -- they don't run away when you shoot at them!

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46 minutes ago, Mark Kmiecik said:

Cool. It's always easier to ID something firsthand than from photos.

Indeed! Nice to know what this turns out to have been!

'There's nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fibre and, in some cases, backbone' -- Terry Pratchett

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