Jobsite Find

[TexMex]

Good afternoon to all.

 

A colleague and I were doing some exploring in a creek bottom on our jobsite located in Fannin County, Texas. The creek we were walking in drains into the North Sulphur River. As we were walking we noticed a large bone sticking out of the creek bank. We decided to grab a couple of shovels and do a little more excavating. We came across multiple bones. As you may see in one of the pictures, we had to do a little digging in order to reach much of the bones, they definitely weren't just lying in the creek bank. I will upload more pictures with measurements. I kinda want to gauge if we stumbled across actual fossils, and if so we were hoping for some sort of inclination of what we may have found. The coordinates for the find are 33.4122,-96.0804. We were at least 15 feet below the grade of the jobsite in the creek.

[ClearLake]

Looks like a cow leg bone.  Having said that, cow and bison are similar so we'll have to see some measurements and look at some details that I don't have handy right now.

[TexMex]

Some of the bigger bones we came across next to a tape measure.

[dhiggi]

If you hold a flame or red hot needle to one of the bones and see if you can detect a smell like burning hair, this may tell you whether your bones are modern or not. 
There shouldn’t be such a smell in fossilised bones

[TexMex]

I read that tip on another post and actually just performed it. There was no smell.

[TexMex]

33 minutes ago, ClearLake said:

Looks like a cow leg bone.  Having said that, cow and bison are similar so we'll have to see some measurements and look at some details that I don't have handy right now.

After some online sleuthing, I'm inclined to agree with you. I pulled the attached image from the following website and it looks like we may have come across a bison perhaps:

 

http://westerndigs.org/n-americas-oldest-bison-fossil-found-revealing-mother-of-all-bison/

 

Edited August 19, 2020 by TexMex
Bad Grammar

[ClearLake]

     

 

These are some diagrams I borrowed from a previous  @Harry Pristis post which should help you decide.  You have a hind leg of a cow in my opinion, but  look at the diagram to the left above and compare to your bones.

[TexMex]

3 minutes ago, ClearLake said:

     

 

These are some diagrams I borrowed from a previous  @Harry Pristis post which should help you decide.  You have a hind leg of a cow in my opinion, but  look at the diagram to the left above and compare to your bones.

Yeah, more than likely. Poor cow maybe wandered down there at some point and the ground gave way burying it. Dang, oh well. The search continues. Plenty of baculite fossils in the area. I'll keep collecting those til the next big thing pops up.