White River potentially hollow (avian?) bone

[Opabinia Blues]

Hello, everyone,

 

Lately this summer I’ve been doing a bit of casual fossil collecting (with explicit permission!) on some land that a very close family friend owns in Weld County, Colorado that has a lot of exposure of the White River Formation, and I’ve collected a sizable amount of material including some pretty awesome finds.

 

Being an amateur, I need some help identifying some of the fossils I’ve collected. Since the forum has a photo upload limit per post, I’ll be making a few threads for different finds, I hope that is ok.

 

This small bone appears to be hollow, which indicates to me it might be avian but that may or may not be the case. It does have a ridge/process on the lateral surface which may aid identification. Location (as stated above) is Weld County, CO, on the Brule Formation.

 

Thanks!

 

[MarcoSr]

2 hours ago, OpabiniaBoogaloo said:

Hello, everyone,

 

Lately this summer I’ve been doing a bit of casual fossil collecting (with explicit permission!) on some land that a very close family friend owns in Weld County, Colorado that has a lot of exposure of the White River Formation, and I’ve collected a sizable amount of material including some pretty awesome finds.

 

Being an amateur, I need some help identifying some of the fossils I’ve collected. Since the forum has a photo upload limit per post, I’ll be making a few threads for different finds, I hope that is ok.

 

This small bone appears to be hollow, which indicates to me it might be avian but that may or may not be the case. It does have a ridge/process on the lateral surface which may aid identification. Location (as stated above) is Weld County, CO, on the Brule Formation.

 

Thanks!

 

 

Avian bones have very thin wall thickness.  Your bone doesn't look avian to me.  Mammal bones have thicker walls.  I collected thousands of micro bones from my sons' Eocene/Oligocene ranch in Nebraska.  I sent over a hundred hollow bones (the ones with the thinnest walls) to a bird expert in Germany and all the bones turned out to be mammal.

 

Marco Sr.