Nice bird bone from the Zandmotor

[Max-fossils]

Hi everyone!

Last week I found this nice, rather big, bird bone on the Zandmotor (Netherlands). It is most likely late Pleistocene in Age (Weichselian) but could possibly be older (though I doubt this is any older than early Pleistocene, given the conservation). I believe it to be a femur of a rather large species of bird. My first thought was the great auk, Pinguinus impennis, but I think my bone is probably not sturdy/thick enough for such a heavy bird. I'm currently thinking it might be something like a large sea gull, but this is just guess work, and birds are definitely not my area of expertise. 

What do you guys think it might be? Also, if any of you has some kind of free identification guide/paper for bird bones (modern/fossil), could you please share it?

I'll already tag @Auspex and @MarcoSr as I remember that you two have worked with bird bones before  

Thanks in advance for your help!

Max

 

 

[Max-fossils]

Here are some closeups:

 

[Max-fossils]

And some more from the other end

 

[FossilsAnonymous]

Maybe @sharkdoctor can help as well. Great find Max!

[RuMert]

Great find and nice color of the bone

[sixgill pete]

@Max-fossils while I cannot help with the I.D. Great find. Especially with that it appears to be complete.

[MarcoSr]

6 hours ago, Max-fossils said:

Hi everyone!

Last week I found this nice, rather big, bird bone on the Zandmotor (Netherlands). It is most likely late Pleistocene in Age (Weichselian) but could possibly be older (though I doubt this is any older than early Pleistocene, given the conservation). I believe it to be a femur of a rather large species of bird. My first thought was the great auk, Pinguinus impennis, but I think my bone is probably not sturdy/thick enough for such a heavy bird. I'm currently thinking it might be something like a large sea gull, but this is just guess work, and birds are definitely not my area of expertise. 

What do you guys think it might be? Also, if any of you has some kind of free identification guide/paper for bird bones (modern/fossil), could you please share it?

I'll already tag @Auspex and @MarcoSr as I remember that you two have worked with bird bones before  

Thanks in advance for your help!

Max

 

I've found and donated a good number of fossil bird bones.  However, I haven't become proficient in bird bone IDs.   Below is a great web site for bone identification of extant birds of prey that may help you with your ID.

 

 

https://www.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/Natural_History/Bones/homepage.htm

 

 

Marco Sr.

[sjaak]

Zandmotor is a mix of pleistocene, early Holoceen and recent material (with some exceptions). Hard to tell the age of such a bone. It does not appear to be very old. It’s no Auk. I would suggest to compare with the usual suspects, such as seagull (which was my first thought). At the NHR museum in Rotterdam work some people with knowledge of bird bones (Bram).

You could also consider posting it at the WPZ Facebook page, where a lot of local collectors and experts are active.

[Mahnmut]

Its a humerus.

[Max-fossils]

On 9/18/2020 at 2:35 PM, FossilsAnonymous said:

Maybe @sharkdoctor can help as well. Great find Max!

 

On 9/18/2020 at 2:39 PM, RuMert said:

Great find and nice color of the bone

 

23 hours ago, sixgill pete said:

@Max-fossils while I cannot help with the I.D. Great find. Especially with that it appears to be complete.

Thanks guys! I'm quite happy with my find too. Bird bones are not super common here, and are mostly found broken due to their fragility, as they tend to break easily during transport in the waves and sea currents. This one survived it really well though! It has a bit of wear here and there, but is otherwise well preserved and in good shape. So you guys are probably right, it does seem like a nice find 

 

18 hours ago, MarcoSr said:

 

I've found and donated a good number of fossil bird bones.  However, I haven't become proficient in bird bone IDs.   Below is a great web site for bone identification of extant birds of prey that may help you with your ID.

https://www.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/Natural_History/Bones/homepage.htm

Ah, thanks a lot for the link! I'll check it out, hopefully I'll find a good match. 

 

3 hours ago, Mahnmut said:

Its a humerus.

Indeed it is. Thanks for the correction  

 

5 hours ago, sjaak said:

Zandmotor is a mix of pleistocene, early Holoceen and recent material (with some exceptions). Hard to tell the age of such a bone. It does not appear to be very old. It’s no Auk. I would suggest to compare with the usual suspects, such as seagull (which was my first thought). At the NHR museum in Rotterdam work some people with knowledge of bird bones (Bram).

You could also consider posting it at the WPZ Facebook page, where a lot of local collectors and experts are active.

Thanks for your insight! The mineralization of this bone is not weak (it is clearly fossilized), so I can rule out recent pretty confidently. Early Holocene is possible though. 

I know Bram really well and often turn to him for ID questions like this, but I usually prefer meeting with him in person to show him my specimens (I have a lot of other, less interesting, specimens still needing ID that he is able to recognize when he has them in hand, but lately a meeting hasn't been possible due to corona). However I'll probably email him these pictures sometime in the next couple of days (either to ask for ID if no one on TFF found a good match or to confirm someone's ID), and I still have some other stuff to tell him. 

I am part of the WPZ, however I don't have Facebook. 

Googling 'sea gull humerus' provided this picture showcasing different humeri from different species, and none of them seem to be a close match to mine:

They all appear to have a small spike (labeled 'tsd' on picture S above), that my specimen doesn't seem to have. And the general shape of both ends don't match mine either... I think it is probably not a sea gull, but could still be wrong. 

[sjaak]

Well, if there was a "tsd" it was probably worn away, but I don't know much about bird bones. I donated mine to Bram. I hope you find out!

 

But you got to be careful with the age of these ZM bones. There are heated discussions about ID on color. Your bone does not have the typical "eurogeul" pleistocene brown color. Also it is not black like the early holocene finds from peat sediments. But is not spotty either, so not very recent. However, mineralisation can go fast in certain sediments, for instance if they are rich in iron. Anyway, this is a long way to tell you that I don't know.....

[sjaak]

Hmm, I think I have a more or less similar bone. You can see the iron crust.

 

[Max-fossils]

19 hours ago, sjaak said:

Well, if there was a "tsd" it was probably worn away, but I don't know much about bird bones. I donated mine to Bram. I hope you find out!

 

But you got to be careful with the age of these ZM bones. There are heated discussions about ID on color. Your bone does not have the typical "eurogeul" pleistocene brown color. Also it is not black like the early holocene finds from peat sediments. But is not spotty either, so not very recent. However, mineralisation can go fast in certain sediments, for instance if they are rich in iron. Anyway, this is a long way to tell you that I don't know.....

Yeah this is why I'm keeping the date relatively open. 

And yes your bone appears to be from the same sediments! Mine doesn't have any iron incrustations, but sure seems to have the same preservation. Nice specimen by the way!

[ClearLake]

I have looked through the book Avian Osteology by Gilbert and the closest match I can see is a goose. The illustration is of a Snow Goose (Chen caerulescens) and is not an exact match but has a very distinctive pneumatic fossa (the big semicircular depression seen in your first close up picture). The size is about right also. This makes me think goose might be a good place to start. See “B” in the photo below. The book also has a dichotomous key to the bird humerus but I don’t know my bird anatomical nomenclature well enough to make it work. 

[Max-fossils]

9 hours ago, ClearLake said:

I have looked through the book Avian Osteology by Gilbert and the closest match I can see is a goose. The illustration is of a Snow Goose (Chen caerulescens) and is not an exact match but has a very distinctive pneumatic fossa (the big semicircular depression seen in your first close up picture). The size is about right also. This makes me think goose might be a good place to start. See “B” in the photo below. The book also has a dichotomous key to the bird humerus but I don’t know my bird anatomical nomenclature well enough to make it work. 

Wow! That does indeed look like a very good match! Thanks a lot for finding this, "goose" was definitely not close to crossing my mind anytime soon so I never would've guessed. 

Much appreciated! 

[Max-fossils]

Thought I'd provide a little update on this bone.

 

A few months after I put up this post on TFF, I stumbled on a paper by Bram Langeveld from the natural history museum Het Natuurhistorisch in Rotterdam, someone I've worked closely with and know well:

--> W Langeveld, B., 2020. Quaternary bird remains from the southern North Sea. Cainozoic research, 20(2), pp.209-227.

In that paper, I found a humerus very similar to mine, that was identified as Garganey/Green-winged Teal (Anas querquedula/crecca) - but the one problem was the size; my bone was much too big to come from one of those two quite small duck species. So I knew it had to be some kind of duck, but I wasn't sure what, and just left it as Anatidae indet. (which is essentially still equivalent to the ID we got to together in this thread thanks to @ClearLake).

 

But yesterday I had a meeting with Bram Langeveld (for unrelated reasons - it was to discuss my Masters), and thought I'd use the opportunity to show him this bone too. He agreed with me that the bone looked a lot like garganey/teal, but was way too big. However according to him it did still match very well with other ducks from the Anas and Mareca genera. The most likely candidates are therefore Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos), Eurasian Wigeon (Mareca penelope) or maybe a very big Gadwall (Mareca strepera). Either way, details in the attachment areas did not match up well with other ducks (all the geese and swans, but also things like eiders, scoters, or mergansers), so we came to a final ID of 'Anas/Mareca sp.' (it's worth noting that until recently, all the species in Mareca were considered as part of Anas, and their distinction was only found through mitochondrial DNA phylogenetic studies). 

Either way, a fairly precise ID and an interesting one too! 

Edited July 19, 2023 by Max-fossils