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Brandy Cole

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Location:  South Texas

Estimated Age:  Pleistocene

Matrix:  Sand, low water, gravel

 

I found this vertebra in the riverbed yesterday and could use help identifying it, if possible.  

 

5fbaa630849f8_VertebraRept.thumb.jpg.30ca04b4d3c80cf8190715b2fd7235cf.jpg

 

I found this link, which made me think it was possibly a turtle vertebra, since it looks like the front is convex and the back is concave.  

 

 

 

It's a pretty large vertebra, so my turtle guess may be completely off, unless this is another hesperotestudo piece.

 

Thanks for any help or suggestions!

 

--Brandy

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Hey Brandy, nice find!   It doesn't look like turtle or tortoise to me at a glance, looks to be mammal.  Will have a dig thru my river verts and see if I can nail it down for you.

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22 minutes ago, Lorne Ledger said:

Hey Brandy, nice find!   It doesn't look like turtle or tortoise to me at a glance, looks to be mammal.  Will have a dig thru my river verts and see if I can nail it down for you.

Thank you!  Any idea would be great.

 

So can mammal vertebra be concave on one end and convex on the other?  I thought the chart was saying that mammal verts are always flat on both ends, but I wasn't sure how accurate or consistent that is.  Or I could also be misreading it.

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Okay, so I haven't found a match yet but have some ideas and someone else might be able to narrow it further.  I 'think' it is a lumbar vertebrae of a medium sized prey animal such as a llama, deer or the like.  The reason I think that is from looking at vertebrae from such animals and they have a very large foramen for the spinal column and blood flow.  Also it is slightly rounded and just plain big.  In reptiles I have found the spinal foramen to be almost perfectly round while in carnivores it is large but flatter top and bottom.   Your question about concave and convex is a good one, the reptiles tend to have dramatically convex process, while the mammals are much more flattened but they are still concave and convex because they need to lock into place for support and movement.  I didn't have any turtles handy, but here are three alligator verts I found on the Brazos, the far right one is absolutely huge.  Apologize for the picture, my other light burned out.

5fbc17bb22dc6_AlligatorVerts.jpg.556a11b383c46661e586bfb41e1cddde.jpg

5fbc17e7d2d65_Alligatorbig.thumb.jpg.98faa445f424f4703abddde49f217b80.jpg

 

As for your vert, well there is something that is bothering me about it and I am not sure if it is because of river wear or natural.  The convex process on it is such a strange shape and doesn't seem natural or useful in any way.  When I find something that defies comparison like that I usually put it in a drawer and label as suspected Sloth!  I have found plenty of sloth teeth and claws down on the river so it is possible, but I am not gonna swear to that ID ;)

OddShapedProcess.jpg.3bf542cc049fd9039aa1f9583d4d8961.jpg

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7 hours ago, Lorne Ledger said:

Okay, so I haven't found a match yet but have some ideas and someone else might be able to narrow it further.  I 'think' it is a lumbar vertebrae of a medium sized prey animal such as a llama, deer or the like.  The reason I think that is from looking at vertebrae from such animals and they have a very large foramen for the spinal column and blood flow.  Also it is slightly rounded and just plain big.  In reptiles I have found the spinal foramen to be almost perfectly round while in carnivores it is large but flatter top and bottom.   Your question about concave and convex is a good one, the reptiles tend to have dramatically convex process, while the mammals are much more flattened but they are still concave and convex because they need to lock into place for support and movement.  I didn't have any turtles handy, but here are three alligator verts I found on the Brazos, the far right one is absolutely huge.  Apologize for the picture, my other light burned out.

5fbc17bb22dc6_AlligatorVerts.jpg.556a11b383c46661e586bfb41e1cddde.jpg

5fbc17e7d2d65_Alligatorbig.thumb.jpg.98faa445f424f4703abddde49f217b80.jpg

 

As for your vert, well there is something that is bothering me about it and I am not sure if it is because of river wear or natural.  The convex process on it is such a strange shape and doesn't seem natural or useful in any way.  When I find something that defies comparison like that I usually put it in a drawer and label as suspected Sloth!  I have found plenty of sloth teeth and claws down on the river so it is possible, but I am not gonna swear to that ID ;)

OddShapedProcess.jpg.3bf542cc049fd9039aa1f9583d4d8961.jpg

Lorne, thank you for the ideas.  I was wondering about alligator too.  I found a few online examples that looked similar, but they were for sale, and it can be hard to tell if those posts are labeled correctly.

 

In terms of that portion of the vertebrae, it's definitely worn, and I think that makes it look weird.  But even if I try to imagine it filled out, it still looks more triangular than most examples of vertebra I've seen.

 

I took some better pictures to show the wear better:

 

5fbc8a3f62fbb_VertWear.thumb.jpg.071c9d1d04e1cc036e6f68ad7d4e1a51.jpg

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  • JohnJ changed the title to Vertebra ID?

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