Bone fragment?

[Sinestia]

Found this along side others that look very similar but no idea what they could be. Any ideas?

[val horn]

Where did you find it?  You say there were others like it can you photograph some others. I can imagine this as a finger bone. I can imagine it as part of an antler. I can also imagine a piece of shrimp burrow ,  I am not seeing bone structure .  If the others are clearly bone. Things just got much more interesting 

[Sinestia]

22 minutes ago, val horn said:

Where did you find it?  You say there were others like it can you photograph some others. I can imagine this as a finger bone. I can imagine it as part of an antler. I can also imagine a piece of shrimp burrow ,  I am not seeing bone structure .  If the others are clearly bone. Things just got much more interesting 

I have close to 70 acres in Southern New Mexico and found them in the foothills of Cookes Peak Mountain where I live (south face) i will post more pics this afternoon.  I will be chasing a strewn field most of the day. 

[val horn]

Do you know what formation you are looking in.  Found some info here : www.geoinfo.nmt.edu/tour/landmarks/cookes_peak/home.html.  What the specific formation determines what age and whether it is marine or terrestrial which also help define the possible fossils  It would be marvelous if these pieces are  terrestrial cretaceous dino bones, and less exciting if they are marine burrows,  But I dont have any fossils in my backyard.  

[Sinestia]

1 hour ago, val horn said:

Do you know what formation you are looking in.  Found some info here : www.geoinfo.nmt.edu/tour/landmarks/cookes_peak/home.html.  What the specific formation determines what age and whether it is marine or terrestrial which also help define the possible fossils  It would be marvelous if these pieces are  terrestrial cretaceous dino bones, and less exciting if they are marine burrows,  But I dont have any fossils in my backyard.  

There are large granitic outcrops that border the edge of my property and I found them within 5 feet or so of one of them. Unfortunately thats as far as my knowledge goes on the geology. I will have a better answer for you soon. 

[GeschWhat]

Can you clean it up any better and take new photos? The longitudinal lines on the surface make me think it is not bone. The good news is fossil bone in many areas of New Mexico is very porous and will stick if you touch it to the tip of your tongue. 

[pachy-pleuro-whatnot-odon]

As Lori said, to properly identify this, you'd need to clean it and share new photographs with us. Right now, the slight metal-rust stains, parallel longitudinal lines and flattened top surface to me suggests a broken chisel.

[fossillarry]

It's a deer horn fragment near the burr(where the horn detaches from the skull) and a few inches of the beam.  Can't tell if it's a fossil.

[pachy-pleuro-whatnot-odon]

21 minutes ago, fossillarry said:

It's a deer horn fragment near the burr(where the horn detaches from the skull) and a few inches of the beam.  Can't tell if it's a fossil.

 

Though I agree that the one end does kind of look reminiscent of the base of an antler, I think the shaft looks too straight and too long before branching, and the parallel grooves/lines put me off... As such, I don't think it's antler...

[fossillarry]

Without too much speculation the specimen could be from a young individual which have longer beams before the first tines form.

[Sinestia]

23 hours ago, GeschWhat said:

Can you clean it up any better and take new photos? The longitudinal lines on the surface make me think it is not bone. The good news is fossil bone in many areas of New Mexico is very porous and will stick if you touch it to the tip of your tongue. 

Of course I can and will do this evening,  I wasn't too sure on how or with what to clean it with, can you advise?

[Sinestia]

I do believe it to be a fossil only because of its density , I would imagine an antler would not be . 

[val horn]

if it is as hard and solid as it looks I would rinse it in plain water and gently rub soft dirt off of it .  If you feel it might or is desolving then I would carefully pick at the dirt with a dental tool or a small fine knife.  Have you had a chance to go back and look at the other possible fossil pieces?

[Sinestia]

I did and I am cleaning them as you have advised as we speak. They are undoubtedly fossils because of clear mineralization but again I'm looking through unexpeirenced eyes. The original piece I posted looks far different since I've cleaned it. Here are some photos of that one. 

[val horn]

Don’t see the new pictures 

[Sinestia]

10 minutes ago, Sinestia said:

I did and I am cleaning them as you have advised as we speak. They are undoubtedly fossils because of clear mineralization but again I'm looking through unexpeirenced eyes. The original piece I posted looks far different since I've cleaned it. Here are some photos of that one. 

 

[Sinestia]

7 minutes ago, val horn said:

Don’t see the new pictures 

The pictures should now be visible, sorry for that delay.  

[GeschWhat]

Looks like it lost its stripes. I'm not really seeing any bone structure 

[val horn]

Pictures of fossil deer antlers from the peace river Pleistocene Florida look a lot like your fossil to me

[Sinestia]

Maybe power of suggestion but it is starting to resemble antler to me as well. 

[Sinestia]

I do appreciate the input from everyone truly and though I am a newbie to this forum and fossil collecting,  I will learn to take better photos and have been learning so much about the geology in my own back yard (Cooke's Peak Mountain Foothills) so until then I will do my best to be concise and factual.  

[pachy-pleuro-whatnot-odon]

Interesting how different this looks now that's been cleaned up. For future reference, though, I'd also add a couple of overview photographs in it's cleaned state. Close-ups are good, but it's a bit tricky to imagine how the piece looks as a whole now that it's been cleaned. Anyway, definitely not a chisel any more

 

As to this being deer antler, that comes as bit of a surprise to me, I must say. May be it's just because it's a lot older than even the archaeological specimens I've seen. But at the very least I would've expected some surface texture as in the images and threads below, if not the bumpy encrustation around the root of the antler:

 

 

 

 

Then again, the slightly widened flat surface on one end of the bone is rather suggestive. And if you look at specimens like those below, it certainly appears possible that not all fossilised deer antler retains its decoration (although I was unable to find any specimens completely devoid of them):

 

 

 

 

And while the very last photograph seems to show the antler being hollow on the inside, it's a pity that I haven't been able to find any photographs of specimens that actually show a cross-section through the broken bit of the antler, as this is very telling in fresh antler. That is: a narrow ring of hard cortical bone around a large inner structure of cancellous bone. The reason this particular configuration is so diagnostic is because antler needs to be simultaneously hard enough to be used in intraspecific combat, while light enough that it can be carried on the head.

 

Anatomy of deer antler. Langley and Wisher, 2019. Have you got the tine? Prehistoric Methods in Antler Working

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cross-section through Red Deer antler. Figure 1 from Giżejewska et al., 2016. Variations of selected trace element contents  in two layers of red deer antlers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cross-sections of Fallow Deer antler (Dama dama) (source).

[JohnJ]

5 hours ago, pachy-pleuro-whatnot-odon said:

As to this being deer antler, that comes as bit of a surprise to me, I must say.

 

I agree with Alexander; I'm not convinced this displays the characteristics of fossil antler.

 

Brighter, better focused images of any broken areas would help. 

[val horn]

i make no pretense to expertise, and the pictures I am attaching came from a rapid google search but his piece look alot like these from florida.  I agree I dont see bone structure and would prefer to.  Additionally he felt that there were other similar pieces in the area.  If some show bone like trabeculation, or none show it the situation becomes clearer.  an isolated find is harder to id than one in a collection form an area particularly when there is very limited knowledge about the local formation

[GeschWhat]

No disrespect, but fossil bone from New Mexico doesn't generally resemble that found in Florida (which is much darker). I was doing a little reading about the area on the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources website. Unless I missed something, I wouldn't expect to find fossil bone in your area. What intrigued me about your find was the striped pattern. Did that completely wash off or is some of it still there? As others have said, an overall photo might help. I'm wondering if it could be some sort of artifact.