Shellseeker Posted July 13, 2021 Share Posted July 13, 2021 With the River and creeks WAAAAY over my head, I have started to sort, review, reduce my collections from the last 3-4 months, starting from the most recent. I have a couple of interesting bones. The 1st I think in a cannon bone from a small pre_equus horse. Why small pre_equus horse? I find 1 Equus fossil at this location for every 100 pre_Equus horse fossils, plus this bone is too small to be an Equus cannon bone. Why Cannon bone ? Because it seems very similar to a photo of Equus Cannon bone created by @Harry Pristis. Harry identified as left leg, Mine seems to be the opposite oriented for a right leg. Metacarpal is the foreleg designation. How can the metacarpal be differentiated from the metatarsal (hind leg) that seems very similar? My find: Not impressive in this 1st photo. There are some differences with Harry's photo above, but I can not imagine what else it might be.... 1 The White Queen ".... in her youth she could believe "six impossible things before breakfast" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shellseeker Posted July 17, 2021 Author Share Posted July 17, 2021 Found it.... Enjoy the journey. It is really satisfying to go from small unknown bone that you might have tossed (how many of these am I actually going to identify), to it looks like an Equus Cannon bone (also called metacarpal 3 or metatarsal 3) to it must be a small horse due to size, to a collections database and it is Nannippus aztecus, metatarsal 3 left real leg. @digit, @planeguy, @jcbshark 2 The White Queen ".... in her youth she could believe "six impossible things before breakfast" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Plantguy Posted July 17, 2021 Share Posted July 17, 2021 5 hours ago, Shellseeker said: Found it.... Enjoy the journey. It is really satisfying to go from small unknown bone that you might have tossed (how many of these am I actually going to identify), to it looks like an Equus Cannon bone (also called metacarpal 3 or metatarsal 3) to it must be a small horse due to size, to a collections database and it is Nannippus aztecus, metatarsal 3 left real leg. @digit, @planeguy, @jcbshark Jack, I"m glad you tracked this down! I probably would have been of little help....but, I did open Hulbert's book and started digging around and looking at the different horse genera and then I got thrown off by this graphic on the UF site which doesnt even list Nannippus or Cormohipparion and others that we seem to find around here. Good info on these pages but I'm not sure why its not complete.... You wouldnt happen to know of a horse lineage tree that has all the fossil genera & species listed would you? May be a question for Hulbert?...I'll look some more around. https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/fossil-horses/gallery/ Anyways, I'm glad you were to able attach an ID to your find. I know the little scraps can drive us all nuts!! Congrats! Regards, Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shellseeker Posted July 18, 2021 Author Share Posted July 18, 2021 What happens when you push hard enough is that you learn the tools that work and those that do not seem to work so well... I find that there are a few papers written by McFadden , Webb, or Hulbert that pretty well describe the small horses from the Middle Miocene to the middle Pleistocene when most of them had gone extinct. You should ask Richard which papers are most instructive on the diversity of the small horses in the Miocene - Pliocene of Florida. The 2nd thing that is valuable is the write_ups of fauna by Florida Land Mammal Age in the UFMNH website. So if I look up say Neohipparion Eurystyle, then I get something like this ... very educational. https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/florida-vertebrate-fossils/species/neohipparion-eurystyle/ Finally I have the Vertebrate Collections Database maintained by Hulbert... it is a great resource: Go to the search page, type in Equidae under Family, then select the pulldown under Genus, and automagically up with come the names of all the small horse Genus, Callipus, Nannippus, Cormohipparion, NeoHipparion , etc, then the same action to move on to Species. It takes a little to get comfortable with it, but it is valuable to make side by side comparisons... 1 The White Queen ".... in her youth she could believe "six impossible things before breakfast" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Plantguy Posted July 18, 2021 Share Posted July 18, 2021 Thanks Jack, I appreciate the insight! I've actually played around with all of these tools/resources at different times. I just got bogged down with wanting a chart to see all of the species...crazy I know... Will see what Dr. Hulbert has...I'm sure its documented somewhere... The closest I have so far is from the old plaster jacket series that Waldrop put together and the diagram after Simpson, 1951. https://floridapaleosociety.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/The-Plaster-Jacket-9-February-1969.pdf Good stuff! Regards, Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shellseeker Posted July 18, 2021 Author Share Posted July 18, 2021 1 hour ago, Plantguy said: Will see what Dr. Hulbert has...I'm sure its documented somewhere... The closest I have so far is from the old plaster jacket series that Waldrop put together and the diagram after Simpson, 1951. I have seen this diagram and will be interested in Dr. Hulbert's response. I think the basic problem is that scientists disagree on key elements of the chart and the facts are not there to resolve the disagreements cleanly. Many propose the "correct" chart and fail to get enough consensus, so the more contentious stay fuzzy and ill_defined like what came just before Equus. So in this chart, it might be that Merychippus ->> Callippus ->> Pliohippus ->> Equus lacks consensus and may have the nonbelievers heavily disagreeing. I myself have learned to live with lots of ambiguity. Here is a comment I reread from one of my most exciting finds. Quote Without detailed study, my first impression is that the “odd features” are the result of it belonging to an older species of horse than usually found in this region of Florida, likely of early half of the middle Miocene age. This is the interval when the classic genera of horses so common in the late Miocene and early Pliocene, such as Nannippus, Cormohipparion, Neohipparion, Pseudhipparion, Protohippus, Calippus, etc. were just getting separated from their common ancestor. Because of this, isolated teeth can be difficult to assign to a particular genus. Your thinking of Cormohipparion is in my opinion in the right direction. There have been a few teeth from the Bone Valley identified as belonging to a species that some have regarded as the oldest species of Cormohipparion, Cormohipparion goorisi. While I agree that this species (better known from coastal Texas) is a likely ancestor of later species of Cormohipparion, my work suggests that it is also the ancestor of Nannippus. Thus for technical reasons it cannot be in either of these two genera, but must belong to a separate genus. So I have referred to it as “Merychippus” goorisi, with the quote marks around Merychippus indicating that actually belongs in an unnamed genus. But as stated above, isolated horse teeth from the middle Miocene are difficult to identify, particularly when not complete like this one. So the conservative choice would be to label it as belonging to the merychippine species-complex of horses. Richard Expand http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/101509-transitional-horse-tooth/ The White Queen ".... in her youth she could believe "six impossible things before breakfast" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jcbshark Posted July 19, 2021 Share Posted July 19, 2021 Nice finds Jack Every once in a great while it's not just a big rock down there! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diginupbones Posted July 19, 2021 Share Posted July 19, 2021 Jack, your persistence always amazes me! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diginupbones Posted July 19, 2021 Share Posted July 19, 2021 On 7/17/2021 at 6:58 PM, Plantguy said: You wouldnt happen to know of a horse lineage tree that has all the fossil genera & species listed would you? @Plantguy here are a couple of charts you may be interested in. http://www.equinestudies.org/evolution_horse_2008/elsevier_horse_evolution_2008_pdf1.pdf 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shellseeker Posted July 20, 2021 Author Share Posted July 20, 2021 On 7/19/2021 at 12:28 PM, diginupbones said: @Plantguy here are a couple of charts you may be interested in. http://www.equinestudies.org/evolution_horse_2008/elsevier_horse_evolution_2008_pdf1.pdf Thanks for this. I had seen one of your charts previously, but had not captured it. Now I have both. These are actually very good. All of my horse teeth find come from the upper (yellow) bubble of the 1st chart. I have a couple of Florida Parahippus teeth (courtesy of Harry) and 1 Merychippus tooth that I found and donated to Richard Hulbert. The White Queen ".... in her youth she could believe "six impossible things before breakfast" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shellseeker Posted July 20, 2021 Author Share Posted July 20, 2021 On 7/19/2021 at 11:03 AM, diginupbones said: Jack, your persistence always amazes me! Yes, it is a trait that rewarded me tremendously during my professional career, that and skepticism. On the downside, I realize that I can be a pain in the butt, hanging on to dubious theories well past their shelf life. I have hopes that others who follow my process, rather than the result are rewarded. The White Queen ".... in her youth she could believe "six impossible things before breakfast" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Plantguy Posted July 25, 2021 Share Posted July 25, 2021 On 7/19/2021 at 12:28 PM, diginupbones said: @Plantguy here are a couple of charts you may be interested in. http://www.equinestudies.org/evolution_horse_2008/elsevier_horse_evolution_2008_pdf1.pdf Thanks! @diginupbones Regards, Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Plantguy Posted July 25, 2021 Share Posted July 25, 2021 On 7/20/2021 at 12:39 PM, Shellseeker said: Yes, it is a trait that rewarded me tremendously during my professional career, that and skepticism. On the downside, I realize that I can be a pain in the butt, hanging on to dubious theories well past their shelf life. I have hopes that others who follow my process, rather than the result are rewarded. Hey Jack, Enjoyed this thread for many reasons! I have some approaches/processes that I wont even try to explain....I blame it on exposure to root cause problem analysis and change control management processes in the I/T world. I drove some folks nuts and still do. Keep after them! Regards, Chris 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now