possible bone in Cretaceous Duck Creek formation

[BobWill]

I know this photo isn't much to go by but I didn't have a better camera and no tools to extract it from the large rock so I could bring it home. I just hope I can still find it.

 

This is about 10 cm long, found in Spring Creek, Cooke County, Texas.  These are marine, limestone deposits with abundant ammonites. It may not be bone but I can't think what else it might be. That could be a scaphopod below it but I haven't seen them here before.

 

Edited October 12, 2021 by BobWill

[Oxytropidoceras]

A fossil burrow would be my guess.

[ClearLake]

Bob, that is a very interesting piece, unfortunately I don’t have a good answer for what it might be.  The reticulate pattern looks way to regular for a burrow in my opinion. You see a pattern somewhat similar to that on the interior of some modern bird bones, but usually only at the ends, not the entire length and of course this is much older.  I’m not really that familiar with the range of bone possibilities in the Cretaceous.  All I can think of is a crushed tube of some sort, just not sure what.  I’ll be interested to see what others have to say. 

[BobWill]

10 hours ago, Oxytropidoceras said:

A fossil burrow would be my guess.

The site has more burrows than anything else. Some huge rocks are covered with more burrows than matrix holding them together! They come in all sizes but none of them have this hollow in the center with the thick wall on each side or the "reticulate" pattern as ClearLake calls it so I didn't consider burrows but of course we can't rule that out just because I haven't seen them there. Being mostly an invertebrate collector I haven't seen this form anywhere.

[FossilDAWG]

There is always the "rudist" possibility.  They can take such a diversity of forms that they fit almost every occasion.

 

Don

[erose]

Those "septa" also make me guess rudist. But that would at best be a SWAG. As we all know here in Central Texas bones are few and far between in our strata. But not unheard of. Just looks like some hard a** limestone to prep out.

[DPS Ammonite]

45 minutes ago, erose said:

SWAG

If you mean a ”scientific wild a** guess”, I like it. Sounds like what I would call a an educated guess.

 

Link

Edited October 12, 2021 by DPS Ammonite

[BobWill]

59 minutes ago, erose said:

Those "septa" also make me guess rudist. But that would at best be a SWAG. As we all know here in Central Texas bones are few and far between in our strata. But unheard of. Just looks like some hard a** limestone to prep out.

Yeah, and I wouldn't be sure where to start the prep since those "septa" seem to drop down below the bone-like part. I'll just add rudist to the fauna list for Spring Creek and leave it there

[doushantuo]

Don't quote me on this,but the morphology reminds me of moldic preservation of,e.g. Lithiotis or Cochlearites