Mystery Bones

[snolly50]

By some vast, cosmic alignment of karma, snolly has become the possessor of a horde of material, deaccessioned from a museum's abundance. Information is scant, but "Oligocene" and "Nebraska" are offered as clues. The foil wrapped specimens had apparently lain in benign neglect for a a generous span, the bone rests in pieces with sheets of dried, peeling consolidant and crumbling matrix.

 

The specimens appear to be limb bones and Oreodont is the donor that presents as likely.  At present, snolly is leisurely joining the puzzle pieces and removing old consolidant (white glue?) and matrix.

 

Please glance at the examples pictured and offer any insight as to their identity. 

 

Here are a couple typical pieces. Note the detritus of peeled consolidant....

 

 

This piece is perhaps a tibia with sherds of fibula attached, hanging precariously by the dried adhesive....

 

[digit]

Very cool! Karma pays dividends every now and then. Lets see if anybody who knows their Oligocene mammals well will have an educated guess as to the identity of these bones.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[snolly50]

@Randyw @jpc Do any of these examples have a familiar look to you? Is Oreodont the likely source? Thanks.

[JohnJ]

@ParkerPaleo

@MarcoSr

[MarcoSr]

3 hours ago, JohnJ said:

@ParkerPaleo

@MarcoSr

 

The ID of loose bones is very difficult, especially without size/measurements. and good bone ends  All I can reasonably say for certain is that Oreodont fossils are, by far, the most common macro mammal fossils on my sons' White River M&M Ranch.

 

Marco Sr.

[Randyw]

I will eccho what MarcoSr said without the ends and measurements it would be a guess. But heres a plate I use as a reference…

[snolly50]

Thanks, I foolishly did not include anything for scale or a measure. All of the bones are approx. 6 inches in length. Once I clean up the matrix covered bone ends I will repost with some close views. There does appear to be several positions of limb bone present in the horde. Thanks again.

[ParkerPaleo]

They are oreodont size at least.  I'd clean off the ends and compare to the plates in Scott & Jepsen that Randy linked.

[jpc]

4 hours ago, ParkerPaleo said:

They are oreodont size at least.  I'd clean off the ends and compare to the plates in Scott & Jepsen that Randy linked.

Yes, this is the best thing to do to ID these.  Mammal postcranial bones tend to look fairly similar, so when you get them cleaned up, compare them to the drawings at a fairly detailed level.  

[Randyw]

I’ve got 2 limb bones in my collection. If you get the ends cleaned up and need some pictures for comparison let me know…..

[snolly50]

Thanks all!