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Mosasaur vertebrae??


Pablo2427

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Hello,  

 

I'd love to know your opinion about these reptilian vertebrae coming from the lower santonian of northern Spain.

 

Fisrt photo is view from above and second from beneath

 

 I've made some guesses about this piece, and I hope some of you could give me your opinion about them. Here come muy guesses:

 

-Taken that it comes from clear ancient marine strata, its general morfphology and its Santonian age, I think it probably is a mosasaur vertebrae. The problem is that there hasn' been any mosasaur reports in these places, basically because vertebrate remains are really rare and fragmented

-Supposing that the mosasaur ID is correct, the next logical step would be trying to discover which kind of vertebrae it is. In the second photo, its beneath view, you can see a big spherical gap (it is highlighted in picture 3), and from it, I'veguessed this vertebra cannot be a dorsal, nor a caudal, because the chevrons there are conected to the vertebrae by a symetrical paired haemal arches (so not a big notch in the center)

I have related this spherical gap with the small chevron like bones which kind of appear beneath some mosasaur cervicals. To show clearer what a I refering to, picture 4 is a higlighted image of this bone I am refering to

 

So, so far, I've guessed I'm dealing with a mosasaur cervical vertebra

 

I would love to know what are your opinions about these guesses and, also, if there's a detalied mosasaur vertebrae monograph I could go for

 

Thanks in advance!!!!

 

Cheers

 

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I'm finding it hard to distinguish cortical bone from matrix in these photographs. Is there any matrix at all? And while I do believe the second and third photographs show what appears to be cancellous bone in a T-shape not unlike what you'd expect to see in mosasaur vertebrae, it's hard to reconstruct a three-dimensional image based off of that. The remaining views appear too fragmentary and deformed for me to make heads or tails of it. But maybe if you could post a video that'd help visualise the specimen in three dimensions.

 

I'll tag some people who might be able to help here: @Praefectus, @JohnJ, @Slow Walker and @Carl.

'There's nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fibre and, in some cases, backbone' -- Terry Pratchett

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Hmm, difficult mosasaur vertebrae question. I'm not really sure. This is a question for Mike Everhart. If you message him on Facebook, he may be able to help you with an identification. 

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@Pablo2427

 

Try taking photos on a solid surface, without your hands, at right angles to the specimen.

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The human mind has the ability to believe anything is true.  -  JJ

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Is it easy to see where parts are missing from the vertebrae? If so could you draw them out on the new images. 

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Silly of me to have indeed forgotten to include you, @caterpillar, even after mentally having made comparisons with the specimens I got from you these years ago! In terms of age, however, this is indeed exactly up your alley!  :DOH:

 

Thanks for posting the video, @Pablo2427! That really helped! Based on that, I'd say there's a good chance you've indeed got a mosasaur vertebra on your hands, albeit of a very tiny species - quite possibly a plioplatecarpine (see the photograph of vertebra from the collection of the Museum voor Natuurwetenschappen in Brussels for reference). For one, I'd definitely say this looks like a vertebra, and a procoelous one at that. So that much we can check off of our checklist for this being mosasaur.

 

1359226744_Mosasaurcervicalvertebraecomparison.thumb.jpg.fe56111eeeca7ef88ac61b40cb12af34.jpg

Cervical vertebrae: A = Plioplatecarpus houzeaui; B = Mosasaurus lemonnieri; C = Mosasaurus hoffmannii

 

 

Seeing as how relatively long the vertebral body is, I'd moreover say that postpygal and termina vertebrae are out, which you also already concluded based on absence of the subcentral haemapophyses. Based on how the transverse processes run into where the neural arch would've sat, I'd also assume the vertebra to be either thoracic or cervical.

825322295_MosasaurvertebraeD.V.GrigorievPetrogradUni.thumb.jpg.e284598fb6780d96d9d204245b2f28c0.jpg

(source)

 

 

Based on various specimens in my collection, however, I'd be surprised that the place where the peduncle would've sat would present itself as a hole in the vertebra rather than the process that it actually is. So, I'd rather imagine this being a thoracic instead of a cervical vertebra...

 

1535816019_PlatecarpuscoryphaeuscervicalvertebraNiobraraFormationGoveCountryKansas07.jpg.420e3da9a23a66394e73527efdd432c0.jpg1366557931_PlatecarpuscoryphaeusvertebraNiobraraFormationSmokeyHillChalkGoveCountyWyoming02.jpg.3ea9c1dd2c688373bab66769f92c0c35.jpg

 

Platecarpus coryphaeus from the Niobrara Formation in Kansas

 

2021617690_Gavialimimusalmaghribensisplioplatecarpinevertebra06.jpg.a4b1c5cb9b2982ee95e47e0b5b31568d.jpg

(?) Gavialimimus almaghribensis cervical vertebra from Morocco

 

Hope this helps!

'There's nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fibre and, in some cases, backbone' -- Terry Pratchett

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

Silly of me to have indeed forgotten to include you, @caterpillar, even after mentally having made comparisons with the specimens I got from you these years ago! In terms of age, however, this is indeed exactly up your alley!  :DOH:

 

No problem

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