tracer Posted July 29, 2010 Share Posted July 29, 2010 soooo, what do you think? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Edonihce Posted July 29, 2010 Share Posted July 29, 2010 so....this is one of those 'I know what it is and I want to see if anyone can guess' things, right? looks like wood to me, but could also be a piece of bone or rock....no way to tell very easily from that view. . ____________________ scale in avatar is millimeters ____________________ Come visit Sandi, the 'Fossil Journey Cruiser' ____________________ WIPS (the Western Interior Paleontological Society - http://www.westernpaleo.org) ____________________ "Being genetically cursed with an almost inhuman sense of curiosity and wonder, I'm hard-wired to investigate even the most unlikely, uninteresting (to others anyway) and irrelevant details; often asking hypothetical questions from many angles in an attempt to understand something more thoroughly." -- Mr. Edonihce Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnJ Posted July 29, 2010 Share Posted July 29, 2010 Looks like a few cockle burr sprouts and some sensitive briar...next to a mossy thing. The human mind has the ability to believe anything is true. - JJ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rover Posted July 29, 2010 Share Posted July 29, 2010 Well, flip the bloody thing over so I can get a good look at it - no matter how I turn my head, I just can't seem to see the other sides of your, ah, log. At a guess, though, I would say that you're messing with us, and you set the log on top of a fossil and pretended the log was the real find. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tracer Posted July 29, 2010 Author Share Posted July 29, 2010 well, the view is what it is. nature chooses which view she presents for us when we go in search of things, and this is what we saw. i've got some other pictures i'm going to post soon showing how well other things can be disguised. what we have done in an attempt to overcome this problem and give ourselves an "edge" is to study the heck out of stuff, trying to memorize general shapes and patterns. some places everything is covered in slime, mud, algae, dirt, etc. and your only chance of spotting something cool is to just recognize the shape. tj has absolute hawk eyes. it weirds me out. he can spot a small lemon shark tooth rolling in the backwash of a wave on the beach. he spots fossils under water from the faintest outline. he'll walk along standing up and spot a piece of mammoth tooth enamel the size of a gnat's toothpick. he's....he's......superman! (can't call him a kid anymore). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeD Posted July 29, 2010 Share Posted July 29, 2010 (edited) maybe...., maybe not.....(i'm thinking not, at the moment). let's see the other side. Edited July 29, 2010 by MikeD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rover Posted July 29, 2010 Share Posted July 29, 2010 Well, all I can say for sure, then, is that you're good at building suspense. I can practically hear the drumroll. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnJ Posted July 29, 2010 Share Posted July 29, 2010 Well, it has a little size to it. The clams to the right are nickel to quarter sized, so as wide as a hand but longer with an arc to the outer surface.... The human mind has the ability to believe anything is true. - JJ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Eaton Posted July 29, 2010 Share Posted July 29, 2010 My wild guess is a chunk of mammoth tusk? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MOROPUS Posted July 29, 2010 Share Posted July 29, 2010 My wild guess is a chunk of mammoth tusk? I agree with you! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tracer Posted July 29, 2010 Author Share Posted July 29, 2010 ok, ok, we'll move in closer - try not to get in tj's way because i can see his slight crouch and caudal surface waggling a bit like it does when he's getting ready to pounce on a find... can't really be tusk, for a couple of reasons. again, we sort of need to semi-ignore the color and surface because, like so much stuff, it's all "funkitated" (tj's word). the huge hints here are the left end, and the sort of "ridge" area traveling at an angle across the top surface along the length of the specimen. and the thing isn't really round. and it isn't a tusk. tusks seem somewhat "laminated" in concentric rings. see the abraded/eroded "notched" looking area on top toward the left end? tusk wouldn't really wear in that manner - and neither would petrified wood. and the right-hand end has a break across it that looks pretty typical of a break across the shaft of a long bone... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Edonihce Posted July 29, 2010 Share Posted July 29, 2010 modern mammal? . ____________________ scale in avatar is millimeters ____________________ Come visit Sandi, the 'Fossil Journey Cruiser' ____________________ WIPS (the Western Interior Paleontological Society - http://www.westernpaleo.org) ____________________ "Being genetically cursed with an almost inhuman sense of curiosity and wonder, I'm hard-wired to investigate even the most unlikely, uninteresting (to others anyway) and irrelevant details; often asking hypothetical questions from many angles in an attempt to understand something more thoroughly." -- Mr. Edonihce Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhw Posted July 29, 2010 Share Posted July 29, 2010 Whale rib? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tracer Jr. Posted July 29, 2010 Share Posted July 29, 2010 You're torturing these poor people.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rover Posted July 29, 2010 Share Posted July 29, 2010 I thought it looked a little like bone, but from a distance it did look more like wood. Now that I've seen the bit on the left, I'm sure it's bone, but what kind... Idunno. Something big, would be my guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ashcraft Posted July 29, 2010 Share Posted July 29, 2010 That is what we in the Missouri fossil collecting clade call a "whatzit". Depending how close they are from (or to) whatzit status, they can also be transmorgified into a leaverite, or they can also be Yardus ornamenti. The problem with Y. ornamenti, is that they can easily be confused with the very destructive Mowerus contactus, subspecies bladus, which can lead to a persistant useage of inappropriate verbage that can be heard for miles. Summer semester finally ended today Brent Ashcraft ashcraft, brent allen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MOROPUS Posted July 29, 2010 Share Posted July 29, 2010 Femur of some sort? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tracer Posted July 29, 2010 Author Share Posted July 29, 2010 the size of the thing, the broken end on the right, and the natural curve of the articulating surface on the left end told me most of what i need to know about what this is. so then i go online, and use search engines to find other examples of the same bone, and look for any points in the morphology that don't match, that don't work. if i see none, then i figure i'm on the right track. then i look for any references to dimensions. in this case, i found one picture with one dimension mentioned, length. i used that reference and scaled it by measuring other dimensions on the picture and converted them to inches and checked to see if the dimensions were within a reasonable range for the thing too. the identification process in this particular case was pretty easy because of the large size of the bone, which eliminated a huge number of creatures that it couldn't be, as well as the preserved articulating surface, which only resembles the articulating surface on like two ends of limb bones in the average mammal. one is the distal end of the radius/ulna, which doesn't work due to other morphological features that aren't here. the other is the distal end of the tibia. it isn't giant sloth, because their bones are distinctively weird. doubt that it's gomphothere, because don't know of any being found around where this was. possible mastodon, but it seems like those were considerably scarcer around texas than they were around florida. so odds are it's mammoth. so i'm figuring it's the distal end of a mammoth tibia. so now what do ya'll think? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MOROPUS Posted July 29, 2010 Share Posted July 29, 2010 Well, I guess that it was a leg bone...Soooooo...What are you going to send me? The whole bone? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tracer Posted July 29, 2010 Author Share Posted July 29, 2010 and hey, while you're at it, does this look like anything, and would you have recommended picking it up or moving on to look at something else? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tracer Posted July 29, 2010 Author Share Posted July 29, 2010 Well, I guess that it was a leg bone...Soooooo...What are you going to send me? The whole bone? noooo...because first of all, you're confusing me with a dino tooth away-giver by another name. secondly, it looks nothing at all like either end of a femur Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scylla Posted July 29, 2010 Share Posted July 29, 2010 Always pick it up, unless in an area with landmines or cows Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tracer Posted July 29, 2010 Author Share Posted July 29, 2010 Always pick it up, unless in an area with landmines or cows speaking of cows, looks like here might be some tracks of one... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnJ Posted July 29, 2010 Share Posted July 29, 2010 and hey, while you're at it, does this look like anything, and would you have recommended picking it up or moving on to look at something else? Partial mammoth teeth are always a cool find...way to go, guys. The human mind has the ability to believe anything is true. - JJ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rover Posted July 29, 2010 Share Posted July 29, 2010 I pick up any funny-looking rocks I see, so you know I would have picked up both of the things you've showed us pictures of. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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