Identification Challenge For Bone-collectors

[Harry Pristis]

Here is a pic of some bones which I've collected in the SE of the USA. Similar bones can be found almost anywhere in the mainland USA, and analogs are to be found in Britain and Europe.

So, help out here with an ID. Get all four correct and win a golden kudo!

-------Harry Pristis

[fossil]

Hey Harry

Ok from left to right :  All are Tarsals from the rear limbs of the follwoing animals from left to right : Deer or juvenile bison, Bison, wolley rhino, mammaoth or mastadon.

Now was i correct ?

[Harry Pristis]

Nice try, Fossil!  The golden kudo is still up for grabs!  I will post correct ID's when there are a few more trys or when someone wins the kudo. 

------Harry Pristis 

[Gatorman]

ok i'll try deer , horse, bison, and rhino. even though i'm not sure about rhino's having a calcendeum like that

[worthy 55]

So Harry , the one on the far left is a Deer Tarsal, Bison , Rhino and Sloth ? ??? ??? That was one of the bones that I needed to ID. 8) 8)

[Harry Pristis]

Reasonable choices, Anson and Worthy. Neither of you has won the golden kudo, though.

Here's one possibility you can eliminate from consideration: NONE of the original four calcanea is from a rhino. Here's a pic of the two larger calcanea with a rhino calcaneum.

This specimen is from the bulky, semi-aquatic, Miocene Teleoceras proterum. This calcaneum is from a mature individual which had considerable exostosis on this bone (exostoses are the boney growths that produce arthritis). This example is from the Bone Valley in Southcentral Florida.

Remember the clues: These are bones from common, near-ubiquitous (at one time or another) species. None of the original four is older than Pleistocene.

------Harry Pristis

[Harry Pristis]

Okay, more info about calcanea. (In all vertebrates except humans, this articulation is called the astragalus-calcaneum. In humans, these bones are called "talus-calcaneus.")

In humans and other vertebrates, the calcaneum may be called the "heel bone" to which an "Achilles tendon" is attached. In some animals, particularly horses, the calcaneum is commonly call the "hock."

These two bones are located in the ankle, but they are not tarsals. Tarsals are the small bones which are packed tightly into the ankle, articulating between the astragalus-calcaneum and the metatarsals (think of the bones in the arch of your foot).

The astragalus and calcaneum bones are important to paleontologists because they are readily diagnostic to species. Furthermore, because they are dense and relatively poorly-vascularized, these bones tend to be preserved when other bones are destroyed by scavengers or by weathering.

Teeth are easy. Identifying all these small foot and ankle bones is challenging and often frustrating. When I get one of these bones reliably identified (usually by means of a museum collection), I label the specimen and keep it. Over the years, I have put together my own modest comparative collection. I recommend this to anyone who finds bones with any regularity.

But now, back to the IDENTIFICATION CHALLENGE. How about some more trys! I know DanWoehr finds bones in Texas -- how about it, Dan?

------Harry Pristis

[worthy 55]

Ok, Deer, Horse, Camel and Bison ??

[Harry Pristis]

Worthy, you've been doin' your homework!  You got three out of four correct!

Here's another clue:  The one you missed is not a fossil, but you may find such a bone, as I did, in the river. 

I'm not going to tease you -- I'll post the correct ID's this evening. 

Way to go, Worthy!!

------Harry Pristis

[Gatorman]

ok so one's from a cow, right? so i would say Deer, horse, cow, and bison.

[worthy 55]

Well thanks Harry!! I would have to say Cow then if it's not a fossil!

[Harry Pristis]

Worthy wins the golden kudo! Way to go!!

[worthy 55]

Alrighty then, thanks Harry!! That was fun study time. 8) 8)

[Uncle Siphuncle]

Hey Harry,

Do I recognize your name from the FL board? If so, I collected once with Debra earlier this year in South FL and had a blast. Got my first mastodon tooth while I was there. Still trying to land my first good TX mammoth tooth. I can't wait to see that big old brick lying there for me like the Holy Grail. I would swear that TX is a repository of toothless mammoths.

Looks like I picked up on this thread too late. I'm a mechanical engineer by vocation and have zero formal education in biology or anatomy. Actually I find lots of Pleistocene material and can usually pick off anatomical position by comparative anatomy, but I'm not very good at pinning them down to genus. I encourage similar lessons in comparative anatomy whenever you have the time. I'll print the images out before this site crashes again (hehehe).

Looks like one of the calcanea wasn't horse...would it be too much trouble to add this one to your image? I have hundreds of Pleistocene bones but using Kocsis, Hulbert, etc. I can only ID the most uniquely diagnostic pieces. There is no substitute for being able to study fully articulated skeletons and hold and flip around positively ID'd, intact bones in your hands, viewing them dynamically from various angles. In TX these opportunities for study aren't quite as readily available to the layman as in FL.

To take this discussion to a similar and equally valuable level, do you think you could post similar images of vertebrae? I can often tell cervical, thoracic, lumbar, and caudal verts apart (the first and last being easiest), but telling horse, cow, camel, bison, and tapir verts apart has proven problematic for me. Perhaps by presenting not just images, but noting diagnostic features unique to each genus would raise the bar for everyone who visits this site.

Likewise, distinguishing the various edentate verts has given me fits too. I can't tell sloth, glyptodont, and Holmesina verts apart other than by general divisions by size. We don't have as much good Pleistocene material as FL, and it seems as though we don't have many collectors as knowledgeable as youself here (although there are enough that I have to push deep into remote areas due to increasing competition). This is not a slam on TX collectors, but Cretaceous and Pennsylvanian exposures are much more prevalent and accessible and therefore get the most attention around here. I must admit that 50-75% of my time goes toward ammonites, echinoids, shark teeth, and crabs as well.

A lineup of astragalus bones would be great too. I particularly have trouble knowing if I'm looking at cow, bison or camel.

Fortunately some specimens present no questions. My 12.5 inch mammoth axis vert, 25 inch, full diameter mammoth tusk section, mammoth occipital plate with both condyles, complete Hemiauchenia cervical vert and femur, Megalonyx claw, tibia, and mandible, various Daspyus, Holmesina, and Glyptotherium scutes to name a few are some of the easier to ID things I've stumbled across in TX. Unfortunately though much of what we find here is poorly mineralized so unless you are more scholarly about this than I am, much of our material is indeterminate.

Thanks for the informative post and I hope I didn't scare you away from posting more. Now if it would just quit raining in TX I could get back to my first love, the Pleistocene.

[Harry Pristis]

Hi, Dan . . .

Nice mammoth axis! It's hard to find elephant vertebra with the neural process in place.

I'm glad you responded. I am working on some other "ID challenges" and will certain post some horse images.

Here's one for starters.

-----Harry Pristis

[Gatorman]

Harry, I love your extremely informative pictures, but is it possible for you to put in a measurement of some sort? 

[Uncle Siphuncle]

Here is another shot of the better side of my mammoth vert. Look for more posts from me on the Member Collections and Fossil ID pages.

[Gatorman]

That sure is one sweet vert.