digit Posted May 22, 2015 Share Posted May 22, 2015 If you haven't already read through the posting of our recent trip to the Peace River and the nice variety of mammal fossils it has turned up I refer you to here: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/54684-more-may-mammoth-mania/?p=584344 It has rightly been suggested that I repost some images to this subforum to see if I can get some feedback on some of the more unusual and presently unidentified bones that I found on my last trip out to the river. First up are a pair of vertebrae that might be to broken up and river worn to be able to stick an identification to but I submit them here just in case. My "go to" assessment of vertebrae of this approximate size is to call them small whale (dolphin) which is an identification totally unencumbered by the thought process. As Al Dente suggested these likely bare no dolphin affinities and I'm wondering if they seem familiar to any of the vertebral experts out there. I can take additional photos from other angles and grab some measurements if that helps narrow things down. Here is the initial picture for now: -Ken Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digit Posted May 22, 2015 Author Share Posted May 22, 2015 Then I've got this little mystery bone that appears to be complete and I naively assume is likely some sort of phalanx. The bone is smaller than the other (approximately 2.5 x 2.5 x 4.0 cm in overall dimensions). It is overall a rather symmetrical boxy shape but with some interestingly asymmetrical features that I'm hoping are diagnostic to its identification. It seems about the right size for a deer joint but I am just guessing at this point. Photos from various angles: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digit Posted May 22, 2015 Author Share Posted May 22, 2015 The last mystery bone is significantly larger (5.5 x 5.5 x 3.5 overall). On the side with the curved surface that looks like is part of a rotating articulated joint there is a single pointed projection. It appears that there likely was a matching projection next to it which has broken off. The opposite side to that has some interesting smooth flat pads that I hope increase its distinctiveness and make it possible to place this bone. Photos from various angles: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichW9090 Posted May 23, 2015 Share Posted May 23, 2015 #3 is an artiodactyl fused cuboid and navicular. Bison or Bos, I'd think. 1 The plural of "anecdote" is not "evidence". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digit Posted May 23, 2015 Author Share Posted May 23, 2015 Nice. I can see the resemblance when doing image searches for cuboid and navicular. There was a cow skull buried in the area I was digging (nearby) last week as I was pulling up teeth and broken bits of jawbone. I could tell they were Bos as the teeth were whitish to tan and not fossilized. I'll give this bone the flame test and verify that it is indeed fossilized. If so, I'll assume Bison. Thanks. -Ken Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harry Pristis Posted May 23, 2015 Share Posted May 23, 2015 I think No. 2 bone is a camel scaphoid. For comparison: 1 http://pristis.wix.com/the-demijohn-page What seest thou else In the dark backward and abysm of time? ---Shakespeare, The Tempest Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Diceros Posted May 23, 2015 Share Posted May 23, 2015 1. Vert. on left looks like a lg. ungulate caudal. Vert. on rt. is a sacral of Alligator (note the articulations at the ends of the transverse processes for the ilia of the hips). 2. Rt. scaphoid of a horse. Nice as your foot bone coll. is Harry, you need a horse scaphoid (the vent. articular surface for the trapezoid is more rounded in camels) in dor., ant. (dor. at left, med. at top), and lat. views. 3. Left cubonavicular of Bison/Bos, in med., ant., and vent. views. Note in the med. view at left that the ectomesocuneiform has partially fused to the underside of the navic. pt. of the cubonav. Basically, they're trying to fuse up all the dist. tarsals (not the artragalus or calcaneum) into a block, so they don't move relative to each other (it makes walking easier). In the nice photo of the dor. view of the deer & bison rt. cubonaviculars, the narrow art. facet at far rt. is for the dist. calcaneum. The head of the atragalus fits in the curved articular surface in the top of the cubonavicular, and the fused metatarsals 3 & 4 (the cannon bone of the foot) articulates with the underside. Note in the box of foot bones, that the camel cuboid and navicular are separate bones - the cubonavicular is just in higher artiodactyls. Carnivores fuse the scaphoid and lunar together, making a distinctive scapholunar. Boy, I used to really love working with carpals and tarsals! They're a lot of fun! 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digit Posted May 23, 2015 Author Share Posted May 23, 2015 I think No. 2 bone is a camel scaphoid. For comparison: Ah yes, I do see the similarity in shape between the camel scapoid in the lower left of your photo and picture #3 of my specimen which seems to be in much the same orientation. I'll follow that line of research and try to confirm with additional photos in my books or online. Thanks. -Ken Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digit Posted May 23, 2015 Author Share Posted May 23, 2015 Thanks Diceros. Your post is packed with a lot of information that I'm going to have to unpack carefully and digest slowly for maximum information retention. Learning can be so much fun. I wouldn't have woken up this morning with the goal of learning all about scaphoids or cubonaviculars but once you have found a specimen it then gives you the reason to delve into that bit of anatomy and learn where your find fits into the overall skeletal system. It would be so nice to live closer to Gainesville and be able to visit articulated reconstructions to really send home how an isolated bone fits into the whole. Thanks to all for the great information. This forum once again proves its value in the depth of knowledge contained within its membership. I've also learned the important lesson that is much better to post mystery bits for possible identification in the proper subforum rather than assume the experts holding the key information would be trolling through the Fossil Hunting Trips subforum. While ID help is sometimes available in the trip report thread it is much more efficient to properly use the forum's dedicated subforums to gain the knowledge you seek. Cheers. -Ken Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harry Pristis Posted May 23, 2015 Share Posted May 23, 2015 (edited) . . . 2. Rt. scaphoid of a horse. Nice as your foot bone coll. is Harry, you need a horse scaphoid (the vent. articular surface for the trapezoid is more rounded in camels) in dor., ant. (dor. at left, med. at top), and lat. views. . . . Well, now. I guess I'll have to get my comparative collection sorted. Maybe you can confirm the identification for these three scaphoids for me. That will help Ken with his mystery bone. Edit: The more I study Ken's ankle bone images, the more I tend to agree that this is a HORSE scaphoid, not a camel bone. Ken's images best match the equus scaphoids in my comparison collection. Edited May 23, 2015 by Harry Pristis 2 http://pristis.wix.com/the-demijohn-page What seest thou else In the dark backward and abysm of time? ---Shakespeare, The Tempest Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Diceros Posted May 24, 2015 Share Posted May 24, 2015 digit - Wanna learn some nasty carpal anatomy? It's the mnemonic device for learning the order of the carpals (there are others, but this is the only one I learned: Spanish ladies cannot piss, therefore they must urinate - (starts top row, medial) scaphoid, lunar, cuneiform, pisiform (top row, lateral), (second row, medial) trapezium, trapezoid, magnum, unciform (second row lateral). I hope anatomy students today have come up with a better one! There are other ones for the nerves of the base of the braincase ("on old Olympus.."), and other even more obscure points of anatomy. To make the carpals even harder to study, some human carpals have different names from those of all other mammals (the pisiform is the "hamate", the astragalus is the "talus", etc.). I always wanted to ID an entire lt. Tertiary mammal fauna from only the carpals and tarsals, but I never got the chance. I thought the faunas shown in Fossil Hunting Trips were all more-or-less identified material. The Fossil ID forum has more challenge. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harry Pristis Posted May 24, 2015 Share Posted May 24, 2015 digit - Wanna learn some nasty carpal anatomy? It's the mnemonic device for learning the order of the carpals (there are others, but this is the only one I learned: Spanish ladies cannot piss, therefore they must urinate - (starts top row, medial) scaphoid, lunar, cuneiform, pisiform (top row, lateral), (second row, medial) trapezium, trapezoid, magnum, unciform (second row lateral). I hope anatomy students today have come up with a better one! There are other ones for the nerves of the base of the braincase ("on old Olympus.."), and other even more obscure points of anatomy. To make the carpals even harder to study, some human carpals have different names from those of all other mammals (the pisiform is the "hamate", the astragalus is the "talus", etc.). I always wanted to ID an entire lt. Tertiary mammal fauna from only the carpals and tarsals, but I never got the chance. I thought the faunas shown in Fossil Hunting Trips were all more-or-less identified material. The Fossil ID forum has more challenge. You don't explain that your mnemonic device is for remembering the HUMAN carpals. You did point out that some human carpals have different names, "trapezoid" being one you didn't mention. Beyond that, "trapezium," the "therefore" in your device, is an exclusively human (hominid?) bone. We rarely deal with human bones on TFF. I think it is a disservice to many on the Forum to conflate human bone names with the names of animal bones. I wish there were uniformity, but there isn't. So, if you wish to inject some information about human anatomy, be so kind as to identify the objects you are mentioning. http://pristis.wix.com/the-demijohn-page What seest thou else In the dark backward and abysm of time? ---Shakespeare, The Tempest Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Diceros Posted May 24, 2015 Share Posted May 24, 2015 Harry Pristis - "Spanish ladies" refers to non-human carpals. I mentioned the two human foot bone names, hamate and talus, only to point out that human anatomists (I do not count myself among them) have their own terminology. When I'd run across human bones, in sorting animal remains from archaeological deposits, they always reminded me of bear foot bones. Give me ungulate bones, any day. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichW9090 Posted May 25, 2015 Share Posted May 25, 2015 The resemblance between bear feet and human feet and hands is remarkable, which gave rise to one of the classic papers in both forensic anthropology and in zooarchaeology - one that everyone knows, but almost no one has a copy of: Stewart, T.D. 1959. Bear paw remains closely resemble human bones. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 28(11):18-22. This was updated and nicely illustrated by Sims in 2007:http://www.fws.gov/lab/idnotes/IDG11_BearHumanFeet.pdf 2 The plural of "anecdote" is not "evidence". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Plantguy Posted May 25, 2015 Share Posted May 25, 2015 Hey Ken, you and John have been tearing it up lately. Lots of really neat stuff. May the success continue. Regards, Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harry Pristis Posted May 25, 2015 Share Posted May 25, 2015 Apparently, there is a trapezium in the generalized quadruped morphology. This pdf [PDF]Carpals and tarsals of mule deer, black bear and human: an ... cedar.wwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1018&context=wwuet by TS Smart - 2009 - Cited by 1 - Related articlesRight human lunate view from the capitate and right bear trapezium anterior view... 36. Figure 19. Right deer trapezoid-magnum ventral and dorsal surfaces. Has some useful deer, bear, and human illustrations. The author is careful to designate no homologous bones, only describing "morphological similarities" between, for example, bear triquetral (cuneiform) and human scaphoid. Similarities, not homologies, are noted between bear trapezium and human lunate and between bear scapholunar and human navicular. This is morphology for the archeologist. The paper does illustrate how complicated the naming of carpals is . . . loaded with duplications. It also hints at how rare is the generalized quadruped, and how variable is the make-up of the carpus. The point of my post was, and still is: This is an area of animal morphology about which generalized statements (like Diceros' mnemonic ditty) will certainly lead to confusion and mistakes. 2 http://pristis.wix.com/the-demijohn-page What seest thou else In the dark backward and abysm of time? ---Shakespeare, The Tempest Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Diceros Posted May 25, 2015 Share Posted May 25, 2015 Harry's handy carpal table and drawings have been written in human anatomy terms, so, as a public service, I'm going to translate them into the terms used for all other mammals (those will be in parens): Scaphoid (same in both) Lunate (Lunar) Triquetral (Cuneiform) [the primitive Centrale has been lost in most mammals] Hamate (Pisiform) Trapezium (same) Trapezoid (same) Capitate (Magnum) Unciform [why they call this a "Hamate" in the table, I don't know] Carnivores like bears fuse the scaphoid and lunar into a scapholunar, and higher artiodactyls like deer fuse the trapezoid and magnum in a trapezoidomagnum and the cuboid and navicular (two hind-foot tarsals) into a cubonavicular. Lots of mammals tend to lose the carpals and tarsals of the medial and lateral sides, as horses have lost digits 1, 2, 4, & 5, in favor of their single-toed foot with hoof (digit 3) (cows have the axis between the 3rd & 4th digit, and they've lost digits 1, 2, & 5). In both cases, the resulting "cannon bones" are stronger, and have fewer twisting injuries. It's your evolution "dollars at work"! I once wrote a paper on a late (latest Miocene) hippo-like rhino (Teleoceras), which was just starting to fuse the magnum and unciform - unfortunately, it started too late, and became extinct in America (in the e. Pliocene) before it had a chance to accomplish its goal. It was sad, really. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichW9090 Posted May 25, 2015 Share Posted May 25, 2015 (edited) Zooarchaeologists are to blame for most of the confusion on carpal/tarsal nomenclature. They tended to get interested in animal bones after taking some physical anthropology, and thus leaning all the human anatomical terms for the bones, and then applying them to non-human mammals. A lot of the identification manuals were written by people of such a background. Then it gets muddied even further by the veterinarians, who have their won terms for the carpals and tarsals, which match neither the zoologists and paleontologists nor the zooarchaeologists and human anatomists. Edited May 25, 2015 by RichW9090 1 The plural of "anecdote" is not "evidence". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Diceros Posted May 25, 2015 Share Posted May 25, 2015 The snarge dentists do the same with human teeth - turning premolars into "bicuspids". Everybody thinks they're better than standard mammalian anatomy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichW9090 Posted May 25, 2015 Share Posted May 25, 2015 The terminology was already confused by 1870, so Flower added these tables to his Osteology of the Mammalia: Hand or Manus: radiale = Scaphoid = Naviculare Intermedium = Lunar = Semilunare, Lunatum Ulnare = Cuneiform = Triquetrum, Pyramidale Centrale = Central = Intermedium (of Cuvier) Carpale 1 = Trapezium = Multangulum majus Carpale 2 = Trapezoid = Multangulum minus Carpale 3 = Magnum = Capitatum Carpale 4+5 = Unciform = Hamatum, Uncinatum Foot or Pes Tibiale + Intermedium = Astragalus = Talus Fibulare = Calcaneum = Os calcis Centrale = Navicular = Scaphoideum Tarsale 1 = Internal Cuneiform = Entocuneiforme Tarsale 2 = Middle Cuneiform = Mesocuneiforme Tarsale 3 = External Cuneiform = Ectocuneiforme Tarsale 4 + 5 = Cuboid 1 The plural of "anecdote" is not "evidence". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Diceros Posted May 26, 2015 Share Posted May 26, 2015 In Flower's 1870 table, it looks like the left column is Old School, the middle is animal anatomy (incl. "Spanish ladies"), and the rt. is human anatomy. I think I now understand the problem with the hamate - in the Old School, it was treated as a pair with the unciform, so now human anatomists conflate the unciform (uncinatum) and the hamate (hamatum - pisiform in all other mammals). Enough Rich, cool as foot bones are, we're putting them to sleep. Earl, carpal & tarsal afficionado 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichW9090 Posted May 27, 2015 Share Posted May 27, 2015 And I was just getting started, we still have the German, Latin and veterinary systems.......... The plural of "anecdote" is not "evidence". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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