Small dinosaur bone?

[ThePrehistoricMaster]

Hi everyone, hope you can help with this ID problem.

I bought a pile of fossils from the Kem Kem beds in Morocco. It included a lot of random stuff, but one particular fossil caught my eye. There was a little bone locked in a "ball" of rock. I couldn't really make out what it was, so I removed the rock and out came this (look at pictures).

To me it looks like a vertebra... Could it be from a dinosaur?

[Troodon]

It looks like a caudal (tail) vertebra and cannot rule out from a dinosaur. Can you take a picture of its top, where the processes would have been. Thanks

[ThePrehistoricMaster]

Here you go:

[Troodon]

Not the picture I was looking for the flat side that is facing the table.

[ThePrehistoricMaster]

Oh, sorry. Here you go again

[Troodon]

Thanks centrum are very difficult to ID since the processes are usually the diagnostic element. I think you are looking at either crock or theropod.

[Ridgehiker]

If I found it in our Alberta Cretaceous deposits, I'd think it was a Dino: theropod caudal...a few positions from the tip.

However, this is just an educated guess..can't tell the texture, etc. I don't know the Dino's of that formation

Vertebrae can be hard to identify unless distinctive. If we were out for a day and found 20 vertebrae...10 would be identified wth certainty to theropod, ceratopsian etc., another 8 to 'probably'...always a couple that are ???

One trap we can fall into is not having a correctly identified specimen to compare it to. Also, nothing to identify specimens beyond family to to a genus level unless found in situ with associated specimens.

[ThePrehistoricMaster]

Ok, thanks for the help and info guys. I'm hoping it's a dino. That would be cool.

Edited October 14, 2015 by ThePrehistoricMaster