Cave bone

[Napoleon North]

Hi 

 

Whats is animal bone it?

 

Location: Twardovski Cave , Kraków, Southern Poland

[Napoleon North]

Next photo .

[ynot]

Pictures of the ends of the bone would help.

Tony

[Napoleon North]

Photo.

[ynot]

Sorry, I meant straight on the end of the bone not another side view.

Tony

[Napoleon North]

Ok

[old bones]

I think Tony means that it would help to see photos of both of the 'ends' of the bone like this:

[Napoleon North]

ok

[Batfossil]

My guess is a metapodial (probably metatarsal) of an approximately hare-sized mammal.

[Napoleon North]

Thank you 

 

This is fossil or modern bone?

[Batfossil]

Hard to tell--in cave deposits, often Pleistocene bones look as unaltered as modern ones. If it's a wet cave with flowstone, etc., then quite likely modern, though no guarantee.

I forgot to mention that this is a subadult animal with the distal epiphysis missing; aside from the distal end not showing a nice joint, the porous look near an epiphysis is typical of young mammals.

[tmaier]

"This is fossil or modern bone? "

That brings up a funny story concerning the discovery of the first Neanderthal human bones...

When they were found in a cave in the mid 19th century, some of the bones were in pretty good condition. They were inspected by many professionals like medical doctors, paleontologists, archeologists, etc. A popular professional viewpoint at the time was that the bones were from a soldier of the Napoleonic Wars (early 19th century) who had become deformed from bad nutrion, and crawled into the cave and died.

The bones were 10's of thousands of years old, but their great age was not easily distinquishable from bones that were 50 years old! Of course nowadays we have many more diagnostic tests for that, but just by appearance, they are hard to tell.

And now you know the rest of the story... =-)