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Gastornis eggshell ID


Czacha

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Hello! I bought Gastornis eggshell with certificate. I am novice so I would like to ask you if I can be certain that it is authentic Gastornis eggshell? I am asking because maybe everyone can create similar certificate and selling fake fossils. I do no know. Can you help me?

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First off - don't ever be fooled by a "Certificate of Authenticity."

Anyone with a printer can print out one of these.   :ank:

 

I enlarged and brightened the picture you posted.

 

    555l160022.jpg..jpg   s-l160022.jpg..jpg

 

 

My issue with this is that I don't see anything that looks like a shell texture on this piece. 

There are also no pictures of the item's thickness, and no indication of curvature, which I would expect from an eggshell. 

That to me is a red flag. 

 

Pretty dubious, in my opinion. :unsure: 

Regards,

    Tim    -  VETERAN SHALE SPLITTER

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"In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks."

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2 hours ago, Fossildude19 said:


First off - don't ever be fooled by a "Certificate of Authenticity."

Anyone with a printer can print out one of these.   :ank:

 

I enlarged and brightened the picture you posted.

 

My issue with this is that I don't see anything that looks like a shell texture on this piece. 

There are also no pictures of the item's thickness, and no indication of curvature, which I would expect from an eggshell. 

That to me is a red flag. 

 

Pretty dubious, in my opinion. :unsure: 

Regards,

I agree 100% with fossildude.   It doesn't look at all like bird eggshell.  Some dinosaur eggshellls have texture like this, but no bird does.  And there has not been any described Gatsornis eggshells as far as I know.  If anyone can prove me wrong, please do.    

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Thank you very much for your responses! I cannot take photos now, but I will send them in the nearest future. 

So, is it possible idenitifying eggshells base on their thickness and surface?

 

Kind regards,

Paweł

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I found similar eggshell for sale on another site.

So, I think that it could be Gastornis, but I am not sure.

 

Kind regards,

Paweł

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Please post pictures, rather than posting links to websites. :) 

The reliability of links is spotty at best, and if it is sold, or the link removed, it does nothing to add to the post. 


I think what everyone is saying is that it may not be possible to verify that they are even eggshells. :unsure:

And, unless they were found in association with Gastornis bones, ... there is really no way to tell - and that is if any have ever actually been found.

Regards,

    Tim    -  VETERAN SHALE SPLITTER

   MOTM.png.61350469b02f439fd4d5d77c2c69da85.png      PaleoPartner.png.30c01982e09b0cc0b7d9d6a7a21f56c6.png.a600039856933851eeea617ca3f2d15f.png     Postmaster1.jpg.900efa599049929531fa81981f028e24.jpg    VFOTM.png.f1b09c78bf88298b009b0da14ef44cf0.png  VFOTM  --- APRIL - 2015  

__________________________________________________
"In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks."

John Muir ~ ~ ~ ~   ><))))( *>  About Me      

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On 1/9/2017 at 10:03 AM, jpc said:

I agree 100% with fossildude.   It doesn't look at all like bird eggshell.  Some dinosaur eggshellls have texture like this, but no bird does.  And there has not been any described Gatsornis eggshells as far as I know.  If anyone can prove me wrong, please do.    

 

 

I agree too.  That specimen looks like it has too much texture to be eggshell even taking into account moderate weathering.  Eggshell wouldn't survive severe weathering.

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On 1/9/2017 at 10:59 AM, Czacha said:

Thank you very much for your responses! I cannot take photos now, but I will send them in the nearest future. 

So, is it possible idenitifying eggshells base on their thickness and surface?

 

Kind regards,

Paweł

 

 

Hello Pawel,

 

I would try contacting bird researchers to find out if it is even a piece of eggshell.  Dr. David Steadman at the University of Florida has given presentations to a fossil club.  You could ask him for help.  You could also look for the article below and contact the authors.

 

Jess

 

 

Hirsch, K.F., A.J. Kihm, and D.K. Zelenitsky. 1997.

New eggshell of ratite morphotype with predation marks from the Eocene of Colorado. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 17(2):360-369.

 

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I see you bought this, you have the specimen at hand.  here is y=what you can do.  Look at the edge of the thing.  Bird eggshell has distinctive, but almost microscopic crystals that run perpendicular to the surface of the egg.  If yours does not have these , then it is not eggshell.  Have a look at a piece of regular chicken egg on the edge, and you will see what you are looking for in this specimen.  Enjoy!

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Maybe this document explains some of the facts regarding to the Gastornis eggs, available for free here .

 

P.S. - The document is damaged, ...or maybe locked?, no problem. *

BTW, a very good research! (not mine)

" We are not separate and independent entities, but like links in a chain, and we could not by any means be what we are without those who went before us and showed us the way. "

Thomas Mann

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You are welcome, jpc!

 

First of all, what I can say with certainty is that the supposed eggshell is not from Gastornis giganteum (non existing name) - which should be Gastornis giganteus, because that is the North American species ( not present in Europe). Those described from France are, Gastornis parisiensis, Gastornis russelli, Gastornis edwardsi, Gastornis minor.

 

" Fragments of large avian eggs were first reported from the Palaeogene of Provence (south-eastern France) by Dughi and Sirugue (1959). They attracted some attention during the 1960s, with papers by several authors (Fabre-Taxy and Touraine, 1960; Touraine, 1960; Dughi and Sirugue, 1962, 1968), and have been found at a number of localities (Fig. 1). The parataxonomic oogenus Ornitholithus was erected for those eggs by Dughi and Sirugue (1962), who distinguished several oospecies on the basis ofmorphological and microstructural differences.

Actually, only two distinct types seem to be recognisable, thin-shelled eggs known as Ornitholithus biroi and thick-shelled ones known as O. arcuatus (Angst et al., 2014b).
As no skeletal remains have been found in the continental formations (mainly consisting of red marls and lacustrine limestones)which yield the eggshell fragments, it proved difficult to identify the birds that laid these large eggs, although both gastornithids (Dughi and Sirugue, 1959; Touraine, 1960; Dughi and Sirugue, 1962) and ratites (Martini, 1961; Kerourio and Aujard, 1987) were suggested. Angst et al. (2014b) have estimated the dimensions and volume of Ornitholithus arcuatus eggs from the curvature of eggshell fragments, showing that they had a volume of about 1300 cm3 and a mass of about 1.4 kg. On the basis of an equation linking egg mass to body mass in birds, it can be shown that those eggs were laid by very large birds weighing about 135 to 156 kg. Gastornis is the only bird from the Palaeogene of Europe that reached such a weight, and it is therefore extremely likely that Ornitholithus arcuatus eggs are Gastornis eggs. Similar size estimates for Ornitholithus biroi eggs have not been possible so far because of the lack of fragments large enough for curvature measurements. These eggs were probably smaller than Ornitholithus arcuatus, but not necessarily much so: recent work on moa eggs has revealed that somemoas laid large eggs with a surprisingly thin shell (Huynen et al., 2010). For the time being, the systematic position of the birds that laid Ornitholithus biroi eggs must remain uncertain, although they may also have been gastornithids. " - *

 

Reference:

*E. Buffetaut, D. Angst .Stratigraphic distribution of large flightless birds in the Palaeogene of Europe and its palaeobiological and palaeogeographical implications. Earth-Science Reviews 138 (2014) 394–408

Bourdon, E., Mourer-Chauviré, C., and Laurent, Y. 2016. Early Eocene birds from La Borie, southern France. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 61 (1): 175–190

Laurent, Y., Adnet, S., Bourdon, E., Corbalan, D., Danilo, L., Duffaud, S., Fleury, G., Garcia, G., Godinot, M., Le Roux, C., Maisonnave, C., Métais, G., Mourer-Chauviré, C., Presseq, B., Sigé, B., Solé, F., 2010. La Borie (Saint-Papoul, Aude): un gisement exceptionnel dans l'Eocène basal du Sud de la France. Bull. Soc. Hist. Nat. Toulouse 146, 89–103

D. Angst et al. Diet and climatic context of giant birds inferred from δ13Cc and δ18Oc values of Late Palaeocene and Early Eocene eggshells from southern France. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 435 (2015) 210–221

 

What was bothering me, was the variety of ornamentation types visible on the surface of each eggshell I've seen on the internet. Finally, I've found a very good document which reveals, that within the same oo-taxon the sufrace ornamentation could be different. And voila, the Sparnacian thick O. arcualus shells from St-Antonin might have TSV, P, S, H, AV and SV ornamentation.

 

"The thick eggshell fragments, attributed to O. arcuatus, correspond to very large eggs that have been laid by a giant bird, most likely Gastornis (Angst et al., 2015)."

Your specimen looks to have vermiculation on the surface.

 

Hope all these helps.

 

" We are not separate and independent entities, but like links in a chain, and we could not by any means be what we are without those who went before us and showed us the way. "

Thomas Mann

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Angst et al. 2015.jpg

" We are not separate and independent entities, but like links in a chain, and we could not by any means be what we are without those who went before us and showed us the way. "

Thomas Mann

My Library

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I'm not saying it is, or not, a Gastornis eggshell, but, with all the above presented pro- and contra- arguments (that's the way of science), I think, nobody can conclude with certainty that the 'eggshell' fragment in question is really an eggshell or something else, without more details (high-res pictures of the surface and cross section of the sample showing the crystallographic structure), also comparative museum specimens, even if all the available data might lead to a positive ID. Anyone of us could make a research regarding to the questionable specimen, as I did, proving nothing more than the possibility to be what is supposed to be, even a well-documented seller.

Try contacting a specialist in domain from NHNM, Paris, and tell us about the conclusions.
Thanks for the topic, Pawel!

" We are not separate and independent entities, but like links in a chain, and we could not by any means be what we are without those who went before us and showed us the way. "

Thomas Mann

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