Eocene Turtle?

[AngieM357]

My boyfriend and I have been finding a lot of pet wood logs lately but, yesterday, as I was digging a large log out of the bank of the creek, I found this. It was buried behind the log, about 3 feet into the bank. The soil is gray sandy clay, and was found just above the water line in a slow-moving meandering stream that is probably 30 feet below the flood stage level. This particular location is in Brazos County, Texas. It should be the Eocene, Yegua Formation, Claiborne group, according to the USGS Web Soil Survey site.

 

The specimen itself is 4" long, and 1.5" at its widest point.

 

We tried to do some research prior to posting here, but there isn't very much information we could find on anything similar to this as it relates to Texas, and nothing that related to fossils at all.

 

Anybody have any ideas? I hope we were on the right track and were able to give y'all enough information to help us out. Thanks in advance for any help you may be able to give.

[jcbshark]

That looks like a piece of soft shell turtle to me

[Darktooth]

Yes Turtle. I found a similar piece in the cretaceous of Bid Brook New Jersey. And my son found modern piecesof turtle recently. I believe there is a name for that specific portion you found but unfortunately I forgot it.

[AngieM357]

Yes, that's the most we could surmise, was soft shell, probably from the Eocene. I'm pretty excited about this one, because I've only found small chunks before, and that was down on the Texas coast near the Sabine River and I haven't looked into that one at all because it wasn't just the most impressive specimen. I appreciate the comments so far. If anyone can think up a scientific name or has any more information, that would be really cool too. I've found stuff from the Green River formation way up in the Pac NW, but don't know if it's the same species.

[Al Dente]

I'm guessing it is from a modern spiny softshell turtle. You can do the burn test to find if it is modern or fossil.

[AngieM357]

Thank you, Al Dente. Being a relative novice at fossils beyond limestone and the ones at Stone City at the Brazos River, I was unaware that this kind of test even existed. I guess that's something we can try later today. 

[bjkibz]

8 hours ago, Darktooth said:

Yes Turtle. I found a similar piece in the cretaceous of Bid Brook New Jersey. And my son found modern piecesof turtle recently. I believe there is a name for that specific portion you found but unfortunately I forgot it.

Is costal the word you're looking for? Most of the time where I dig these are what we find when turtle bits show up.

[jpc]

It is definitely a costal plate from a soft-shelled turtle.  Hard to tell from here if it is fossil or modern, but if it is fossil it is very well preserved.  We get a lot of those here in our Wyoming Eocene rocks, but it is rare to find them in perfect condition.  So my guess is modern stained, but I admit, I know little about TX Eocene preservation.

 

BTW... the Green River Fm is here in Wyoming, 1000 miles form the Pac NW.   : )  

[doushantuo]

some of you ,etc

[doushantuo]

too large to post directly

[doushantuo]

one we all would love to find

[doushantuo]

ARES

Rieppel1999.pdf

[ynot]

34 minutes ago, jpc said:

BTW... the Green River Fm is here in Wyoming, 1000 miles form the Pac NW.  

To someone from Texas everything west of the plains is part of the pacific northwest.

[Uncle Siphuncle]

Apalone ferox.  TX Eocene turtle frags are often black and highly mineralized.

[AngieM357]

On 6/30/2017 at 11:59 PM, ynot said:

To someone from Texas everything west of the plains is part of the pacific northwest.

Yeah, kinda! That's what a public school education'll do for ya!

[AngieM357]

I'd like to thank everyone for so many informative replies. I haven't had time to look over the scientific papers yet, but I'll probably pull them up from my University's database for ease of reading. I love this forum because everyone is so helpful and friendly, and I really appreciate all y'all's help. There's really a great group here. Hopefully I'll learn enough where I can start helping out others as well, instead of always being the one to ask questions!

[AngieM357]

I know it's been forever since this thread had activity but I thought I'd update anyone who cared: the turtle piece was indeed modern and unremarkable in every way!