Vertebra help

[coled18]

Hi all,

found this vertebra in the Kansas River today on a sandbar. I've found everything from Pleistocene bone fragments to half-mineralized cow bone here before, but nothing of this size. It could have belonged to a cow, but I think it's a bison considering the amount of mineralization and general shape. I could use your help identifying this one! PS it is about 6 inches high, the spinous process is about 3 inches high and has been chipped across the top. It has also not been cleaned too well, hence some of the brown dirt color. 

Other side view 

[izak_]

@Harry Pristis

I don't know what it is, but its in very nice condition.

[trisk]

Cool, a fellow MHK resident! This bone looks like a lumbar vert given the wide transverse processes, which might help with ID if photographed from above. The tall spinous process is suggestive of a bison but I'm no expert.

 

[RyanDye]

Looks like a Bison vertebrae to me.

 

Definitely, not a thoracic vertebra it's Spinous process is much shorter than thoracic vertebrae. From the locality and other stuff I dug up it's most likely from a Bison antiequus lumbar vertebrae L2.

 

Here is a Bison antiquus occidentalis lumbar L5 similarly 5.8 inches high and a little over a foot long, of course, this is expected to differ since it's more complete.

 

Lumbar L2 (second from last excluding the tail section) 

 

 

 

More reference: (I found this image before it was posted recently)

 

 

[RyanDye]

9 minutes ago, trisk said:

Cool, a fellow MHK resident! This bone looks like a lumbar vert given the wide transverse processes, which might help with ID if photographed from above. The tall spinous process is suggestive of a bison but I'm no expert.

 

Quite humorous, right before I was going to post my conjecture on the ID you used the exact same reference I had uploaded about a minute before what a coincidence. 

[trisk]

25 minutes ago, Ryan Dye said:

Quite humorous, right before I was going to post my conjecture on the ID you used the exact same reference I had put it about a minute before what a coincidence. 

The Bison Osteology site it comes from is pretty great! The original is unfortunately offline, but archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20150409044110/http://lamar.colostate.edu:80/~lctodd/bison.htm

From the description there:

Lumbars

The typical bison has 5 lumbar vertebrae. There are several characteristics that allow you to recognize lumbars:

1. the have the broad, flat transverse processes (lumbars look like Star Fighter planes with the transverse processes being the wings)

2. the articular surfaces of the centra are the flattest of the bison's skeleton (they have no costal pits).

3. the articular processes are noticeably 'hook-like' and provide a very solid connection between the lumbars allowing very little movement.

 

My reservations about ID would be that the articular processes don't obviously show the curved "hook", but they're also pretty worn so it's difficult to tell. Also, the aspect of the cranial and caudal surfaces is narrower at the ventral end than the cow or bison vert references.

 

I think an equine vertebra (below) is also a possibility, though this specimen would be quite large for one.

 

[RyanDye]

1 minute ago, trisk said:

The Bison Osteology site it comes from is pretty great! The original is unfortunately offline, but archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20150409044110/http://lamar.colostate.edu:80/~lctodd/bison.htm

From the description there:

Lumbars

The typical bison has 5 lumbar vertebrae. There are several characteristics that allow you to recognize lumbars:

1. the have the broad, flat transverse processes (lumbars look like Star Fighter planes with the transverse processes being the wings)

2. the articular surfaces of the centra are the flattest of the bison's skeleton (they have no costal pits).

3. the articular processes are noticeably 'hook-like' and provide a very solid connection between the lumbars allowing very little movement.

 

My reservations about ID would be that the articular processes don't obviously show the curved "hook", but they're also pretty worn so it's difficult to tell. Also, the aspect of the cranial and caudal surfaces is narrower at the ventral end than the cow or bison vert references.

 

I think an equine vertebra (below) is also a possibility, though this specimen would be quite large for one.

 

An equine vertebra is definitely a possibility although as you said size is quite large for that. 5.8 inches is quite close to the size of this specimen as well, as evidence that B. antiquus fossils have been found numerously I didn't visit the site the image we both posted so thank you for introducing me to such a resource very helpful! 

[coled18]

Thanks everyone! I never thought of it being equine, but I'll look into that more.