Are These Whale?

[alanm]

Hello,

Found these at Glenafric, in North Canterbury, New Zealand. These large rocks had only recently dislodged in high seas. They are entirely made up of shell fragments and I assume these 'bones' were deposited on top. 

Thanks, Allan

[Rockwood]

They appear to be ribs, and they seem to be in a clast which is distinct from the shelly matrix. Both factors seriously hamper a further identification.

[Tidgy's Dad]

Hello, and a very warm welcome to TFF.

Nice find, very interesting, but agree with Rockwood in that I'm not sure it will be possible to establish what these ribs are from. 

[Bobby Rico]

Welcome to TFF  from Leicestershire uk

I also agree they look like ribs but at this time indiscernible . I also think if you added the location in the Tags future searches may find your post and be able to shine a light on your find too. For me the location is always the key to an ID. 

 

 

[GeschWhat]

Take care with the homogeneous tan matrix behind the ribs. Since it is so different from the surrounding matrix and is located in the vicinity of the ribs, it could be stomach or intestinal contents.

 

 @Carl

 

Welcome to the forum!

[Carl]

37 minutes ago, GeschWhat said:

Take care with the homogeneous tan matrix behind the ribs. Since it is so different from the surrounding matrix and is located in the vicinity of the ribs, it could be stomach or intestinal contents.

 

 @Carl

 

Welcome to the forum!

Yep. Gotta be careful when matrix changes dramatically like that!

[Rockwood]

Huh ! That one could have the guts to do that again ?

[GeschWhat]

Since I don't know how knowledgeable you are when it comes to fossils, I just want to emphasize the significance of stomach contents, if that is what you have there. It is a very rare find. 

[Rockwood]

2 hours ago, GeschWhat said:

stomach contents

Gastrolite 

[ynot]

1 hour ago, Rockwood said:

Gastrolite 

 

Gastroliths are gizzard stones. Never heard of "gastrolite"

[Kane]

1 minute ago, ynot said:

 

Gastroliths are gizzard stones. Never heard of "gastrolite"

 

[ynot]

7 minutes ago, Kane said:

 

Uh yeah.....

[Rockwood]

"If it were a gastrolite (the stomach equivalent of a cololite), I would expect to see inclusions. It could be a cololite though."

From previous @GeschWhat thread. 

[GeschWhat]

2 hours ago, Rockwood said:

"If it were a gastrolite (the stomach equivalent of a cololite), I would expect to see inclusions. It could be a cololite though."

From previous @GeschWhat thread. 

It depends on what they eat. If they eat a lot of soft bodied critters you might not see inclusions, or the inclusions might be very small. Some modern whales like to dine on krill, or squid. Here is the image @Rockwood referred to. Technically, this could be stomach or intestinal contents. 

[alanm]

Hello,

Thanks for the replies. I've uploaded another photo for a bit more context.

In answer to Lori, I'm not very knowledgeable. But the 'stomach' material seemed to be just a clay type of soil that had been smoothed by high tides. I should have mentioned that there were 6 bones visible, 2 round in section and the others had a broad oval section.

Thanks, Allan

[Rockwood]

57 minutes ago, alanm said:

But the 'stomach' material seemed to be just a clay type of soil that had been smoothed by high tides.

There may still be a chance of it being a gastrolite. It's a long shot with a limb in the way, but if something nearby the isolated blob were to be highly unlikely to survive deposition in this setting, and a common component of  recognizable stomach content it may be an indication.

[Rockwood]

19 minutes ago, Rockwood said:

There may still be a chance of it being a gastrolite. It's a long shot with a limb in the way, but if something nearby the isolated blob were to be highly unlikely to survive deposition in this setting, and a common component of  recognizable stomach content it may be an indication.

Squid beaks with a fragile part still present just came to mind as a conceivable. 

[GeschWhat]

10 hours ago, Rockwood said:

Squid beaks with a fragile part still present just came to mind as a conceivable. 

Agreed. An interesting note on this. I can't remember the source off hand, but remember reading somewhere that in modern whales, undigested squid beaks have been found but hooks have not. In coprolites, squid hooks have been found, but beaks have not. I thought I had found beaks in coprolite a while back, but a CT scan revealed they were likely hollow vertebrae from juvenile fish. 

 

11 hours ago, alanm said:

In answer to Lori, I'm not very knowledgeable. But the 'stomach' material seemed to be just a clay type of soil that had been smoothed by high tides. I should have mentioned that there were 6 bones visible, 2 round in section and the others had a broad oval section.

Thanks, Allan

Does the material dissolve or get soft when wet? Calcium phosphate, the mineral present in carnivore bromalites, can be very soft and may look like clay, but will not dissolve in water. That said, sometimes softer sediment will drift into the body cavity, but there still may be bones of prey animals in with that sediment.

[abyssunder]

Just in parenthesis, have you heard of Ambergris ?

 

modern ambergris, left, and ambergris fossil from Allerona, western Umbria, Italy

 

" Probable fossil ambergris occurs within early Pleistocene shallow-marine clay deposits in western Umbria (central Italy). More than 25 large, permineralized structures are scattered over an area of ~1200 m2. These are commonly convex to elongated, helicoidal to concentric, calcium carbonate–rich structures, 30–60 cm high and 60–120 cm wide. Permineralized squid beaks and altered organic matter occur inside these structures. Preliminary chemical data reveal the presence of organic molecules compatible with the degradation of cellular lipids, whose cholic acids indicate the presence of mammalian gastric or intestinal activity; eight free amino acids were also found. The results allow the identifi cation of these structures as intestinal products of sperm whales living ~1.75 m.y. ago. The described fossil structures represent the only known example of Pleistocene sperm whale coprolites. "

 

reference:

P. Monaco et al. 2014. Ambergris cololites of Pleistocene sperm whales from central Italy and description of the new ichnogenus and ichnospecies Ambergrisichnus alleronae. Palaeontologia Electronica 17(2): 1-20

A. Baldanza et al. 2013. Enigmatic, biogenically induced structures in Pleistocene marine deposits: a first record of fossil ambergris. Geology 41(10):1075-1078

 

AmbergrisNZ

[Rockwood]

14 minutes ago, abyssunder said:

Just in parenthesis, have you heard of Ambergris ?

Most valuable aspirate one is likely to run into if I recall correctly.

It most likely was the root of the my thinking.

[GeschWhat]

35 minutes ago, abyssunder said:

Just in parenthesis, have you heard of Ambergris ?

 

modern ambergris, left, and ambergris fossil from Allerona, western Umbria, Italy

 

reference:

P. Monaco et al. 2014. Ambergris cololites of Pleistocene sperm whales from central Italy and description of the new ichnogenus and ichnospecies Ambergrisichnus alleronae. Palaeontologia Electronica 17(2): 1-20

A. Baldanza et al. 2013. Enigmatic, biogenically induced structures in Pleistocene marine deposits: a first record of fossil ambergris. Geology 41:1075-1078

I completely forgot about this! Good catch!

[doushantuo]

for the sake of completeness:

(probably because of bacterial physiology there's an upper size limit on these structures(they ARE smaller than the structures figured in  this thread ,but maybe they might clump/aggregate..

[Rockwood]

They look a bit like some of the concretions found in the Potomac river is how I happened to come across the idea of it's existence. 

[Plantguy]

 

On 3/30/2018 at 10:08 PM, alanm said:

Hello,

Thanks for the replies. I've uploaded another photo for a bit more context.

In answer to Lori, I'm not very knowledgeable. But the 'stomach' material seemed to be just a clay type of soil that had been smoothed by high tides. I should have mentioned that there were 6 bones visible, 2 round in section and the others had a broad oval section.

Thanks, Allan

 

I see the coprolite/digestive discussions and probably missed something somewhere in an earlier thread--I know I see New Zealand stuff periodically and just cant remember. So, I'll throw it out there anyway...I'm curious about the geology of what is going on in these rocks. Do we know what formation and age these are from?

 

This last image seems to show large conglomerate pieces--with a number of very fine grained irregular shaped clasts (one of which contains the bones) in a more course sandstone like matrix--I suppose a graywacke. In the upper left of the photo the clasts appear as a mix of both the brown clasts as well as gray clasts. Is the brown clast with the laminations/bedding in the very top left just a separate rock or is it part of or imbedded in the conglomerate/sandstone?   Could the bones in question be within some type of a ripup clast of previous fine grained sediment that has been incorporated when the sandstone/conglomerate was being deposited. I used to find belemnites in finer grained clasts in conglomerates in California---similar plate boundary with lots of tectonic deformation...We had debris flows sloughing off the coastline running down underwater channels and creating some interesting rocks with all sorts of inclusions from other more quiet water finer grained sediments.  

 

Ok to tell me I'm all wet....been there before. 

Thanks for the photos...got me thinking and puzzling...very neat! 

 

Regards, Chris 

 

 

[Rockwood]

Good description of what I had considered the most likely scenario.