New Jersey Cretaceous skute/bone

[frankh8147]

Hello,

 

I recently found what looks like a piece of bone or skute and was wondering if anyone could identify it by the pattern. Unlike the crocodile and turtle skute I've found here, this appears to have little 'star' shapes rather then divots. Any help is greatly appreciated!  

 

-Frank

 

 

[Bone guy]

I'm certainly no genus so take my suggestion with a grain of salt. But somewhere I heard that star shaped bumps are characteristic of shark cartilage?????

[The Jersey Devil]

Agreed. However, I would call it Chondrichthyan cartilage since it could have also belonged to a ray or skate. The cartilage usually has a hexagonal pattern. It can sometimes vary based on what it came from.

[frankh8147]

Thanks for the replies! I have seen that pattern in cartilage but this one looked to me like bone structure (especially the back) and I haven't been able to find any examples of cartilage that looked like that. Here is another shot of the back side. 

 

The pattern does look good for shark cartilage though and this would be, by far, the thickest piece of it i've found so it absolutely could be that - I was just stuck on it's structure.

 

[caldigger]

1 hour ago, frankh8147 said:

Thanks for the replies! I have seen that pattern in cartilage but this one looked to me like bone structure (especially the back) and I haven't been able to find any examples of cartilage that looked like that. Here is another shot of the back side. 

 

Maybe it was an anorexic ray.

Because it's nothin' but skin and bones.

[Plax]

What does Ischyrhiza rostrum look like?

[Carl]

21 minutes ago, Plax said:

What does Ischyrhiza rostrum look like?

This could very easily be a piece of Ischyrhiza rostraum. But there just sin't enough to say which chondrichthyan sent this message...

[Carl]

Just a clarification of terms: I would definitely avoid the word scute for bony dermal/armor elements, especially for turtles. Osteoderm is best for crocs, dinosaurs, placodonts, armadillos, etc., but this is arguable for the turtle. For turtles it's best to just go with 'turtle shell fragment.' Scute should be reserved for the keratinous coverings of osteoderms, which are rarely, if ever, preserved as fossils.

[hemipristis]

The one side looks cartilage-like, but the other side doesn't. I have a bunch from Lee Creek and in those, the hexagonal, star-like pattern is penetrative, and occurs on all sides. But I'm not an expert by any means.  Could still be

[D.N.FossilmanLithuania]

I think it is probably from the big frog, the skull section.

I have long bones of them in flint erratics of Lithuania (The Baltic Region), these amphibians live in all the world except Antarctica from the Triassic age.

Best Regards  

Domas

[frankh8147]

Thanks for the replies, and Carl, thank you for the term correction!

 

For comparing structure; here are a few pictures of it compared to a few Cretaceous Ray verts. and Ischyrhiza rostrums from the area with different types of wear.

 

[frankh8147]

47 minutes ago, D.N.FossilmanLithuania said:

I think it is probably from the big frog, the skull section.

I have long bones of them in flint erratics of Lithuania (The Baltic Region), these amphibians live in all the world except Antarctica from the Triassic age.

Best Regards  

Domas

Domas,

I'm not familiar with any frogs being found here. I looked online at some amphibian skulls and see the resemblance but the 'break and bust' nature of the NJ Cretaceous would make it difficult for any material to survive.

[Carl]

2 hours ago, Carl said:

This could very easily be a piece of Ischyrhiza rostrum. But there just sin't enough to say which chondrichthyan sent this message...

And I forgot to add that their rostra have parts that are tessellated and "wood-like" just like the specimen in question.

[frankh8147]

 

4 hours ago, Carl said:

And I forgot to add that their rostra have parts that are tessellated and "wood-like" just like the specimen in question.

 

Interesting! Do you think chondrichthyan is about as far as we can go with an ID? And if so, would that be cartilage making that pattern?

[Carl]

17 hours ago, frankh8147 said:

 

 

Interesting! Do you think chondrichthyan is about as far as we can go with an ID? And if so, would that be cartilage making that pattern?

Yes and yes. I might lean towards Ischyrhiza but I don't think it's currently provable.

[frankh8147]

26 minutes ago, Carl said:

Yes and yes. I might lean towards Ischyrhiza but I don't think it's currently provable.

Pretty cool, thanks Carl!

[Carl]

And referring to a conversation I just had about this with non-remanie:

 

My only hesitation is that I don't know what the cartilage from anything else in the brooks would look like. This morphology has been shown for Ischyrhiza but it hasn't been shown to NOT exist in other chondricthyans from out there as far as I know. That's all. That said, I would definitely label them as "probable rostral cartilage."

[frankh8147]

That's pretty cool! Thank you again Carl and thanks @non-remanié. I'll hold onto this one - it's always nice to have something from the brooks that I didn't know existed there prior to finding.

[Al Dente]

Frank- Is there any way for you to take a clear close up photo of the bumpy surface? Looks very bony to me. 

[Al Dente]

On 4/2/2018 at 9:13 AM, Plax said:

What does Ischyrhiza rostrum look like?

Forum member dirtdauber found one a while back. Here's one of his photos.

[Plax]

I missed this one! unbelievable

[frankh8147]

4 hours ago, Al Dente said:

Forum member dirtdauber found one a while back. Here's one of his photos.

 

@Al Dente Wow!!! Now that's an amazing fossil!

My photography skills are not that great unfortunately. Here is the only other 'decent' picture I was able to get of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[JohnJ]

George's incredible find