Peculiar break or bite marks?

[KimTexan]

@5 Humper Thank you for the kind words. I didn’t realize there were people who followed stuff on TFF who weren’t members. I can see that though. I think I originally signed up as a member under another name a few years before I signed up under KimTexan, but I forgot my user name and password and created new ones.

 

When you were young. You make yourself sound old, but then reference Ellen  being long before you so you can’t be that old. You’re probably younger than me.

 

Cass county is is a great place for artifacts, but not so much on the fossil side. I kind of know a guy who lives there who is a big artifact surface hunter. He has invited me out there to go hunting with him a few times, but we never worked out a date. Arrowhead Fred, Jason Smith is his name. His family owns a ranch out in East Texas, maybe Cass Co. I don’t really know him. He followed my fossil posts on the DPS FB group and messaged with me a bit.

 

I think my best story in terms of adventure was “The North Sulfur River at Night” that was an adventure I won’t soon forget. That was an adventure I had when I was a bit more inexperienced with the wilds of the NSR. I’m still inexperienced with it. It’s a dynamic place filled with mystery, wonder and potential for danger and adventure. I love it.

 

In regards to species of bison I’m leaning towards Bison bison. Once I get the skull stabilized and cleaned up I’ll be able to make a better assessment of it. It will take me a while to get there though. Since I have most of the other bones mostly cleaned up I’m going to work on consolidating/stabilizing them with Butvar 76. I thought I’d go back and finish cleaning the litter nitty gritty details first.  Last night I did that to the femur with bit marks. Afterwards I was sitting on the couch next to it and I heard a really loud crack sound come from it. I guess the water caused it to swell and resulted in a crack somewhere that I can’t see. So I think I’ll stabilize all the bones first. Then I’ll glue back together whatever needs gluing. 

Then I will start on some of the easier messy broken bones with fragments. It will give me an opportunity to learn about various aspects of use of B76 application and concentration. It will also help me increase my skills of prepping before I get to the very challenging prep of the skull. 

 

Then there is also the best hunting weather of the year from now till maybe June. After that it will get to hot for too much time out hunting. The NSR from June till September is a formidable place. I came very close to having a heat stroke and doing myself in last June in the NSR. I didn’t write a story on that one. I was there maybe an hour before I realized I couldn’t do it. That was an adventure of just trying to stay alive and get back to my car. I didn’t have cell service so I couldn’t even call anyone to let them know I was in trouble. Even if I could have they would have had a nearly impossible time finding me had I collapsed. I had plenty of fluid. It was just the heat and no shade in the river. I’m not sure why I couldn’t handle that day. Other days I have. I did make it out and crazy me, I recouped and went right back in at another location. Found crazy cool stuff too, which I’ve posted, but didn’t do a trip report.

[5 Humper]

Wow, ma'am, you are a very skilled and prolific writer! You need to write a book.  I read that North Sulfur River at Night story and was, to say the least, riveted.  You should print out all your lengthier story-like posts here and bind them for your kids (I believe you have mentioned you're a mom at some point on here), or adapt them into a fossiling adventure book.  

 

I am much younger than Ellen.  I hope.  Not that she's old.   I'm a little more than halfway between 40 and 50 .  (Sometimes I act 12, though.)  Incidentally, I'm a pretty big fan of both Don and Ellen.

 

As for Bison ID, I think you're spot on.  Probably earliest Bison bison.  I was thinking that myself based apparent size and spread of its horn cores, best as could be told from pix.  

 

I've had a few fossil adventures, myself, down here along the gator-laden waterways of Florida....and the Southeast.  Hoping to get some of that material up here sometime.  

 

I do visit my family in Cass Co, annually, and have been thinking of exploring the lower Sulfur River area, but time always evaporates.  Plus, I'm spoiled here in Florida, I guess.  Not to mention, landowner issues in TX are different than FL.  People tend to be crankier in TX about whether you're even near their land along waterways.  FL is blessed with muchos rios, and there are many access points.  

 

 

[Harry Pristis]

 

Firstly, the perforations are bite marks, not osteichnid borings.  The evidence is the tiny bits of crushed and displaced cortex within the margins of the holes.  Secondly, the perforations are the result of spikey teeth compressing the bone surface, not canid molars which would leave crushed bone over a broader area of cortex.  I see bite marks on the sharp margins of the condyles -- drag marks and sheared bone.  All of these bites could have been inflicted by coyotes.  If the  area of the bites is limited, it may be that only that part was exposed after burial by a flash flood.

 

 

[ynot]

I have heard that when a predator or scavenger start to eat a carcase they will go for the anal orifice first because this is the easiest point of entry. They will then consume the internal organs (destroying most of the ribs in the process.). The leg joints would be saved for last.

Kim said most of the ribs are missing.

This would indicate it was eaten to a point and then partially buried, leaving the leg(S) exposed for scavengers.

 

At least that is how I interpret the available information.

[abyssunder]

17 hours ago, KimTexan said:

@Harry Pristis and @abyssunder what about the larger teeth impressions. There are 2 very distinct teeth impressions in the bone where a piece is missing . They are hard to capture by picture well though. The impressions are 1 cm wide at the edge of the bone where the teeth bit into the bone and proceed into the bone where they narrow to a point. They make a triangle shape in the bone. The longest impressions is about 2 cm.

The shot isn’t straight because I couldn’t get the lighting to capture the triangle shapes when straight.

From this shot the one on the lower right is most obvious. It angles outward to the right. There is another tooth mark on the bottom 2cm to the left also angling outward to the left. Then on top is another triangle shape pointing down.

 

Kim, do you think these two samples have similar features?

 

 

[Harry Pristis]

1 hour ago, ynot said:

I have heard that when a predator or scavenger start to eat a carcase they will go for the anal orifice first because this is the easiest point of entry. They will then consume the internal organs (destroying most of the ribs in the process.). The leg joints would be saved for last.

Kim said most of the ribs are missing.

This would indicate it was eaten to a point and then partially buried, leaving the leg(S) exposed for scavengers.

 

At least that is how I interpret the available information.

 

If the carcass was attacked in any conventional manner, there would be bite marks at random places on the skeleton, and the bones would not be articulated to the degree Kim reports.

 

 

[ynot]

1 hour ago, Harry Pristis said:

there would be bite marks at random places on the skeleton,

I agree, and was going to ask Kim if she had seen any other suspect bite marks.

 

So, @KimTexan, are there any other bones that may have bite marks on them?

[KimTexan]

20 hours ago, ynot said:

 

So, @KimTexan, are there any other bones that may have bite marks on them?

Not so far. I haven’t been over the bones with a fine tooth comb yet, but sure haven’t seen anything obvious. I did look over the other femur, but found nothing.

 

I have quite a few rib fragments. Some are long, I have only one whole rib, but certainly not equivalent to the number of vertebra found.

[KimTexan]

Oh there is this bone with a triangle shape chipped out of it, but I thought it was from a naturally weak spot on the bone. I don’t know what bone it is though.

[Rowboater]

Hi Kim, you said earlier that some of the bones were moved slightly away from where the "main" site was and attributed that to flooding.  I used to deer hunt a lot when younger (walking with dogs) and it is rare to find an old carcass tightly together in one place.  With so much meat on a bison one would expect a lot of scavenging and, even possibly bites on a weakened slowly dying trapped-in-the-mud animal.  Here the scavengers today would be dogs, coyotes, maybe foxes and buzzards (and more and more commonly, surprisingly, eagles).  I agree with ynot that scavenging and those bites are almost unavoidable unless it settled La Brea tarpit-like beneath the mud.

I had posted a piece of whale bone a while back which had a smooth hemispherical hole in the bone which was unlike any that I had seen before (it had even mineralized a different color, possibly coincidentally).  Pathologist friends said "bone is hard" to interpret even in fresh animals, and they refused to speculate on fossil bone.  However, there was a scientific paper from China which suggested that a nearly identical smooth hemispherical hole in a dinosaur bone (femur?) was from an abscess and the animal had survived the damage (at least for a while).

I agree that it would be great to have pathologists or paleontologists who could distinguish predation, survived predation attempts, and scavenging marks.  Anthropologists often seem to be able to get a lot more information out of meager bone evidence, but there's likely speculation involved, which leads to 'discussions' later. 

[abyssunder]

Maybe the trace (circled with black in your specimen) has some similarities with the ones below (circled in black), considering its position and its shape.
(I converted to grayscale your image for a better relevance. Hope you don't mind.)

What do you think, Kim?

 

 

 

[KimTexan]

1 hour ago, abyssunder said:

Maybe the trace (circled with black in your specimen) has some similarities with the ones below (circled in black), considering its position and its shape.
(I converted to grayscale your image for a better relevance. Hope you don't mind.)

What do you think, Kim?

 

 

 

Those all look deeper. Also, none of them have the other example have the cluster of puncture marks associated with them. My piece has three clusters of punctures. all have 4 points.

The gouge mark circled is the 4th point associated with a cluster of three points on the other side of the condyle not seen.

[KimTexan]

On 1/26/2019 at 4:35 PM, abyssunder said:

 

Kim, do you think these two samples have similar features?

 

 

They do have similarities and are close to the same size. If those are teeth marks they are slightly different.

 

I think I may see a cluster of 4 puncture marks on the top right that look similar.

 

What is it from?

[abyssunder]

All the samples I've posted have invertebrate traces on bison bones, not bite marks.

 

C - shows channel on proximal end of bison calcaneus (xx116-39).

 

" Channels
Channels are much like notches in that they have U-shaped cross section (Fig. 34.5A–C). Channels occur on the surfaces of the bones and can extend for some distance, unlike notches that occur on bone edges.
Channels cut into the surfaces of bones much more deeply than scallops. Channels vary considerably in size from 2.9 to 23.1mm in width (Table 34.8) and can be straight or curved. Channels can lead to tunnels or pits. The walls appear rough and show minute, nondirectional striations, and do not contain swirlpatterns.
The great variation in channel width suggests that more than a single arthropod—adult or larva—created these marks. It is interesting to note that some channels are oriented in a straight line. Although we assume that these channels were made by arthropods, the identity of the tracemaker is unknown. "

 

F,G,H - (F) Notch on the shaft of a bison calcaneus (16585-39). (G) Notch on the edge of the proximal end of a bison scapula (16762-39). An elliptical tunnel also occurs on the articular surface of this bone. (H) Notch on the lateral side of a bison metatarsal shaft (16340-39).

 

" Notches
Notches, unlike tunnels or pits, are cup-shaped depressions (Fig. 34.2F–H). They measure from 4.3 to 14.8mm in width (Table 34.6) and occur on the ends of bones as well as on the shafts. The width of notches is well within the size limits of both small and large pits as well as tunnels. Most notches, like pits, have rough walls, but several have very smooth walls with no surface irregularities.
The orientation of a notch, like a tunnel, records the path of movement of the tracemaker. The tracemaker created a notch on the edge of a bone by gnawing between soft tissues encasing the bones and the bones themselves. If the tracemaker had gnawed directly into the bone, this would have created a pit or tunnel.
Like pits and tunnels, notches represent feeding or excavating, rather than reproductive, behavior. The depth of the notch records how closely the organism passed to the bone edge as it gnawed through surrounding tissues, rather than the width of the actual organism. Apparently, as invertebrates moved through a carcass, bones sometimes simply impeded the route; undeterred larvae simply gnawed the bone surface as well as tissues surrounding the bone.
Because notches and tunnels probably represent the same type of behavior, width sizes can be similar (Table 34.6). Caution is necessary; however, the width of a notch depends on how closely gnawing occurred to the actual bone surface. Arthropods that passed close to bones would gnaw deeper into bone surfaces leaving notches with larger widths than arthropods that did not pass as closely to the bone surface. Often, the length of the notch could not be easily measured (Table 34.6), and this measurement provides little information on the actual activity. "

 

For all the other type of invertebrate traces (small pits, large pitts, tunnels, scallops and scratches, thin, curvilinear, branching grooves, broad, smooth, short grooves - see West and Hasiotis, 2007.

 

Also, the authors pay attention to the human modification and weathering on bones.

 

All the above excerpts are from West, D. L. and Hasiotis, S. T. 2007. Trace fossils in an archaeological context: Examples from Bison skeletons, Texas, USA. In: Miller, W. III (ed.). Trace Fossils: Concepts, problems, prospects. Elsevier, Amsterdam, 545–561.

 

 

 

[5 Humper]

There are some fantastic points here.  All seem plausible and valid.  As Harry said, this may be unanswerable.  At least in regards to whatever made the symmetric, round, clustered holes.  The missing condyle sure looks like carnivore.  But I think I, personally, still lean toward carnivore causing the clustered "punctures."  What we might not have considered is multiple punctures from the canine tips of a wolf.  That is assuredly the right size and symmetry to have caused such puncture.  Although those teeth are not used to literally crunch and consume bone, they are powerful enough to puncture bone in the takedown.  Multiple bite attempts at same point of attck during a struggle may have caused our clustered punctures     ?

[5 Humper]

And if we agree that the condyle was taken off by carnivore, then applying Occam's Razor, it seems likely that the nearby cluster punctures also were delivered by the same carnivore.  

[5 Humper]

On 1/27/2019 at 4:07 PM, KimTexan said:

Oh there is this bone with a triangle shape chipped out of it, but I thought it was from a naturally weak spot on the bone. I don’t know what bone it is though.

This is a bison sternum bone

[KimTexan]

On 1/28/2019 at 5:46 PM, 5 Humper said:

This is a bison sternum bone

The first pic has a triangle shaped chunk out of it. About the same size as the tooth impression, but I am of the opinion that it just chipped or broke in a weak spot based on the opposite side, which is symmetrical and has a little divot or something there.