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please help identify - colorful bone with chop marks


wart

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8 hours ago, hemipristis said:

Color is usually the result of the geochemistry of preservation. It's usually more instructive about in what formation the bone was found (sometimes it can be quite characteristic, such as with megalodon teeth), than an aid in species identification. There are of course exceptions. 

that is some interesting information - while reading about the different minerals that can take the place of bone material during fossilization i came across some information out of australia mate - opalization sure would be fun to find.  id like to bury my dentures and see if they would go to diamonds....then i would have a grill. 

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Ok, back to topic: as already said it is not a mosa-vert.

Second, after you marked the "Chomp marks" it is clear, that these are no chomp marks but just erosion artifacts. 

To which animal this bone (no vert) belongs is still unclear - maybe the experts can tell more..

Nevertheless, an interesting find...

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It's a great find, but I think you're reading more into it than there actually is. It won't become something other than what it is just because you want it to be. Because of the amount of wear it may not be possible to ID it beyond "therapod bone", if it is from a therapod. I'm still waiting for someone to chime in on that possibility.

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Mark.

 

Fossil hunting is easy -- they don't run away when you shoot at them!

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yeah...i really want it to be a t-rex...but not for me - but my boy - he is nuts for dinosaurs and fossils right now - the exuberance of youth cant be matched.  i thank you all for taking a look and calming my imagination:) i need that all the time.  william

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This item appears to be the fossilized base of a tree fern or similar plant.  Compare the vascular pattern of the item's cross-section with web images of tree fern trunk cross-sections. 

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3 hours ago, sagacious said:

This item appears to be the fossilized base of a tree fern or similar plant.  Compare the vascular pattern of the item's cross-section with web images of tree fern trunk cross-sections. 

I can't find a match in that line. You would need to post a good one to convince me this isn't bone.

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On ‎4‎/‎23‎/‎2019 at 4:56 PM, wart said:

oh, ok.  i was thinking colors would narrow down the subject matter.  thank you for clearing this up.

To answer you question, even though it does not help ID, someone can still explain why they have different colors. 
In a nutshell, the ground is a chemical soup, and when iron comes into contact with bone, shell or maybe even agatized fossils, it will turn them red, if it is carbon, it will turn it black. 
Each color has a list of elements and chemicals that turn it that color, the beauty from your bone is from the rich concentration of chemicals that it was buried with. Sometimes, like a mammoth molar tooth I own, it can even be blue, green, purple and other exquisite colors. Red and black are quite common but it still makes for beautiful fantastic fossils. Hope that helps.

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23 hours ago, Rockwood said:

I can't find a match in that line. You would need to post a good one to convince me this isn't bone.

Which skeletal element do you propose the item represents, and what good evidence has you convinced it's bone?


The item quite unambiguously has the shape of a tree stump.  It retains a smooth apparently original surface, yet no cortical bone is evident in the excellent photos provided above, nor does the exterior texture resemble bone.  The item does unquestionably resemble a tree stump in both overall exterior shape and minute interior detail.  That, plus the complete lack of support for this item being any specific skeletal element should be adequate to raise a good measure of doubt that the item has vertebrate ancestry. 

 

Below is a web-found photo of a transverse section of a fossil tree fern trunk for comparison with a cropped photo from the OP.  While the question item has not been cut transversely and polished, there are essentially no disconfirming dissimilarities.  Both photos show vascular canals of varying diameter, and neither shows cortical bone.  Let the sum of the evidence guide your decision. 

 

 

 

 

IMG_0310.JPG.jpg

fossil tree fern.JPG

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16 minutes ago, sagacious said:

Which skeletal element do you propose the item represents, and what good evidence has you convinced it's bone?

It's a fragment of a large bone that is not complete enough for me to identify further.

I see a remnant of cortical bone, but nothing that looks at all like plant vascular material to me. The shapes and distribution are just wrong.

Got to go make some tree stumps now. Have a good day. :)

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Looking carefully at the intersection of the surface with the fracture I do see cortex. Also if the openings in the transverse fracture were cross sections of vascular channels from a plant, then they would be linear in the more longitudinally oriented fractured surfaces. I think this is bone.

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I am in agreement with the petrified fern/palm ID.

Along with what has been said supporting this, the glauconite (green) crust is a common feature for petrified wood (in some areas/formations) and I can not remember seeing glauconite in association with petrified bone.

If You look close at the wide end there are elongate structures consistent with fern or palm.

 

If @wart can post some good close up pictures of the grain on the wide area and narrow end it may help to clear up the issue.

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Darwin said: " Man sprang from monkeys."

Will Rogers said: " Some of them didn't spring far enough."

 

My Fossil collection - My Mineral collection

My favorite thread on TFF.

 

 

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1 hour ago, ynot said:

post some good close up pictures of the grain on the wide area and narrow end it may help to clear up the issue.

i will do just that - thank you for your input and i will follow your requests.

it has been raining plenty in north texas lately - so i had rain days to investigate stuff....but now we are in full landscape mode - pictures coming.

wart = william anthony reed (my family calls me tony)

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i will take new pictures - but wanted to remind the viewers of this side - the ugly side.  what does this area show?  because i WANT this to be a bone...and showing marrow and tendons...i, of course, felt like this was some sort of tendon structure - but as the plant theory comes to light.....maybe it is a clue in that direction.  i can say that the black mass gives way to a smooth rounded surface - like the inside of a straw - in white/grey/green color.

my new photos will be of it wet to exaggerate the colors...not to be misleading.

19 hours ago, Zenmaster6 said:

In a nutshell, the ground is a chemical soup, and when iron comes into contact with bone, shell or maybe even agatized fossils, it will turn them red, if it is carbon, it will turn it black. 
Each color has a list of elements and chemicals that turn it that color, the beauty from your bone is from the rich concentration of chemicals that it was buried with. Sometimes, like a mammoth molar tooth I own, it can even be blue, green, purple and other exquisite colors. Red and black are quite common

fabulous information - thank you

 

19 hours ago, Zenmaster6 said:

beautiful fantastic fossils

yes it is - thank you

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this pic shows what others do not.  lets say you have a straw and slice it down the middle lengthwise - thats what that vein feels like...it just happens to have a big wad of red/black crud in the middle of it - but above and below it it is relatively smooth....like a water-park slide.IMG_0319.JPG.24b024ec60bd048214c3bad4549208e2.JPG

my thoughts are this backside was actually MUCH bigger and broke away to reveal this.

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IMG_0317.JPG.86109fcfd95eba855d436aeeca05c0db.JPGIMG_0315.JPG.ca7b689199d14e8bd124bc19a7762b43.JPG

these 2 pictures are important for this reason - like i said before...it is heavy for its size - so when i go to grab it it has - quite conveniently - an identical area for proper thumb placement on either side to grab it and look at it.

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Dry, close, focused photos of various parts of the surface will be useful.  ;)

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The human mind has the ability to believe anything is true.  -  JJ

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lets say the green crust is considered the true outer layer of the plant/bone fossil....ok?

the green does appear in a few other areas - minutely - so the imaginative eye can "complete" the layer like dot-to-dot drawings to kind of SEE the original outline of the bone....but on the back side...all the green is gone - so it is nowhere near the original shape.  that was a lot of words that dont mean a thing.....IMG_0320.JPG.cf3c1f4018d0f349e5a4083e121c01bf.JPG

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6 minutes ago, JohnJ said:

Dry, close, focused photos of various parts of the surface will be useful.  ;)

i apologize...its so bright outside i cant actually see my image on the screen - im going to try it again.

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The green is likely just some algae that could be cleaned off.  You might try a mild bleach solution and a soft brush to see if easily comes off.

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The human mind has the ability to believe anything is true.  -  JJ

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after you stare at something for so long u think youve seen it all - but actually im seeing new stuff that i will point out...

i always ignored the fact that this "bone theory" didnt have some sort of core...like bones do.  so when the plant theory came up in this thread i took it to heart.  but now, i do see some sort of centralized dark area at the top of the bone - never saw that before.  but im also a plant person....and plants definitely have plenty of veins or straws making up their structure....so im meerely pointing out what other photos do not seem to show - the central dark area.

IMG_0312.JPG

IMG_0328.JPG

IMG_0330.JPG

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6 minutes ago, JohnJ said:

The green is likely just some algae that could be cleaned off.  You might try a mild bleach solution and a soft brush to see if easily comes off.

i dont want to prove my lack of genius...or throw chills down anyone's back...but i scrubbed this rock...its been in the freezer (dont ask)...and prior to this post (dont smack me) it spent a day or two in our chlorinated hot tub.  so any dreams of me finding anything living like algae or DNA on this rock and being able to replicate a dinosaur in our chicken coop are dashed.  but i did have a plan for it, well, my boy did.

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