Novice seeking ID help

[PODIGGER]

Photos of two more Peace River, FL finds.  Smaller one a tooth, claw, antler tip?  Larger piece Dugong, tooth, other?  any input would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks.

[digit]

First off-congratulations on your photography--photos outside in the bright light help light the subject and help cameras focus and including a scale (especially with items lacking features) helps us to get an idea of the size of the piece without the luxury of being able to have it in hand.

 

Sorry to say that I see no enamel on either of these which would indicate teeth. Claws and antler tips are a bit more distinctively shaped and I'm not seeing any features on the first one that would indicate either of those. Both pieces look like the random bone bits that frequently turn up while sifting for fossils in the Peace River. While some of the unidentifiable pieces might be from exotic species that we'd love to have an identifiable piece from (giant ground sloth, dire wolf, llama, mastodon), many fragments will simply elude identification if there is not some sort of characteristic feature present which will allow a more certain ID to be made. The second item pictured above looks large enough yet still solid to the core that it quite probably is a smaller dugong rib bone.

 

After some time spent collecting random bone pieces you will eventually tire of these (and the common dugong rib bones). They are cool pieces of the past--a bone that has mineralized and may be millions of years old--but without a clue to their identity a large pile of mystery bone soon loses its luster. If we had dinosaur bones in Florida, you could easily gift random pieces of "chunk-o-saurus" to friends and family (and people you meet on the street ) because of the charisma that dinosaurs have in the public's imagination. Most folks, who would love to hold a piece of dinosaur bone in their hands, would not rise to the same level of excitement when given an "unknown mammal bone from the Plio/Pleistocene".

 

I tend to only keep bones that have some sort of (hopefully) distinctive shape to them. One bone last week that I kept just because it had an odd attachment surface in the middle of the fragment didn't look like much but was enough for someone knowledgeable to ID as part of a scapula from a juvenile tortoise.

 

A belated welcome to the forum from another Florida member. Lots of good information here. Hope you manage to get out hunting more before the summer rains come and end the season.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[PODIGGER]

Ken, Thank you for the help. As a novice I greatly appreciate the help and guidance of you and your colleagues here on the forum.  I must give all photo credit to my wife.  She is a wildlife photographer and was willing to help after she saw my feeble initial attempts at taking the photos myself. 

 

Jim

[digit]

Good to have a photographer in the family.

 

We were all novices at one time--most are still novices outside of their area of expertise. We all have to start somewhere and sharing that knowledge (and having it archived here) is a great use of all that accumulated knowledge.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken