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I recently got this unusual, at least to me, marine mammal tooth. I am pretty sure it’s Pinniped but beyond that I’m not sure. Marine mammal fossils are not something I have a great deal of knowledge about. I suspect it could possibly belong to an Odobenid as opposed to Allodesmus. I have never had any teeth from the STH Walruses in my collection so I’m going solely off some research I did. It’s a really cool tooth whatever critter it belonged to. Any thoughts ??

Hello dear fellow forum members, I have a question that will hopefully evoke speculative answers. As I have built models of many aquatic animals from anomalocarids to whales, I thought another creature that would fit into my collection is Kolponomos, sometimes called the oyster bear. I intend to use a cave bear skeleton toy as a rough basis, adapting it to look like Kolponomos. But alas, I just found out that nobody knows what they looked like behind the neck. I always read that there where "some postcranial bones" known and found out just recently that this really means only some cervical vertebrae, one metapodial and one phalangeal bone. The only source I could find that mentioned the specific bones at all was the one in the picture below. So here are my two questions: Is there more recent material? And if not so, what can the known bits tell us? They are described as somewhat intermediate between Ursids and Pinnipeds, so would it be plausible to assume a slightly reduced hindlimb? I am prepared to make use of artistic license, but I hope to be as acurate as possible with the little data I have. Any input is welcome, educated guesses, creative ideas, but most of all feedback from anyone who has some knowledge about this strange beast. Thanks in advance, J

Hey everyone, I found this vertebra back in April on the Zandmotor (Netherlands, most likely late Pleistocene in age). I believe it's a thoracic vertebra from some pinniped, but I'm not sure. I've been comparing it to several vertebrae online, especially using the Osteology section in the Idaho Virtual Museum website (which is quite good, perhaps a useful resource for some of you!). Unfortunately, I am not finding any satisfying matches. The different seal thoracic vertebrae I am seeing look most similar, but they all appear to have a less wide corpus than my specimen. I'm really hoping to be able to put a species name on this specimen; I know it's not complete, but I feel like enough of it is there to be able to make a confident species guess. But I will settle for a less specific ID if necessary. So, what do you guys think? I'm looking forward to hearing your opinions! Best, Max EDIT: just realized there are no size references on my photos, sorry! The vertebra is 8cm wide at its widest point and 5cm long. The corpus is 5.5cm wide and 3cm high.

Anyone know what these various teeth are from? I think the big one is Allodesmus but the rest I'm not sure about. Collected over the last few years at Ernst Quarries in Bakersfield.