Unidentified, possibly lower femur bone from a dinosaur?

[timlah79]

Scale: Approx 11-12cm square in all directions (LxWxH)

Location Found: Washington State (supposedly)

I believe this to be the lower part of a femur from some kind of dinosaur but for all I know it could be part of a completely different bone and/or from a completely different animal. See note below photos.

 

 

Note:    This and all posts I'll create are from a tub full of unknown, supposedly all dinosaur fossils collected around areas of Washington State which I recently acquired from a collector. However, I don't know for certain when or where they were collected. I am not an expert whatsoever. Hoping the community can help me figure out what they are.

[Fossildude19]

Welcome to the Forum.

 

Identifying these items may be difficult, without precise location information. 

 

Keep in mind, only one dinosaur fossil has ever been found in Washington State. 

Chances of dinosaur finds are incredibly slim.  Please keep this in mind.  

[timlah79]

25 minutes ago, Fossildude19 said:

Welcome to the Forum.

 

Identifying these items may be difficult, without precise location information. 

 

Keep in mind, only one dinosaur fossil has ever been found in Washington State. 

Chances of dinosaur finds are incredibly slim.  Please keep this in mind.  

 

Ugh, I didn't know about only one dino fossil ever found in WA state. Therefore I could be completely wrong as to where this and many of my other fossils in this tub I have actually came from. As I peruse through again now, I even see some labels of Oregon, New Mexico, and other places, labels just floating around. I even just found a label that says "Albertosaurus libratus - Edmonton Formation, Drumheller, Alberta, Canada" but that's just a label floating around as well. I have no clue which of these fossils that label alone would apply to. There are also labels of T-Rex, Compy, Triceratops, etc which are unmatched with anything. 😟

 

In summary, before I got the tub from the owner, it seems she never cared about keeping the fossils organized and/or ensuring the labels stayed together with which fossils are which. It seems she'd just carried the tub around from home to home for years. I can see she tried wrapping together in paper towels what I guess she thought were bones from the same animal. But she didn't even tape the wrappings so many have just fallen out of their paper towels. It's quite a mess. 

 

If location found is a primary requirement to identify a given fossil and I don't actually know, am I completely out of luck figuring out what animals these fossils are from? I appreciate any expertise/advice on that front.

[C2fossils]

It does look like bone, maybe some of them were purchased/found elsewhere.

[Fossildude19]

16 hours ago, timlah79 said:

If location found is a primary requirement to identify a given fossil and I don't actually know, am I completely out of luck figuring out what animals these fossils are from? I appreciate any expertise/advice on that front.

 

 

Not at all.  Feel free to post up your items, one or two at at time. Having no location info makes things much harder, for sure, but not necessarily impossible.

 

Location is rather important - it tells us where to start to investigate the stratigraphy of an area.  Stratigraphy tells us what to expect to find in that area.

For instance, dino fossils being RARER than RARE in Washington State.

 

That said, good pictures, will help us to figure out what we can, IF we can.

(Good pictures meaning - well lit, IN FOCUS, measuring tape/ruler for scale, and photos of all sides - top, bottom, front, back, right, left)

 

[timlah79]

54 minutes ago, Fossildude19 said:

 

 

Not at all.  Feel free to post up your items, one or two at at time. Having no location info makes things much harder, for sure, but not necessarily impossible.

 

Location is rather important - it tells us where to start to investigate the stratigraphy of an area.  Stratigraphy tells us what to expect to find in that area.

For instance, dino fossils being RARER than RARE in Washington State.

 

That said, good pictures, (well lit, IN FOCUS, measuring tape/ruler for scale, and photos of all sides - top, bottom, front, back, right, left) will help us to figure out what we can.

 

 

Here's my next post and probably last for the day. Again no clue where this fossil actually came from or if all bones pictured are part of the same. If I should take photos of more angles, please LMK.

 

[jpc]

this piece does look like a distal end of a femur, but of what....?  who knows.

[DokDeino]

So a few things:

 

First, I agree that this appears to be the distal end of a femur. 

 

Looking at a map of Washington State, and reading up a bit on its history, it seems much more likely that we're dealing with a large mammal than a dinosaur. 

 

https://www.gsoc.org/news/2020/3/13/washington-state-land-of-geologic-complexity

 

Do you have any idea what part of the state it may have been collected from?

 

Also, can you tell if it is fully permineralized? It looks like there are spots where the bone has flaked, and they're lighter than the surrounding bone. That could indicate that it's fairly recent. 

 

Regardless, neat fossil! But I'm not sure how diagnostic a distal femur can be. Maybe someone with experience in large mammals could help? 

[C2fossils]

I did a little research on mammal fossils of washington, the size of the socket narrows it down to either Giant sloth, Wooly Rhino, or any others I might have missed.

But because it is just a fragment you can't really pinpoint any single species.

[Jaybot]

26 minutes ago, C2fossils said:

I did a little research on mammal fossils of washington, the size of the socket narrows it down to either Giant sloth, Wooly Rhino, or any others I might have missed.

But because it is just a fragment you can't really pinpoint any single species.

No use in assuming it is from Washington, as he is unsure where the fossil came from.  It may be dinosaur if it came from somewhere like NM.

The number of possible candidates makes it too difficult to give a positive id.  Location would be necessary

 

[timlah79]

19 hours ago, DokDeino said:

Also, can you tell if it is fully permineralized? It looks like there are spots where the bone has flaked, and they're lighter than the surrounding bone. That could indicate that it's fairly recent.

Interesting but I'm unsure how to tell if its fully permineralized. What else could I inspect on it to figure that out? It does look to have been coated in some kind of lacquer or something.

 

3 hours ago, C2fossils said:

I did a little research on mammal fossils of washington, the size of the socket narrows it down to either Giant sloth, Wooly Rhino, or any others I might have missed.

But because it is just a fragment you can't really pinpoint any single species.

Any of those would be cool, I wish I knew for certain!

 

Lastly, yeah to others' points about location, I seriously have no idea where / what state it came from. My initial assumption that all of the fossils in this tub came from WA state is clearly wrong. Since as I mentioned above there are labels floating around in the tub that note different states, even Canada. It's unfortunate that the original owner didn't keep the labels matching in some way to each fossil. 🙁

Regardless, even if this and many of these remain a mystery, I really appreciate everyone taking the time to research and chime in!

[ClearLake]

37 minutes ago, timlah79 said:

Since as I mentioned above there are labels floating around in the tub that note different states, even Cana

Do the labels have ID's on them?  Or just locations?  If they have names, it may be possible  to start grouping items that could possibly fit that creature.  It might help you narrow it down.  Or not.  Just a thought.

[DokDeino]

"Interesting but I'm unsure how to tell if its fully permineralized. What else could I inspect on it to figure that out? It does look to have been coated in some kind of lacquer or something." 

 

If you have any fresh bones of similar size in your collection? If so, hold it in one hand, and the femur part in the other. See if you can tell if the femur is much denser. 

[timlah79]

On 12/25/2023 at 1:46 PM, DokDeino said:

"Interesting but I'm unsure how to tell if its fully permineralized. What else could I inspect on it to figure that out? It does look to have been coated in some kind of lacquer or something." 

 

If you have any fresh bones of similar size in your collection? If so, hold it in one hand, and the femur part in the other. See if you can tell if the femur is much denser. 

 

@DokDeino

The only other similar sized bone I have is this one (and I have no clue what it is either, I sure would like to know!). It looks like the end of a femur or some large bone but its difficult to tell. When doing that hand holding test, this one feels much denser + heavier. Also this one doesn't have that lacquer coating like the other. Unsure if this is helpful at all? 

 

 

[timlah79]

@DokDeino Any thoughts since my last reply above?

[jonnyquest]

How many labels and fossils do you have? Maybe we can connect the dots.

[FB003]

On 12/19/2023 at 3:17 PM, timlah79 said:

 

Ugh, I didn't know about only one dino fossil ever found in WA state. Therefore I could be completely wrong as to where this and many of my other fossils in this tub I have actually came from. As I peruse through again now, I even see some labels of Oregon, New Mexico, and other places, labels just floating around. I even just found a label that says "Albertosaurus libratus - Edmonton Formation, Drumheller, Alberta, Canada" but that's just a label floating around as well. I have no clue which of these fossils that label alone would apply to. There are also labels of T-Rex, Compy, Triceratops, etc which are unmatched with anything. 😟

 

In summary, before I got the tub from the owner, it seems she never cared about keeping the fossils organized and/or ensuring the labels stayed together with which fossils are which. It seems she'd just carried the tub around from home to home for years. I can see she tried wrapping together in paper towels what I guess she thought were bones from the same animal. But she didn't even tape the wrappings so many have just fallen out of their paper towels. It's quite a mess. 

 

If location found is a primary requirement to identify a given fossil and I don't actually know, am I completely out of luck figuring out what animals these fossils are from? I appreciate any expertise/advice on that front.

I would still post these.  You may have some degree of luck on teeth.  Some are quite obvious such as hadrosaurid or ceratopsian teeth. Some may need more pics than others but I think you'll find people here make pretty good detectives.

[DokDeino]

20 hours ago, timlah79 said:

@DokDeino Any thoughts since my last reply above?

Sorry, been busy since the holidays 

 

Honestly, I'm not sure if we can get much beyond 'distal end of femur.' Maybe you could narrow it down to the Class via histology, but you'd need to see someone who knows a lot about bones on the micro-scale. There might be someone like that at a nearby museum? Could be worth calling around. 

 

IF it is from your state, then it's most likely from a large mammal from the ice age. If not, it could be anything. 

 

Sorry mate, wish I could be more helpful. Would be interested in seeing what else you got in that box, tho