Mystery atlas vertebra

[JenniferWMH]

A friend of mine in New Mexico has this vertebra in her studio, and asked if I could identify it.

 

My phone charger is 5.5 inches across, for scale. It certainly looks like an atlas vertebra, but I am stumped regarding the species. The foramenae and occipital facets look pretty diagnostic, but my comparative skeletal anatomy is really rusty and I need some help with this identification!

 

It doesn't look like horse, cow, moose, or elk, or mammoth, or mastodon, or ground sloth, for that matter. It is most like Bison bison, but not quite typical, I don't think, but I don't have access to a research collection to compare. It doesn't look quite like the Bison antiquus or latifrons specimens for which I could find pix - looks most like Bison priscus, but that seems unlikely.

 

I don't have the provenance on this. It looks like there was some carnivore scoring perhaps, some weathering, but I'm not seeing butcher marks in my pix. I took quick pix on the fly, not realizing it would stump me! I'd appreciate any thoughts you might have!

 

 

[Shellseeker]

Well,  not completely there,  but it is from a very large mammal.  You likely will have to consider whale

https://www.fossilsforsale.co.uk/store/p25652/Miocene_age_Whale_Atlas_Vertebra_North_Carolina_116.html

 

Looks similar to your lower right photo... 

[JenniferWMH]

Thanks for the suggestion - it's definitely not a marine mammal. Here is a pic of a pretty typical cetacean atlas vertebra - in this case, blue whale. Cetacean bones are typically more streamlined than the mystery vert which has a relatively much more detailed morphology. My understanding is that the vertebra was obtained locally, so probably not a marine mammal in New Mexico, unless it was Cretaceous and from a Western Interior Seaway beast. In that case, it would exhibit some pretty significant fossilization, I would think, and in any case, it bears no resemblance to an Elasmosaurus/Plesiosaur atlas vert. Thanks for the idea, though.

 

[Mahnmut]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

I can not give you a species ID, but I think you may be to quick in excluding groups.

It happened to me often enough, wrongly taking sexual dimorphism or ontogeny for diagnostic features on a species level. Finding online references with the necessary information is not so easy.

If the best matches you found until now are bovids, consider intraspecific variation, a capital bull will have had quite different structures in his neck from a yearling cow for example, those differences may well be greater than those between different species of Bison. @Harry Pristis would know more.

New Mexiko is not so likely a place to find whales as far as I can tell, but whale necks are highly diverse, some species even have fused neck vertebrae. So that it does not resemble a blue whale vert does not exclude whales, even if assumed location does.

Best regards,

J

[JenniferWMH]

Thanks, good points on the sexual dimorphism and ontogeny. True enough - am certainly not a big expert at all on marine mammals, just a little skeptical about finding one in a landlocked state, needless to say. The thing is, I spent some time looking at all the whale and plesiosaur atlas verts I could find, and none looked anything like this one, so...  I've contacted some of my old archaeologist friends at the University of Wyoming - if it's some kind of bison, they'll know. I miss having access to a good faunal archaeology collection!

[Plantguy]

Thats a very cool specimen with great pics! I was tooling around recently trying to locate bison petrosal info/images and had been thru a number of onsite sites/papers/images looking for images and docs that might help me and ran across various images of the various bison running around in the US.  Finding comparative images has been challenging and understand your dilemma.

 

One doc that might help if your search dead ends is this doc that shows a couple of the bison locations there in New Mexico as well as other fauna in the Pleistocene.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281207462 PLEISTOCENE VERTEBRATE FAUNAS IN NEW MEXICO FROM ALLUVIAL, FLUVIAL, AND LACUSTRINE DEPOSITS Article · January 2005 CITATIONS 8 READS 5,129 1 author: Spencer G. Lucas New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science

It lists B. antiquus..but others only to genus level

 

The Idaho project also has some fantastic 3d images of their B. latifrons examples that look similar...but I wont even try to suggest its that as this is way out of my league even if I had specific measurements..

 

 

 

Will wait from your experts... please keep us posted! Good luck.

 

Dr Lucas might also be worth a try if needed.

Regards, Chris 

Edited March 10 by Plantguy
added image and text

[JenniferWMH]

Hi Chris,

Thanks so much for taking the time to respond - these are both very helpful resources/suggestions. I didn't know about that Idaho Museum of Natural History site - that's really interesting, I'm looking forward to digging into it further. Their latifrons image sure does look like a close match, doesn't it? I'll be sure to post back when I hear back from an expert.

Thanks again, Jennifer