Bone?

[mainland fossils]

[Rockwood]

It does look like the texture of bone. Where was it found?

[jpc]

I don't think it is bone.  It has randomly dispersed holes on what would be the broken edge of the bone as well as what would be the surface of the one.  Too random for bone.  

[Fin Lover]

I'm not seeing bone either 

[Fossildude19]

Maybe some sort of sponge?

 

 

Cropped and brightened:

 

 

 

 

[C2fossils]

My bet is on sponge or geologic.

[Rockwood]

1 hour ago, Fossildude19 said:

Maybe some sort of sponge?

It does beg for some kind of explanation. 

[Plantguy]

Got my attention from the get go on the title...

I thought bone was a distinct possibility as well...Now I want to go look at some bones in the garage! 

Looking forward to more of youalls analysis....good for my brain! thanks!

 

Regards, Chris 

 

 

[Rockwood]

Maybe a big knee?  tff 

[jpc]

too big for even a mammoth knee cap.  

 

 

[Jaybot]

Rough location, at least state/county/region would aid in id very much @mainland fossils.  Thank you!

 

I'm not sure on this one.  I'll reserve my dignity and wait for the location before making a guess

[Fossildude19]

10 minutes ago, Jaybot said:

Rough location, at least state/county/region would aid in id very much @mainland fossils.  Thank you!

 

I'm not sure on this one.  I'll reserve my dignity and wait for the location before making a guess

 

 

OP is in New Zealand, and has previous posts of items from Otago.

[val horn]

I agree the texture does not look like bone.  ?On a wild guess possibly palm wood?

[mainland fossils]

Remembering it still has sandstone on it so alot of the pores will still be closed. I'm finding everything is covered in sandstone so no one has any idea what's actually here because it's all hidden so well and I'm such a green horn with no help other than you guys.i took some stuff to the museum and they laughed because it was still so covered in sandstone. An explanation is close tho... there is no denying some of the stuff starting to come out in the different types of sandstone but as I have learnt, don't show people untill you have something decent or people just think your mad

[jpc]

Question for you... If everything is covered in sandstone and you have no idea what is inside, what makes you suspect there is anything inside?  Generally things inside a chunk of rock are found by seeing a piece sticking out of the rock, or by being in an area where you have established that there are indeed fossils inside the rocks (this works with concretions especially).   You might pick up a thousand pieces of sandstone before finding out that there is nothing in any of them.  

 

Fossil bones are generally not at all common in NZ.  A few folks on here have found some really cool stuff there.  They have spent a lot of time learning which rocks form where contain fossils.  

 

Edited November 7 by jpc

[Plantguy]

Hey JP, I didnt make it to the garage to look for bone, still need to do so to better educate me on large bone characteristics! A dim light came on before I made it there about volcanic rock outcrops I saw during a college geology field trip around a natural steam production field in Calif and then a much more recent volcanic geology encounter...

 

How about this unknown being a water worn cobble of vesicular basalt/rhyolite or something volcanic like that? I wonder if the geology in that area supports this guess.. @jpc

 

I found a picture that I took of a similar sized cobble that I picked up in Hawaii several years ago now showing a vesicular basalt. It had very small vesicles (holes), most in the 2-5mm range...There were others with much larger vesicles.  Here's a comparative shot in color with the unknown on the left and my sample on the right and grayscale shot below to enhance the texture.

 

 

It would be interesting to hear more about the outcrop/geology and how these are situated in a sandstone?...your insights/questions are great ones...

 

Is the site/parent rock/outcrop/formation actually sedimentary or something volcanic? 

 

Regards, Chris  

Edited November 8 by Plantguy
I cant type

[Jaybot]

17 hours ago, mainland fossils said:

Remembering it still has sandstone on it so alot of the pores will still be closed. I'm finding everything is covered in sandstone so no one has any idea what's actually here because it's all hidden so well and I'm such a green horn with no help other than you guys.i took some stuff to the museum and they laughed because it was still so covered in sandstone. An explanation is close tho... there is no denying some of the stuff starting to come out in the different types of sandstone but as I have learnt, don't show people untill you have something decent or people just think your mad

Sorry to hear you had a negative experience at the museum... don't worry about people thinking your mad, since what others think about you does not affect who you are.

 

Your specimen is actually interesting to us on TFF, as we have had many members come forward and bring their theories.  Chris's (@Plantguy) theory seems like the one I'd favor as of right now.

 

Never stop learning, and have fun

[doushantuo]

plantguy is right. 

basalt showing equant vesicularity, examples of which  can probably be seen near Okataina(in the wellknown Taupo volcanic zone).

the probability of the existence of a fossil in there  is vanishingly small

Sorry to hear about your bad experience with "the professionals".

 

Edited November 8 by doushantuo

[Rockwood]

I've been rereading the book Carboniferous Giants and Mass Extinction lately. Huge volumes of gases are thought to be released in basalt floods. It stands to reason that some vesicles could be frozen in a shape resembling bone cells. 

[val horn]

I still think  the holes resemble palm wood (although the vesicular basalt is interesting).   Mostly I dont worry about weight, but would the density of the basalt/ pumice? be sufficiently lower to allow id by weight?

[Plantguy]

24 minutes ago, val horn said:

I still think  the holes resemble palm wood (although the vesicular basalt is interesting).   Mostly I dont worry about weight, but would the density of the basalt/ pumice? be sufficiently lower to allow id by weight?

Awesome pics of the wood! thanks! 

 

Who are our colleagues on this forum from down there that might add context and local knowledge? I wish the cross section of the unknown was in sharper focus! Unknown seems to be more dense/ less vesicle filled along the left of the specimen...  @mainland fossils possibly a better closeup?

 

I think I see DPS Ammonite here as I'm typing...maybe he can shed some light and closure...

 

Regards, Chris 

[DPS Ammonite]

I think that it is plant material. Palm maybe, but palm fibers that I have seen are usually straight and parallel. The holes appear to be meandering tubes which don’t really fit for it to be a volcanic rock. Better up-close pictures will help and a locality.

 

If marine it also could be a colony of tube worms.

 

 

Edited November 8 by DPS Ammonite

[jpc]

plantguy... yours certainly looks more igneous than anything else, but I am no expert at the finer points of igneous geology.  

[Rockwood]

1 hour ago, val horn said:

Mostly I dont worry about weight, but would the density of the basalt/

 

1 hour ago, val horn said:

pumice? be sufficiently lower to allow id by weight?

Pumice is volcanic glass. Basalt is the material sea floor is composed of. It is dense/heavy. Wouldn't that make basalt/pumice sort of a non sequitur?

[val horn]

Yes  Rockwood. You are right, they are not the same thing.