boonieguy Posted February 25, 2011 Share Posted February 25, 2011 Back in december i hit the 102 river before the snows hit. First thing i spied on the sandbar was this old whitetail shed froze to the sand. After picking it up i noticed the weight just wasn't right. After looking it over it was hollow on the inside. It seems as though it must have been buried long enough for it to form a skin the outside. Then once it was back out bouncing around in the river the soft inside worked its way loose. Anyone else ever run across one like this? Brian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tracer Posted February 25, 2011 Share Posted February 25, 2011 can you show a couple of other pictures, like of the whole thing and the base of it too? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boonieguy Posted February 25, 2011 Author Share Posted February 25, 2011 I had plans for that the first time but ended up with a error i couldn't get rid of, and was scared of loosing what i had. I'll try again. I guess i'll do one pic at a time Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boonieguy Posted February 25, 2011 Author Share Posted February 25, 2011 Here is the base and the stuff cemented around the second point area Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Auspex Posted February 26, 2011 Share Posted February 26, 2011 Weird. I've never seen that before (course, where I find sheds, the porcupines get to them pretty quick). "There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant “Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley >Paleontology is an evolving science. >May your wonders never cease! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CreekCrawler Posted February 26, 2011 Share Posted February 26, 2011 Could be fossilized. Odocoileus virginianus has been around for a very long time. That's weird that the internal structure has vacated. Never seen anything like that.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lonerguy Posted February 27, 2011 Share Posted February 27, 2011 Here is the base and the stuff cemented around the second point area I've never seen anything like that myself. It's an antler alright. I don't know what to say. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tracer Posted February 27, 2011 Share Posted February 27, 2011 well, hmmm. i'm almost of the opinion that the antler was from an animal which had an abnormality. antlers are usually fully developed when shed. they do not have super noticable cancellous bone inside them and none of the big, open trabeculae that you see inside long bones. the external area of cortical bone is thicker than what is left on your specimen in the hollowed out portion. for that reason, i can't really see acidic groundwater conditions or the like having caused the phenomenon, although i'm definitely not ruling that out because i think i see a bit of granularity and erosion on the exterior surface in the picture of the base. but another possibility, which i haven't found info on, is that there was a flaw in the normal calcification process late in the growth of the antler. antlers grow really fast each year, and they start out as easily-damaged, highly vascular tissue covered with a hairy skin. once they've grown to the appropriate size, everything just calcifies and turns into hard antler material, and the "velvet" outer skin dies and gets rubbed off. i'm just wondering if the internal calcification had some slight deficit that left the antler with less internal structural integrity. no wait - how would that animal have done rubs and fights and everything with that antler all season and had it remain intact til the shed if it was gooey inside to start with? (this is what's known as circular logic. it's what makes your computer freeze up occasionally when reading my posts.) my guess would be that the hollowed-out portion was subjected to wet acidic conditions after deposition and that the cancellous bone was dissolved. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barkerj Posted February 27, 2011 Share Posted February 27, 2011 I have heard anecdotes of maggots eating antlers while they are still velvety. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kosmoceras Posted February 27, 2011 Share Posted February 27, 2011 Wow! Never seen that before! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boonieguy Posted February 27, 2011 Author Share Posted February 27, 2011 well, hmmm. i'm almost of the opinion that the antler was from an animal which had an abnormality. antlers are usually fully developed when shed. they do not have super noticable cancellous bone inside them and none of the big, open trabeculae that you see inside long bones. the external area of cortical bone is thicker than what is left on your specimen in the hollowed out portion. for that reason, i can't really see acidic groundwater conditions or the like having caused the phenomenon, although i'm definitely not ruling that out because i think i see a bit of granularity and erosion on the exterior surface in the picture of the base. but another possibility, which i haven't found info on, is that there was a flaw in the normal calcification process late in the growth of the antler. antlers grow really fast each year, and they start out as easily-damaged, highly vascular tissue covered with a hairy skin. once they've grown to the appropriate size, everything just calcifies and turns into hard antler material, and the "velvet" outer skin dies and gets rubbed off. i'm just wondering if the internal calcification had some slight deficit that left the antler with less internal structural integrity. no wait - how would that animal have done rubs and fights and everything with that antler all season and had it remain intact til the shed if it was gooey inside to start with? (this is what's known as circular logic. it's what makes your computer freeze up occasionally when reading my posts.) my guess would be that the hollowed-out portion was subjected to wet acidic conditions after deposition and that the cancellous bone was dissolved. There is some insides left from the opening to the distal end. Its softened and separated from the outer layer. Im not sure how it came to be that way, but i took a welding rod and slid down the base end and its hollow clear to the end. By tapping the rod i could feel how thin it was at the base. Definitely interesting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tracer Posted February 27, 2011 Share Posted February 27, 2011 see if you can find any water quality reports for the area in which you found it to see if acidity has been an issue. can't really think of what else could be the issue unless some sort of bone-eating microbes were breaking it down. like i said before, i got to thinking about how bucks use their antlers all the time and i can't imagine it was structurally unsound prior to being shed and wasn't broken off. i have found a number of broken pieces of antler and they have all be very, very strong, stable, and dense. because of that characteristic, i'm usually reluctant to mentally assign them status as a fossil or non-fossil, since it seems sort of impossible to tell, absent adhering matrix. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ramo Posted February 28, 2011 Share Posted February 28, 2011 (edited) I have heard of antlers like this before. Here is what I've heard to cause this... As the antler hardens, it starts from the outside first, and then the inside hardens until the entire thing is hardened. Possibly this deer died during antler growth, and the middle of the antler hadn't hardened completely. Just my guess, but I think it seems possible. I can't think of any other way. Ramo (Then again this appears to be a shed, and the entire base looks hard. Possibly the deer had a disease, and shed the antler shortly after it started hardening) Edited February 28, 2011 by bowkill For one species to mourn the death of another is a new thing under the sun. -Aldo Leopold Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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