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Big Vertebra (Mammoth?)


murphy

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This vertebra is 6 inches in diameter and 2.5 inches thick. It was found around Palestine, Texas. I have seen some pictures of mammoth or mastodon vertebrae that are similar in size. Is that what this is?

I would love to tell you that I found it while on a fossil hunt, but I can't. My wife found it while clearing out some iron ore rocks that had been stacked to form a flower bed outside a house we lived in. She reminds me constantly that it is her fossil.

I'm interested to hear what you think.

Thanks,

Steve

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post-5159-0-59451900-1298999600_thumb.jpg

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Definitely Proboscidian. Mammoth or mastodon is a tough one. Just for size I would go with mastodon but probos are a little out of my scope!

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here's what i think, steve. i think you should hide the fossil, and when your wife asks what happened to it, say, "how should i know? - it's your fossil."

yeah, it definitely has the proboscidean vertebral centrum look, but i've never found enough reference material to know any way to tell for sure which proboscidean it's from. if you can figure out where it came from you might be able to research what all proboscideans were known to have existed in that area and kind of mentally narrow it down, but probably best to just consider it from a hose-nose.

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That's gotta be what it is. And I'm happy just knowing its proboscidean. I don't need to narrow it down from there.

Thanks everybody.

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