darrow Posted January 19, 2013 Share Posted January 19, 2013 Noticed these marks on the inside of this piece of mastadon tusk. They look a little too localized and "generalle" oriented in the same direction to be random damage, but I'm not seeing paired parallel tracks of rodent gnawing, or the typically very uniform pattern rodents leave when gnawing. Does look like stone tool cut marks? Wouldn't be "butcher" marks but mayby the chunk of ivory was used like a little chopping block? Darrow Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cris Posted January 19, 2013 Share Posted January 19, 2013 I've noticed a lot of these marks on the outside "bark" of many tusks..I think they may be from the animal rubbing the tusk against a tree the same way elephants do today...Sometimes you'll notice a perfect cross hatching pattern on them and that fits exactly with what you see elephants doing on the Nat Geo channel. Anybody else have any other explanations? It seems like a fairly common thing to be cut marks and its not rodent chew marks (they have a very distinctive look) EDIT: After looking at the photos again, that does appear to be a lot of marks for such a small area... Very cool find. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clayton Jones Posted January 19, 2013 Share Posted January 19, 2013 I would expect tool marks to be a little deeper and fewer in number. Many tool marks in one area like this would probably come from a hunter using a stone tool to scrape and cut meat from the bone. The only problem there is that tusks don't have meat on them except at the point where they join the skull. Maybe a hunter tried to carve the tusk, but he wasn't very artistic? Since all of the marks are parallel and cover a large-ish area, I would think that these marks come from a single scrape from a large, rough object instead of repeated cuts and impacts from fine-edged tools. Cris' tree-rubbing idea seems appropriate, or maybe they were scraped up a bit by a glacier pushing them around? My attempt at creating a museum and community center to help people find an interest in the world around them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PrehistoricFlorida Posted January 19, 2013 Share Posted January 19, 2013 Considering how each mark is at the exact same angle, I would tend to lean away from the marks being from man. www.PrehistoricFlorida.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darrow Posted January 20, 2013 Author Share Posted January 20, 2013 The scratches are on a surface that would internal to the tusk while the animal was alive. Below is a picture of the other side of the piece which apepars to have been an external surface when the tusk was intact. I think this would rule out the animal rubbing a tree. I think glaciers never approached closer than 700 or so miles to S.E. Louisiana, but the single scrape on a rough object sounds plausiable. Maybe it was trampled on. I'll take some pictures under magnification and post them next week. Darrow Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darrow Posted January 25, 2013 Author Share Posted January 25, 2013 Here's thee pics of the scratches under magnification. I think the marks were the result of a "scrape on a rough object" i.e. trampled. If you look close, you can see a few grains of sand deeply imbeded in the ivory, some with a corresponding gouge tracing the apparent path of the grain as it was smashed into the surface... Darrow Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darrow Posted January 25, 2013 Author Share Posted January 25, 2013 ,,, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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darrow Posted January 25, 2013 Author Share Posted January 25, 2013 last one... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AgrilusHunter Posted January 25, 2013 Share Posted January 25, 2013 Curiously, not all of these marks are at the same angle. "They ... savoured the strange warm glow of being much more ignorant than ordinary people, who were only ignorant of ordinary things." -- Terry Pratchett Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AgrilusHunter Posted January 25, 2013 Share Posted January 25, 2013 (edited) Also, several of these marks tend to be composed of two parallel grooves with a raised ridge in the middle. I've tried to highlight that below with dotted lines for grooves and solid for ridges. In my mind I see these as good candidates for marks made by the incisor teeth from a rodent. Are you sure they are not gnawing marks? I'd put my money on a bit of tusk that was gnawed on. Edited January 25, 2013 by AgrilusHunter "They ... savoured the strange warm glow of being much more ignorant than ordinary people, who were only ignorant of ordinary things." -- Terry Pratchett Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PrimitivePast Posted January 30, 2013 Share Posted January 30, 2013 Hi Darrow, Are you sure that your object is ivory? It doesn't look like Mastodon tusk. Can you attach one more photo of the other side of the object without the scratches. http://www.primitivepast.com https://www.facebook.com/PrimitivePast Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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