Strange Little Bone

[Boneman007]

I would say with 100% surity that it is a cretaceous Ischyrhiza mira.

[Auspex]

Compare to these: LINK

[Uncle Siphuncle]

its as likely that another collector dropped it out of his pack than to have it naturally transported that far, and end up in the condition found.

[Boneman007]

I have never hunted the Brazos, but I have heard that cretaceous fossils are found regularly. Is this not true?

[Auspex]

Is Cretaceous sediment buried too deep there? I know there is a pretty famous K/T site on that river, but I don't know where that is relative to the site of this find.

[garyc]

I've hunted the eocene cite near Bryan, but the cretaceous areas are further north, I think just south of Waco. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I only very seldomly find shark teeth and a little more commonly oysters, that I've always assumed came from Whiskey Bridge(eocene)

[Boneman007]

I've hunted the eocene cite near Bryan, but the cretaceous areas are further north, I think just south of Waco. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I only very seldomly find shark teeth and a little more commonly oysters, that I've always assumed came from Whiskey Bridge(eocene)

Any pics of the shark teeth? How about an oyster pic? Both should be diagnostic.

[bone2stone]

Dang you guys are sure bringing up a lot of the sites I once hit years ago.

That Whiskey Bridge site sure has some nice stuff in it.

Your specimen does resemble the rostal spines mentioned earlier but larger

than the SR stuff from the Ladonia area, more like the Morocco stuff.

Bone2stone

[Boesse]

For comparison, the specimen labeled 3 and 4 in this figure is a late Pliocene Pristiophorus (sawshark) tooth with a 10mm crown, from the Purisima Formation. This is the geochronologically youngest sawshark in the eastern North Pacific:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kI7kL-gcxEA/TzLlWLJEy9I/AAAAAAAABX4/dYqy8gQNGtY/s1600/FIGURE%2B3.jpg

Edited April 24, 2013 by Boesse

[garyc]

Ok, here are some oysters I routinely find around this part of the Brazos and the better preserved shark teeth that I have found around here. Again I'm hunting about 100 miles down river of the eocene site at Whiskey Bridge and the cretaceous formations are well up river from there, another 100 or so river miles.

I don't know what the shark teeth are. I think three of the oysters are exogyra ponderosa? If so those became extinct in the cretaceous right? So I am finding a big ol' jumble of material, some pleisto, some eocene, some cretaceous??

[JohnJ]

With the qualifier that these have been almost been rolled beyond just "oyster", the three smaller ones look more like a late Cretaceous Pycnodonte sp. Not sure on the larger one, but definitely not E. ponderosa. Looks like at least some of the oysters made it past the Eocene grinder.

[siteseer]

Dan,

JohnJ and I were going back and forth with PM's about this and I wondered if this was a case of one collector bringing a fossil from another site to show to another collector and the specimen slipped out of his hand/pocket/pack ending up downstream where it couldn't have reached otherwise.

I used to collect at a Late Miocene site in Scotts Valley, CA (now a fenced-off storage facility) and people would sometimes bring specimens they found on other trips hoping to run into someone who could provide an ID.

Jess

its as likely that another collector dropped it out of his pack than to have it naturally transported that far, and end up in the condition found.

[garyc]

Dan,

JohnJ and I were going back and forth with PM's about this and I wondered if this was a case of one collector bringing a fossil from another site to show to another collector and the specimen slipped out of his hand/pocket/pack ending up downstream where it couldn't have reached otherwise.

I used to collect at a Late Miocene site in Scotts Valley, CA (now a fenced-off storage facility) and people would sometimes bring specimens they found on other trips hoping to run into someone who could provide an ID.

Jess

Finders keepers, losers weepers!

[siteseer]

Those teeth look like Late Eocene teeth - early makos and Negaprion frequens (or another early species of large Negaprion).

Ok, here are some oysters I routinely find around this part of the Brazos and the better preserved shark teeth that I have found around here. Again I'm hunting about 100 miles down river of the eocene site at Whiskey Bridge and the cretaceous formations are well up river from there, another 100 or so river miles.

I don't know what the shark teeth are. I think three of the oysters are exogyra ponderosa? If so those became extinct in the cretaceous right? So I am finding a big ol' jumble of material, some pleisto, some eocene, some cretaceous??