Bone Valley Find

[JohnJ]

Is it possible this could be a seal tooth root?

 

12 hours ago, Nimravis said:

....

 

[HuckMucus]

14 hours ago, Harry Pristis said:

Color is the weakest basis for saying much about a bone.  The color of the find fits the range of colors of things from the Central Florida phosphate.

Regarding color, I must apologize for making unfounded assumptions. After thinking about some of the posts here, I have a point of clarification:  My posts have been talking about relative ages within *modern* antlers.  So, when I say recent vs old, I’m not talking about fossils or ancient antlers dug up from below ground.  It is my fault for assuming, especially on a fossil forum, that everyone knows what I’m talking about when my reference to “old” or “in the white” or “chalk” is a matter of a year or two or three or four, etc; i.e. not ancient.

 

“In the brown” (aka brownies) and “in the white” are terms of art in the antler markets, at least where I am from.  *They are more about condition than color.*  A brown is recently shed from the animal, or it has been picked up and protected from the elements.  They can stay in great shape for hundreds of years.  A white, by comparison, has been exposed to the elements for at least a year, it has begun to crack, split, flake and become chalky.  It doesn’t matter what color it is.  It could have been in the duff and the color thus dark.  The point is, it has aged.  Some more than others.  Browns are worth a lot more money than whites.  Hence the distinction.

The picture below shows three brownies and one white.  It’s obvious which are which.

 

However, the next photo shows two of the same antlers turned over.  The lighter colored one is a brownie and the darker colored one is that same old “in the white” antler from the last photo.  Color aside, notice the relative state of degradation vs smooth, hard and shiny.  Therein lies the price difference.

      
Regarding the photo posted by Lone Hunter, of the fossil antler next to the “modern” antler above, the reason I said the fossil looks like a brown and the modern looks like a white, is not because of the color.  Worn texture aside, the fossil looks hard and glossy.  The modern looks dry and old, like it’s starting to degrade.  Color was not part of my analysis on that photo.  I was making a comparison between hard/glossy and dry/degrading.  Again, my fault for not being clear.

Regardless, if the Central Florida phosphate colors like the subject find, then it colors exactly like many a freshly shed antler color.  I’ll address the subject find below, in another post.
 

Edited May 15, 2022 by HuckMucus
spelling

[HuckMucus]

The reason I think the object under discussion is *not* an antler tip is because of the transition between what I assume is the “marrow” and the hard, outer shell.  Antler tips have a thicker outer shell and the transition to the marrow is more gradual and less defined.  Also, the interior of the object is darker and, from what I can tell, it looks more like inorganic mineral/rock.  It doesn’t have the “marrow” look of a fresh antler, but I’d need a clearer close up of that material in order to judge.
Compare what we can see in the subject’s photo of the break with my photo of broken antler tine, attached here.

 

The object we are talking about looks hard and glossy.  Thus, the exterior looks like a fossil or a freshly shed antler.  Personally, too my eye, it looks more like a fresh shed than a fossil; especially a worn fossil like Lone Hunter posted.

The interior is tough to gauge in a photo but the exterior looks exactly like a broken piece of a freshly shed antler.  
I have hundreds of antlers at my place, elk and deer, in all different stages of aging, except fossilization.  I have no fossil antlers.  Following are some pictures of tips that I have that look like the subject antler.  As to freshly shed antlers, they can be ivory tips, or brown in color.  But I’m not focusing on color.  I’m basing my opinion on non-color appearance.  Like a fresh bone vs an old dried out bone.  Unfortunately, my antler tips might appear a little yellowed because of linseed oil.  Otherwise, the color is identical to the find.  The regular antlers (not tips) have not been oiled.
 

[Meganeura]

12 hours ago, JohnJ said:

Is it possible this could be a seal tooth root?

 

 

Were sea lions in Florida at all?

[BullStrong]

This bone sure looks like a broken off piece of the fan like structure of a sea turtle Plastron. Here's an image of a sea turtle at the South Florida Museum in Bradenton, FL.

[Meganeura]

20 minutes ago, BullStrong said:

This bone sure looks like a broken off piece of the fan like structure of a sea turtle Plastron. Here's an image of a sea turtle at the South Florida Museum in Bradenton, FL.

Both my wife and I agree that that’s a definite possibility - looks very similar!

[JohnJ]

@Harry Pristis @digit @Shellseeker 

[digit]

6 hours ago, BullStrong said:

This bone sure looks like a broken off piece of the fan like structure of a sea turtle Plastron.

A possibility. I'm sending images to my turtle expert. We'll see if we get any response along those lines.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[Lone Hunter]

Thought this image might help since it looks a little different here.

[siteseer]

One thing to consider is being mindful of the time represented by the Bone Valley Formation.  I think the oldest layers are Middle Miocene but it seems most of the fossils found come from the upper layers which are Late Miocene to Early Pliocene.  The land mammals found like the horses (advanced hipparions) provide good time indicators.

 

The Bone Valley Formation is known for deer but only what may be the oldest deer in North America and it is rare.  It's also small compared to a whitetail and wouldn't have had antlers large enough (and that's assuming it had antlers) to have a fragment as big as the specimen shown.  There are Late Miocene possibilities.  There's the late protoceratid (extinct group o artiodactyl) and it had horns and there's the pronghorn antelope relative, Hexobelomeryx (remembered by some, especially anyone who collected Bone Valley in the previous century, as Hexameryx).  I don't know what a piece of horn of Kyptoceras would look like but Hexobelomeryx had solid horns - not hollow like the specimen in question.  I have a tine of that somewhere and will have to get it photographed and then shown to some other longtime Bone Valley collectors to get confirmation that it is a tine but I think that's what they said it was when I showed it to them twenty years ago. 

[Meganeura]

1 hour ago, siteseer said:

One thing to consider is being mindful of the time represented by the Bone Valley Formation.  I think the oldest layers are Middle Miocene but it seems most of the fossils found come from the upper layers which are Late Miocene to Early Pliocene.  The land mammals found like the horses (advanced hipparions) provide good time indicators.

 

The Bone Valley Formation is known for deer but only what may be the oldest deer in North America and it is rare.  It's also small compared to a whitetail and wouldn't have had antlers large enough (and that's assuming it had antlers) to have a fragment as big as the specimen shown.  There are Late Miocene possibilities.  There's the late protoceratid (extinct group o artiodactyl) and it had horns and there's the pronghorn antelope relative, Hexobelomeryx (remembered by some, especially anyone who collected Bone Valley in the previous century, as Hexameryx).  I don't know what a piece of horn of Kyptoceras would look like but Hexobelomeryx had solid horns - not hollow like the specimen in question.  I have a tine of that somewhere and will have to get it photographed and then shown to some other longtime Bone Valley collectors to get confirmation that it is a tine but I think that's what they said it was when I showed it to them twenty years ago. 

One of my peace River trips turned up this which I’ve been told is fossilized deer antler (it’s definitely a fossil as well), so I assume it’s from Hexobelomeryx?

 

[digit]

Peace River (being lag deposits and not in situ material) does have a mix of material from Miocene through Plio/Pleistocene and White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) is not uncommon in the Peace.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[Harry Pristis]

9 hours ago, siteseer said:

The Bone Valley Formation is known for deer but only what may be the oldest deer in North America, and it is rare.  

White tail deer (O. virginianus) antlers are not uncommon fossils in the Peace River.  Sometimes they are shed antlers, occasionally, they have bits of skull attached.  Late Pliocene through Pleistocene, according to Hulbert.

 

 

Speaking of Hulbert, he recently confirmed the identity of my only specimen of the early deer mentioned by Siteseer.

 

[siteseer]

Wow, Harry, great piece!

 

I was looking at what I found about 20 years ago when I was able to hunt a phosphate mine just before they shut down fossil hunting.  I thought I found a lot of stuff but I was told they used to find three times as much in the old days, people filling coffee cans with 3-toed horse teeth.  I found just a few and some partials but it was great.  I was happy with the half-a-camel-tooth I found too because it's almost impossible to find that much of a fossil camel tooth in California.  It was an incredible experience.

[Meganeura]

On 5/15/2022 at 7:21 PM, digit said:

A possibility. I'm sending images to my turtle expert. We'll see if we get any response along those lines.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

Hey Ken, 

Just wondering if you ever heard back from the turtle expert, and if not if you have any recommendations on who my wife and I might take it to, to get checked!

[digit]

It seemed inconclusive. It may remain one of those unidentifieds.

 

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[Meganeura]

1 minute ago, digit said:

It seemed inconclusive. It may remain one of those unidentifieds.

 

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

Oh well, I appreciate you checking! It's pretty cool to have a fossil that's stumped everyone. 

[BullStrong]

If I had a similar fossil in my collection I would call it a sea turtle gastralia or belly rib off the hypoplastron, based on the size, shape , and texture of the bone.  

 

Here are two images of such bones for comparison.

[digit]

That is one very definite possibility. Just don't know if there is enough of this to conclusively identify it as one of these spiky projections. Were it to be a pair of these projections with more of the characteristically textured basal bone then we could certainly be more confident in the ID. We had someone come into the Fanastic Fossils exhibit at the FLMNH a few days back who had a similar find that had been in the family for some years. They had wondered if it was a tooth or claw but it was very similar to the find in question in this topic and that is what we chose to tell this person to research online as it might be the true identity of their mystery find.

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

 

[HuckMucus]

It would be nice to see a cross section showing the the thickness of the outside and the consistancy of the inside of one of these turtle projections.