Hunting in the cold

[Shellseeker]

It was pretty cool yesterday. As a youth, I used to swim in Vermont quarries. But having been in Florida for 20+ years,  I define cool differently. As I stepped out of my truck at 6:45 am, it was 57 degrees Fahrenheit and I was about to go swimming.  I am not completely crazy.  I had my 5mm shorty wetsuit on. 

Very successful day,  Slow to start,  moved twice and then consistent finds.

A couple of Notes:  There is a row or 2 of Tigers and 3-4 rows of Bull _ Dusky teeth those species dominate here. 

I pick up a some interesting bones to Identify later.... 

The Makos (55 and 41 mm) and lower Hemi (45 mm) were definitely appreciated. 

 

Tiger shark teeth are as large as I find anywhere. This might be P. contortus.

 

Then this Osteoderm on the right, compared to Alligator... I almost tossed it away... but then I thought it could be Crocodile....

 

There is a cluster of 5 mostly whole or partial Horse teeth... They are the primary request for Identification or comments..  

#1

 

#2

 

#3

Really beaten up Tridactyl,, Pretty.. need to stare at it to see if I can find the protocone.  High Majority of Tridactyl Horses here are N peninsulatus

 

#4 Almost all there... I think an Id is possible...

 

#5

Lots missing... may be Equus.. lower partial

 

All comments and suggestions appreciated... Jack

 

@fossillarry

[hemipristis]

Nice haul!

 

Re the 2 prizes in the second photo, I think the consensus nowadays is to ID them as ancestral great whites 

[Shellseeker]

1 hour ago, hemipristis said:

Nice haul!

 

Re the 2 prizes in the second photo, I think the consensus nowadays is to ID them as ancestral great whites 

I am glad that I do not work on the names.... Thanks,

[Balance]

Looks like a great day! Loving all these Equus finds! 
 

Jp

[Plantguy]

Jack, I'm glad to see your latest. Yes its been a bit brisk down here of late. Nothing like further up north but I layered up! 

 

Of no help with the horse stuff but I'm intrigued and appreciate seeing/learning as you wade thru your finds. I'm still struggling with some ear and tilly bones, and turtle frags...but its nontheless enjoyable!

 

Continued hunting success!

Regards, Chris 

[Shellseeker]

8 hours ago, Plantguy said:

Jack, I'm glad to see your latest. Yes its been a bit brisk down here of late. Nothing like further up north but I layered up! 

 

Of no help with the horse stuff but I'm intrigued and appreciate seeing/learning as you wade thru your finds. I'm still struggling with some ear and tilly bones, and turtle frags...but its nontheless enjoyable!

 

Continued hunting success!

Regards, Chris 

Chris,  Good to hear from you..  Are you getting out to hunt ?  Here are some others from Sunday more likely in your wheelhouse.

Turtle  ,  is that a gator byte or...?

 

How about a bone that does not quite look like mammal , but I could easily be wrong

 

and an earbone...

 

 

and finally just because this photo turned out well.  Enjoy..

 

 

[Family Fun]

Always love to see your amazing finds

[ClearLake]

Jack, I believe your unidentified bone above ("How about a bone that does not quite look like mammal , but I could easily be wrong") is a Horse Metatarsal IV, also known as a splint bone (see the diagram below off the web for its location).  These bones are more or less fused to the cannon bone (the main bone of the lower leg), I would guess more so as the horse ages but may also vary amongst species of horse.  I have no clue how to  differentiate among the various species of horse that may be present in the Peace River.

 

 

 

Here is a close up of one on my horse that shows the similar proximal end (right in your first picture of it) to yours at the blue arrow.  The second picture shows the location of the splint bone on the cannon best seen between the 10 and 11 inch mark.   The rough portion of the bone, seen very well in your first picture of it is where is attaches to the cannon.

 

     

 

 

I should point out that the front leg cannon bones have two of these splint bones, one on either side.  Your bone may match up better with those, I'm not quite sure how to distinguish them.  But, either way, it looks like a metatarsal IV or a metacarpal II or IV.

Edited November 4, 2023 by ClearLake
Spelling

[Shellseeker]

1 hour ago, ClearLake said:

Jack, I believe your unidentified bone above ("How about a bone that does not quite look like mammal , but I could easily be wrong") is a Horse Metatarsal IV, also known as a splint bone (see the diagram below off the web for its location). 

Wow,  I am impressed by both your knowledge and willingness to share.  I have seen the proximal end of these splint bones infrequently over the years and never managed to get a certain ID.  You have put a smile on my face.. Thanks for the excellent pictures and photos ,  I will save them to my local disk.

I have been discussing Horse finds at this Blancan site with Fossillarry and any horse fossil found has the potential of being Tridactly , early Equus, or Equus. Do you have a sense of what the size of splint bone would match?

[ClearLake]

28 minutes ago, Shellseeker said:

Wow,  I am impressed by both your knowledge and willingness to share.  I have seen the proximal end of these splint bones infrequently over the years and never managed to get a certain ID.  You have put a smile on my face.. Thanks for the excellent pictures and photos ,  I will save them to my local disk.

I have been discussing Horse finds at this Blancan site with Fossillarry and any horse fossil found has the potential of being Tridactly , early Equus, or Equus. Do you have a sense of what the size of splint bone would match?

No problem, my pleasure.  When I saw your original pictures, I knew it looked familiar, just had to look around to actually place it.  As I have looked some more, and especially with one of your recent pictures, I am now pretty certain this is a metacarpal, not a metatarsal.  That is based on the articulation surface that you can see on "top" of the bone, not the two U-shaped ones.  That is a feature of the front leg where it articulates with some of the carpal bones on top of it and does not appear to be a feature of the hind legs.  I'm sure a smart person could figure out whether it is metacarpal II or IV and left or right leg, but that is beyond my knowledge.  I'm also afraid I have no real knowledge on the relative size ranges of these bones in the various equine lineages.  My horse skeleton knowledge is fairly limited to the recent ones.  

 

Here is a link to an interesting paper on the evolution of the horse front leg if you need some good bedtime reading.  

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5792948/

[Shellseeker]

I tracked down this photo of Metacarpal 4 (Splint bones) on Horse Front legs. Comparing my find with the Photo below... It has the same depression /ridge as the top blue line and the same articulation facet as the bottom blue line.  Seems to be Metacarpal 4 on the left leg. I saw few photos of Equus having a 9-10 inch cannon bone, with what look like a 6 inch Splint bone, I need to find a measurement of a Tridactyl Metacarpal 4 Splint bone.

[Balance]

This is fantastic!

[Plantguy]

On 11/4/2023 at 9:57 AM, Shellseeker said:

Chris,  Good to hear from you..  Are you getting out to hunt ?  Here are some others from Sunday more likely in your wheelhouse.

Hey Jack, still on the injured reserve here and hoping to get back in the game soon. Thanks for the additional great photos of your finds!

That turtle neural fracture does look to have a curvature to it that might suggest a gator chomped on the poor thing. That's certainly an odd break but I'm not certain I can say that how it was formed. I think a study of gator injuries on extant bones/turtles would be fascinating for comparison to our fossil fragments. I imagine someone may have gone down that path. 

 

Awhile back I may have mentioned my wanting to get the Atlas of Taphonomic Identifications which I hoped it would have answers about some of these types of questions...how does a bone end up looking the way it does. This crazy book has over 1000 detailed images of various fossil and recent mammal bone/modifications. It cost me around $70 on online auction site. Cost a bunch but I like books still, even in this online age....Its in Google books now but only a limited version/copy of it....I'll never get thru all of the detail of it...its mesmerizing! I know I'm crazy having said that.

 

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Atlas_of_Taphonomic_Identifications/V9jBDAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=atlas+of+taphonomic+identifications&printsec=frontcover

 

Bob Sinibaldi's "What your Fossils can tell you" also has some explanations of what has happened to our Florida Fossils. 

 

I did run into a metarsal IV question awhile back with some of my bits and pieces and the quest for answers. Larry again provided those awesome horsey answers. Good luck in tracking down the sizes for yours!

 

The earbone is a keeper. Nice! I've been stumbling my way thru that anatomy. Hoping I live to at least 90 to have a chance of understanding their complexities and the variations between the diff critters...I think I might do it in 20 years at the current rate...the problem is I'm forgetting it as soon as I learn/absorb it/think I figured it out...lol...

 

Here are my latest acquisitions...a bulla/petrous bone and other connections...I think its a bovid, possibly bison..was told it was possibly 10000yrs old from Iowa. .I've solicited help. .I want to section it oh so badly to see the structure  inside!! Kind of looks like similar threads in the ff that Ive seen in the past year or so...havent gotten the time yet to go back and compare...

And a extant minature horse petrous bone...

I need to go do chores badly and prep for work tomorrow!! 

All the best!

Regards, Chris 

 

 

[Shellseeker]

5 hours ago, Plantguy said:

I need to go do chores badly and prep for work tomorrow!! 

All the best!

Regards, Chris 

Thanks Chris,  Lots of info packed into your post..  Went hunting today.  Miles to go before I sleep.  Will respond in detail tomorrow..  Jack

[Coco]

@Plantguy Your link is weird, it doesn’t open, it’s broken

 

Coco

[Plantguy]

On 11/5/2023 at 7:47 PM, Coco said:

@Plantguy Your link is weird, it doesn’t open, it’s broken

 

Coco

Thanks Coco. I'm not sure what happened there. I was trying to paste an image and got that strange set of characters...The system has been doing very weird things lately. Right now I am typing but I cant see it being displayed as the panel keeps jumping up out of view. Earlier it would not let me to go to the 2nd page of the fossil ID section or any other page.....

 

I'll try pasting then cover photo of the book again below

I think if you do a google book search for the Atlas at least you will be able to see some of the photos....

[Coco]

Hi,

 

The result is the same. Do you use Firefox ? I have no problem with it.

Is this the image you want to show? Sorry about Ama---, I only found this link : https://www.amazon.fr/Atlas-Taphonomic-Identifications-Modification-Paleoanthropology-ebook/dp/B01J9P22CA

 

Coco

[Shellseeker]

On 11/4/2023 at 2:26 PM, ClearLake said:

No problem, my pleasure.  When I saw your original pictures, I knew it looked familiar, just had to look around to actually place it.  As I have looked some more, and especially with one of your recent pictures, I am now pretty certain this is a metacarpal, not a metatarsal.  That is based on the articulation surface that you can see on "top" of the bone, not the two U-shaped ones.  That is a feature of the front leg where it articulates with some of the carpal bones on top of it and does not appear to be a feature of the hind legs.  I'm sure a smart person could figure out whether it is metacarpal II or IV and left or right leg, but that is beyond my knowledge.  I'm also afraid I have no real knowledge on the relative size ranges of these bones in the various equine lineages.  My horse skeleton knowledge is fairly limited to the recent ones.  

I sent a photo off to Richard Hulbert,  recently retired Director of the Vertebrate Paleontology Lab at the University of Florida,  Gainesville...

Quote

...The lateral metapodial is most likely a 4th metatarsal of Equus. Metacarpals are not as massive. 

Richard's responses are usually succinct.  Wanted to give you feedback after your significant contribution to my understanding of Horse metapodials..

[ClearLake]

3 minutes ago, Shellseeker said:

Wanted to give you feedback after your significant contribution to my understanding of Horse metapodials

Thank you, that is good information from Richard.  I will file it away in my memory bank (no guarantee of retrieval - haha).  In looking at my horse skeleton, the metacarpal and metatarsal look about the same size to me, but that's just one specimen and I did not precisely measure them, so....  It would be interesting to see a comparative collection of them as I am curious about differences other than size, but I'll save that for a future research project (adding to long list that will probably never happen ) and just go with the experts opinion.

[ClearLake]

In my search for something else, I ran across a publication which had some information that I think is pertinent to the horse metapodial discussion.  

He has a section on distinguishing features of the second and fourth metapodials in Equus and I think based on this we can ID yours more precisely and certainly.

 

When I compare the diagrams and descriptions in the book with your specimen, (see below) I think the best match is with the Fourth Metacarpal.

You can see that on the proximal end (right picture below), there is one large articulation surface that covers most of the area, as described for the fourth metacarpal.  Also, the depiction of the medial surface (left photo below) with its two very distinct and slightly separated articulation facets also seems to match best with the fourth metacarpal.

 

So, while I hate to disagree with Richard, the information in this publication on articulation surfaces would seem to indicate its a metacarpal.  The book does agree with Richard on the metatarsals being more robust than metacarpals, but without the other corresponding bones from this animal, I'm not sure how you would decide relative robustness (again, a nice comparative collection would go a long way).

 

  @Shellseeker Use or ignore this information any way you choose, I just wanted to pass on what I had come across.

 

 

Edited November 29, 2023 by ClearLake
Spelling

[Shellseeker]

3 hours ago, ClearLake said:

So, while I hate to disagree with Richard, the information in this publication on articulation surfaces would seem to indicate its a metacarpal.  The book does agree with Richard on the metatarsals being more robust than metacarpals, but without the other corresponding bones from this animal, I'm not sure how you would decide relative robustness (again, a nice comparative collection would go a long way).

 

  @Shellseeker Use or ignore this information any way you choose, I just wanted to pass on what I had come across.

Clearlake,

Your discovery is both insightful and irrefutable.  and I am really pleased to have the correct ID.  Thank you.  As you can imagine , I do not often get an opportunity to go back to Richard on an incorrect ID,  but will do so here and let you know the outcome. 

 

I found another bone at the same location as this 4th Metacarpal, and it seemed to have similar articulation facets...  Do you recognize it ?