Dinosaur park formation find

[Joy_Fossils]

Hi everyone! 
 

We found this piece in the dinosaur park formation of Alberta. We think it is the top of a vertebrae, since there seems to be a neural canal preserved. The rest of the vertebrae is gone though, so we are having trouble identifying whose vertebrae it is. Maybe crocodile? Maybe dinosaur? Any input will be super helpful! 

[patelinho7]

Assuming it is a vertebra, and the first pic is the front face, could you provide clear, brighter images of the front face straight-on and the rear face straight-on as well? If the backside of the vertebra is shown here, my apologies. However, in any case, the photos could be a bit brighter. 
 

My first impression would be croc solely based on size, but I’m having trouble seeing the centrum? Has it been broken off?

[Fossildude19]

Cropped and brightened:

 

 

[Joy_Fossils]

Ah you caught me, I forgot to add a picture of the back face! I will post some better pictures of the fossil. Yes, it seems the centrum is either broken off, or not there. 
 

I was looking closer at it, and it seems that what I thought to be the neural canal doesn’t continue through the bone. The other side of the fossil has no hole. We also asked another local fossil hunter if he knew what it was, and he suggested  it might be a hadrosaur skull piece! My son looked into it, and the piece that seemed to match the best was a basisphenoid. 

Here the the pictures of the front and back. I also added a video, since it is a funky piece of bone and hard to orient  from just pictures.
 

 

[patelinho7]

I thought I saw neural processes earlier but I'm not sure anymore... also, a neural canal should extend all the way through the other side in a more uniform fashion, this doesn't seem like that. To me, it's chunkosaur, but perhaps @jpc or @musicnfossils know more.

[jpc]

I  think this is a piece of someone's braincase... too complex for a vertebra, in this writer's opinion.

[Joy_Fossils]

Thank you so much for your input! We think (and hope) that it is a skull piece (basisphenoid?), but we will check with some APS members to confirm it. The piece is really wacky and pictures don’t really show it well.

 

 

[jpc]

basisphenoid is a good guess.  

 

[patelinho7]

Any chance you can narrow it down to genus?

[Joy_Fossils]

23 minutes ago, patelinho7 said:

Any chance you can narrow it down to genus?

I don't know. If there is a difference between crested hadrosaur and non-crested hadrosaur basisphenoid, then maybe it is possible we can narrow down a genus. At the locality we collected it from, the upper part of the Dinosaur Park formation, but below the Lethbridge coal zone is exposed. After looking at a biostratigraphy map, that means it could be either corythosaurus, lambeosaurus, or gryposaurus?