Joy_Fossils Posted June 7 Share Posted June 7 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! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patelinho7 Posted June 7 Share Posted June 7 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? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fossildude19 Posted June 7 Share Posted June 7 Cropped and brightened: Tim - VETERAN SHALE SPLITTER VFOTM --- APRIL - 2015 IPFOTM -- MAY - 2024 _________________________________________________________________________________ "In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks." John Muir ~ ~ ~ ~ ><))))( *> About Me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joy_Fossils Posted June 7 Author Share Posted June 7 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. IMG_5493.MOV Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patelinho7 Posted June 7 Share Posted June 7 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. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jpc Posted June 10 Share Posted June 10 I think this is a piece of someone's braincase... too complex for a vertebra, in this writer's opinion. 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joy_Fossils Posted June 10 Author Share Posted June 10 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jpc Posted June 10 Share Posted June 10 basisphenoid is a good guess. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patelinho7 Posted June 11 Share Posted June 11 Any chance you can narrow it down to genus? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joy_Fossils Posted June 11 Author Share Posted June 11 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? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joy_Fossils Posted July 5 Author Share Posted July 5 We emailed Dr. Don Brinkman about the fossil. He also thinks it’s a hadrosaur basisphenoid. He said the basisphenoid does not vary much in hadrosaurs, so he could not say which hadrosaur it would be from. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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