Snake Vert?

[I_gotta_rock]

I'm trying to ID this for a friend. She found it at the FIsher-Sullivan site in Virginia, from the Virginia Eocene. It's all marine, but there have been snake found there. It's ridiculously small at 4 mm!

[Rockwood]

Snake verts do have the ball and socket articulation. I suspect this could be an amphibian or reptile though. 

It's not an eel because they are fish. 

[patelinho7]

@MarcoSr

[I_gotta_rock]

42 minutes ago, Rockwood said:

Snake verts do have the ball and socket articulation. I suspect this could be an amphibian or reptile though. 

It's not an eel because they are fish. 

I know eels are fish. but this site is mostly shark teeth. Eels at least have the same flexible spines. Looks like they have really long process, though.

[Fin Lover]

[I_gotta_rock]

@Fin Lover, That's handy!  So looks like either snake or turtle, although there aren't any amphibians here to compare. How do you tell which end is front and which end is back?

[MarcoSr]

The vertebra is a reptile vertebra with a ball and socket.  It is pretty beat up (processes missing) and still partially filled with formation sand, which makes a positive ID from the pictures not possible for me.  Sea snake vertebrae, from Palaeophis sea snakes, are very common at the Fisher/Sullivan site.   Thousands of Palaeophis vertebrae have been collected there.  I know of only two land snake vertebrae collected from the site, which are much larger than this vertebra, and they still haven't been positively identified/named yet, as far as I know.  I know of only a couple of lizard vertebrae found at the site.  Only a small number of crocodile vertebrae have been found at the site, and they are much larger.  Lots of turtle shell fragments and turtle bones have been collected at the site, but I haven't seen a turtle vertebra collected from the site.  At least, I've never found one.  So heavy odds point to a Palaeophis sea snake vertebra.

 

Marco Sr.

[I_gotta_rock]

Thanks, @MarcoSr! Don't know how I forgot to ask you!