Pliestocene Braincase

[ebrocklds]

here it is. phone for scale. it was found in the western usa, but i don't know exactly where. a friend picked it up with a bunch of bison and mammoth material.

thanks in advance for all your help.

Brock

[PrehistoricFlorida]

Difficult to tell, but it looks like it may be a section of elephant cranium.

[Harry Pristis]

here it is. phone for scale. it was found in the western usa, but i don't know exactly where. a friend picked it up with a bunch of bison and mammoth material.

thanks in advance for all your help.

Brock

I gather there are no tooth alveoli present?

The saggital area is missing, too. That would be useful.

Your images are too large to view without scrolling on my 22" monitor, so my impressions are even less confident. That said, the apparent massiveness of the skull suggests to me something like an Archeotherium. Again, that's just an impression which may be way off.

Let us know what you find out.

[Guest bmorefossil]

it is big but im not good unless we are talking about marine mammals

[ebrocklds]

i was thinking something like horse camel rhino or cow. although cow is looking the closest to me.

Brock

[Guest Nicholas]

Rhino would fit the bulk portion.

[Fruitbat]

It MAY be important that it was found with mammoth and bison material. Mammoths and bison both made their first appearance in North America during the Pleistocene. If, indeed, the fossil was contemporaneous with those animals then it must be a Pleistocene animal. It COULD be part of a mammoth skull...but exactly which part I couldn't tell you without being able to look it over and compare it with a relatively-intact skull. It appears to be too large for most other Pleistocene megafauna except, possibly, a very large bison or one of the large ground sloths. Woolly rhinos haven't been found in North America to my knowledge so that one is essentially ruled out. It would be very helpful to know where it came from but apparently that information isn't available. The only way it could be anything but Pleistocene is if there is an older sediment underlying the sediments that contained the mammoth and bison material.

-Joe

[Guest Nicholas]

http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/lar...e_animals.html#

[Guest Nicholas]

Hyracodon is rhino like is it not. If I do recall they had unusually large skulls for their body.

[Fruitbat]

As you can see in the link that Nicholas posted...rhinos are NOT found in North American Pleistocene deposits...though other perissodactyls like horses and tapirs are. Interestingly, rhinos did go through a long period of evolution in North American ranging from the Eocene through the Pliocene before they became extinct here. A few rhinos MAY have survived into the Blancan (which some scientists still classify as earliest Pleistocene though many consider it to be latest Pliocene).

-Joe

[Guest Nicholas]

As you can see in the link that Nicholas posted...rhinos are NOT found in North American Pleistocene deposits...though other perissodactyls like horses and tapirs are. Interestingly, rhinos did go through a long period of evolution in North American ranging from the Eocene through the Pliocene before they became extinct here. A few rhinos MAY have survived into the Blancan (which some scientists still classify as earliest Pleistocene though many consider it to be latest Pliocene).

-Joe

I do no think that list is very complete but it is a good indicator for some species. I'm partial with the Blancan being classified as the earliest Pleistocene.

[FossilFreak]

Your images are too large to view without scrolling on my 22" monitor, so my impressions are even less confident.

Harry,

That's kind of interesting. I wonder if its some type of internet settings you have. I have 20" monitor and all of the pictures fit the internet window in both firefox and explorer.

[Guest bmorefossil]

As you can see in the link that Nicholas posted...rhinos are NOT found in North American Pleistocene deposits...though other perissodactyls like horses and tapirs are. Interestingly, rhinos did go through a long period of evolution in North American ranging from the Eocene through the Pliocene before they became extinct here. A few rhinos MAY have survived into the Blancan (which some scientists still classify as earliest Pleistocene though many consider it to be latest Pliocene).

-Joe

but this seems to big for tapir and horse, what about bison?

[Fruitbat]

Personally...without actually having the fossil in my hands to look at and compare to reference specimens and without knowing what age the fossil actually is...all I can say is that it isn't out of the realm of possibility that it is part of a bison skull. It could also be a part of a mammoth or mastodon skull or, as I mentioned before, it could be ground sloth. Even some of the giant camels are a possibility.

-Joe