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Fossilized Whale Bone


eaglebluff

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I reaaaaaally want to find everything i can about this find. I pulled it out of a 75' cliff south of the Jamestown Ferry, Surry VA.

Species? Age? Value?

email me if interested: labenz.g@gmail.com

Thanks!

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HooEee! That's a Large Marge! It'd make a nice footstool! :P

Twice the size of any I ever found at Westmoreland/Stratford Hall.

"There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant

“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley

>Paleontology is an evolving science.

>May your wonders never cease!

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Not sure what unit is exposed at that locality, but it is most likely part of the Chesapeake Group (Calvert, Choptank, St. Mary's, Eastover Fm.). Aside from the age (which will require pinpointing the locality on a geologic map, and then placement of the locality within a stratigraphic column), all that can be said about this is that it is a large mysticete (baleen whale) vertebra. Probably not worth a whole lot.

Did you leave part of it in the cliff? I'd expect something collected in-situ to have more of the neural arch/transverse processes (unless of course the specimen was taphonomically abraded).

Bobby

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That far down the formation is either Eastover or Yorktown, so Upper Miocene or Pliocene.

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I think that area is Yorktown Pliocene deposits for the most part, with some Columbia Pleistocene above that. I don't think that it's Miocene because I've collected near there and not once found any Physogaleus contortus teeth. I have found some rather large Galeocerdo cuvier teeth though. I know of someone that's found verts that size in that area as well.

Nice fossil...mine pale in size though. Some day I hope to find one that large.

Kevin Wilson

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The reason that I bring up the Pleistocene is that I found a fossilized bison tooth there, probably Bison antiquus I guess. It's in my gallery.

Kevin Wilson

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I thought I would mention that Eastover Fm vertebrates aren't known very well; there probably isn't going to be much of a faunal distinction between Eastover verts (latest Miocene) and Yorktown verts. The absence of Physogaleus contortus doesn't indicate much, besides the fact that P. contortus is absent. I don't know Galeocerdo spp. well enough to tell; it also depends on whether that tooth was in-situ or not. In any event, I don't think the shark assemblage from the Eastover is good enough to say one way or the other if these tiger teeth can be that distinctive for determining age (I don't think the latest Miocene is represented very well that far north on the Atlantic Coastal Plain by fossiliferous deposits).

Just some musing about that sorta stuff.

Bobby

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