Texas Mystery Fossil #4

[NAUfrogger]

Bone? From N. Sulphur River. Has vertical (or horizontal depending on how you look at it) striations like wood but I didn't think wood would be all black like this.

[silverphoenix]

It's a neat piece--it really does look like petrified wood to me. Petrified wood can come in just about any color of the rainbow, including very dark colors.

A good way to tell (most of the time) if something is bone is by looking at where the breaks are and seeing if it is porous. bone is very porous, while petrified wood is generally solid. Hope this helps and welcome to the forum!

[tracer]

again, hard to tell from the picture. doesn't look like bone to me. the problem with pronouncing it fossil wood is that most of the fossil wood from the NSR doesn't really look like that. but it's more likely to be fossil wood than bone.

there's really no substitute for seeing a lot of examples of what fossil wood and fossil bone look like. there are are lots of pictures on the forum in various places. the dead giveaway on bone, if it has any worn or broken places, is the "cancellous" inner bone structure. it's distinctive and tends to stand out even when quite worn. fossil wood tends to have rectangularity (is that a word?) and a striated appearance, and sometimes you can see grain structure on the ends. fossil wood at the NSR tends to be gray or brown and kind of grainy. its very mineralized, but not nicely so. it isn't pretty.

[silverphoenix]

I haven't seen any NSR petrified wood, so I could be wrong--I agree it's hard to tell from the picture. My best guess is petrified wood though--looks like some of the stuff I find around here.

[mommabetts]

I would have to say it is wood also, but the pics need to be a little lighter if at all possible.

[MikeD]

New pic. Definitely wood. You can do the lick test on bone. It will kind of stick to your tongue.