tooth or small tusk?

[pluff mudder]

Found this today on a man-made beach in Port Royal, SC. I believe the area has been classified as a drowned river bed. Brackish water flows from the Intracoastal Waterway to the Atlantic Ocean, and is a popular spot for fossilized shark teeth (including Megalodon teeth), and fossils from land mammals, also. I'm pretty sure I found a very degraded three-toed horse tooth in the same area. I hope my non-scientific description of the area is reasonably accurate. Here is a photo:

 

 

 

[pluff mudder]

[jcbshark]

Probably need a view from the broken end to see the interior structure but with the photo given I would say a piece of bone or possibly a deer tine 

[Bone Daddy]

Deer antler was my first thought as well. The texture looks a little off for antler, but it's tough to say.

[pluff mudder]

Thanks for your responses. I was having trouble resizing so my photos are limited. This is a little blurry: 

 

[Notidanodon]

definitely some sort of bone material

[pluff mudder]

[Shellseeker]

It is almost certainly bone, but this is the only valuable identification photo... showing the inner core and outer edge.... and because it is out of focus , adds no value

 

 

[pluff mudder]

...another shot: 

 

[Shellseeker]

1 hour ago, pluff mudder said:

..another shot: 

Thanks for providing this photo view.

Like others, my first impression was bone, but like JCBshark above , I wanted to see the end to determine what the interior of your find tells us. I have been hunting SW Florida, both the Gulf and interior rivers and have found hundreds of thousands of bones, just a few tusks, and a large number of teeth.

I have some items that match your shape and size but are NOT bone.  So, what tells me that your find is bone.. Look at the photos below.  It seems to be the same general shape and size of your find.

When I look inside the 2nd photo,

1) I see concentric "rings" going down the center of the fossil

2) the inner "rings" are dark grey in color but there is a golden brown "edge" on the outside of the fossil.  From your original fuzzy photo,  I imagined that I was seeing a similar lighter colored outer "ring"

 

I think that your fossil does not have the concentric "rings",  and it has fossilized bone marrow in the inside.

The top photo also has the concentric rings on the outside, and , as far as I know, only one mammal has such rings, on it teeth.  Identification is a process of elimination... Is it whale, or one of the animals that has tucks: peccary, tapir, rhino, dugong, mastodon, mammoth, etc.  If those answers are all "no", we get back to the original identification == bone

It took me 2-3 years to be able to ID bone in all its various shapes.

 

[pluff mudder]

Fossilized bone, then. Thank you. It helps the beginner to not only know "what" but also "why", so thanks again. 

 

..."hundreds of thousands"! Wow! 

[Shellseeker]

10 hours ago, pluff mudder said:

..."hundreds of thousands"! Wow! 

I thought it was close because I see a lot of bone but multiplying it out,  maybe an exaggeration ... retired and hunting for 12 years in fossil rich sediments and rivers..On average 8 month hunting season,  some years 4-5 trips a week , other years at least 2 trips a week.. so

12 x 8 x 3.5 = 340 x number of fossil bones per trip.. I see I am off by a zero but it is an important zero

[pluff mudder]

That's still impressive, and I get your point: there are a lot more bones out there than tusks.