Bone in the stone

[kansas]

This is a find I thought some of you might enjoy. it was found when some buddies and I were poking around an old sand plant. I'm not to good with fossils and bones. But doesn't it take about a million years for bone to be replaced with minerals? So would that make this a dinosaur fossil?   Either way its still way cool. An Excalibur of fossils.




Thanks for taking a look
Travis

[SDhunter]

Thats a cool find.  Thanks
Gary

[painshill]

Hi Travis
A fossil is defined as nothing more than the preserved remains of an animal, plant or other organism. Various types of preservation processes proceed at different rates for different kinds of tissues and conditions of burial. Although we tend to think of fossils in millions of years of age, there is a generally accepted (but completely arbitrary) cut-off date of 10,000 years. For recent fossils, the preservation may be nothing more than dehydration or a thin coating of mineral patina. For ancient fossils, complete mineralisation and replacement of the original organic item is more typical.
It’s difficult to say from your pics if what you have is a mineralised fossil bone or something else… a coral maybe. Perhaps even a mineral concretion. Good sharp close-ups of the broken protruding end and the unbroken area of the wall may (or may not) tell us.
Although concretions are not fossils, they form around a nucleus and that nucleus may well have been organic. A root or branch will often form a tubular concretion. Decomposition of the organic material can leave a cavity that then fills up with minerals.
The host rock of your item looks to be limestone (?) and the cavity seems to be filled with something “oolitic” (little round balls of calcareous cemented material). That can form in cavities of both fossils and concretions.
A more precise location might enable us to determine the age and deposit type it came from and so lead us to a possible identification… but only of a very generic nature. It’s not likely to be a dinosaur bone and those would only be found in deposits that are at least 65 million years old. I’m a little doubtful that it’s a bone at all.
Roger

[kansas]

Try to get better pics. All I have is my phone for pics its 8mgp not the best. I also adding another rock with bone in it.




Been getting off work after dark so no sunlight pics. Hope this helps. Thanks for your replies
-Travis

[painshill]

Travis
You still haven’t given us a precise location. Even without that, I would say the second item looks like a straight-shelled cephalopod (marine molluscs). The rounding at the far end and the sharp indented ridge underneath the near end are not characteristic of long bones.

They are characteristic of some cephalopods… like this one (example only):

I believe I can see some faint segmentation (it isn’t present in all species and in any case often wears away) and the relatively clean break possibly reflects this. Bones don’t normally break that cleanly.
This suggests we’re looking at marine deposits, so that’s what the other item may be too. It still doesn’t look like bone to me. If Jessy’s around, I’m sure he will have a view.
Roger

[kansas]

Ok the location of the first specimen, it was found in a longtime active sand plant off of the Kansas river. In Riley county Kansas. It's hard to say how deep it was before they pulled it up. The second one was found in a small spring fed creek in northeast Kansas. Pottawatomie county.  I will try to get better pics in better lighting. Thanks for your reply. I thought for sure this would have been bones. It's nice to be able to ask, and get a response from people who know about these things.
Would u say these finds are rare?
Thanx
Travis

[turkeytail]

Neat find..Idda drug it home too!

[painshill]

kansas wrote:

Ok the location of the first specimen, it was found in a longtime active sand plant off of the Kansas river. In Riley county Kansas. It's hard to say how deep it was before they pulled it up. The second one was found in a small spring fed creek in northeast Kansas. Pottawatomie county.  I will try to get better pics in better lighting. Thanks for your reply. I thought for sure this would have been bones. It's nice to be able to ask, and get a response from people who know about these things.
Would u say these finds are rare?
Thanx
Travis

  Hi Travis
Sorry, but not rare. Kansas rocks are full of fossils from the Upper Pennsylvanian and just into the Permian. The State was covered in shallow seas around 320 – 245 million years ago, so mostly you are going to find invertebrate marine fossils: brachiopods (shelled animals), corals, crinoids (plant-like animals distantly related to starfish), sponges, bryozoans and so on.
In the Smoky Hills (North Central Kansas) the Late Cretaceous (around 87 - 82 million years) Niobrara chalk is rich in clams and oysters, but you can also find larger vertebrates – turtles, fish, shark and large marine reptiles like mosasaurs and plesiosaurs. There are occasional pterosaur (flying reptile) finds. Now those would be rare. Unfortunately, nearly all of the good collecting locations are on private property and require permission of the landowner.
There’s a more complete listing of Kansas sites and what you can expect to find here:

http://www.fossilsites.com/STATES/KS.HTM

For that first item, what I still can't see is whether that V-shaped notch is from breakage (my assumption) or is actually the natural shape of the item. If the latter I might be just be persuaded towards marine bone but frankly I can't tell. It also looks to have an outer layer with the interior fully replaced by calcite which is more usual for soft-bodied animals with a shell. It's clearly hollow, which doesn't help too much except to say that if it were marine reptile bone that would rule out turtle.
Roger