Hoping I found an Indian artifact...

[Ashleynryder]

Hi!
I need some help figuring out what I found... My dad knows a lot about Indian artifacts, and he's stumped. It could be a fossil, but I know there were Indians in the area where this was found (Olentangy River, Delaware, Ohio). It was found in a private remote part of the river, only accessible by foot, and around a bend in the river. It looks almost like a fossil of a vertebrae, but at the very end, it dips down into a wider, smoother groove that is perfectly circular (which makes me think it was man made). Anyone know what it is?

[CMD]

:welcome: to the forum. I don't know what I'm looking at there :dunno:
Maybe it will be familiar to someone; we'll see.......

[taxidermist01]

It looks modern.  Like something was personally imbedded and eventually broke out.  I have a site that I like to collect fossils  (belemnites) from.  It is a very dense clay "Hard Pan" and can only be accessed during low tide and I have noticed that anything solid with weight to it that lays on the surface long (years) finds a way to imbed itself in the hard pan.  Now this hard pan shelf is exactly what it says.  It is hard but weight of the item and water action will erode the item into the surface.  I once pulled up a shovel head and a near perfect impression was left.  The shovel head was embedded flush with the edges.  I imagine the shovel got discarded because the handle broke trying to dig in the hard pan.  That is just how hard it is.  By the way, it kinda resembles a section of some type of Hydraulic Hose possibly off or a piece of farm equipment.

[Driftwood]

Hello and welcome! I'm not sure what that is, but it looks like a fossil impression of some sort... doubtful any kind of artifact or human creation. I put my money on either some kind of concretion impression or fossil impression... I'd have to get in there with some magnification, I guess.

[Ashleynryder]

It's interesting that you mention concretions, because the area I found this is loaded with them... some lodged in the shale cliffs, but quite a few on the ground and in the water.  Can you explain what a concretion impression is?  Thanks for your answer!

[Driftwood]

It would be the area of stone around the concretion that still carries the impression of the concretion itself... what kind of concretions are in your area?

[Driftwood]

Never mind, I found it... https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/...V57N02_114.pdf
There's something in the above pdf that makes some sense as concerns your find... says the larger ones often have a ridge around the center made of a different material. The thing you found might be an impression of this 'other material'. Carbonate concretions as found in your area vary in size and shape... some flattened out a bit, others like cannonballs, smooth and very round. Sometimes they have a particular texture resulting from being crushed or flattened.

[Ashleynryder]

Thanks for all the info!  I just started looking into concretions a few months ago when my friend told me about these 'big round balls' along the river on her property.  So what you're saying makes sense.  I took a couple pics of the concretions too...

[Driftwood]

Very cool! Giant cannon ball rocks make for some pretty interesting creek walking. Yeah, I would say your first post picture is the remains of one of those volcano looking masses like in your post above. We here in my part of NY have some neat concretions... here's two photos of small carbonate concretions:


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And here's a larger kind... called a septarian concretion:

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Here's a photo to show scale: