Posted on 01/01/2011 6:51:30 AM PST by Hotmetal
Oh, my - what Hotmetal found looks like a small section of that.
Cool that’s it. Mine was 3 peices of one side of that thing.I was very careful getting it out but it fell apart anyway.
The far left fossil is probably Odocoelius virgianus( whitetail deer
The longer vertically oriented piece beneath the Equus molar is an Equus lower molar
There are several fragments which are clearly the vertebral bodies of a mammal and one looks to be perhap an alligator (Alligator mississipiensis)
The white piece at the six-oclock position is a superior molar of the species Tapirus. I cannot tell the species, but is probably Tapirus excelcus or Tapirus veroensis.
The large fragements are clearly those of a superior cusp of a Mammut americanus, the American mastodon.
There are two inferior teeth, probalby Equus or possibly Tanupalama, but I cannot see the occlusive surfaces, so I cannot be sure.
The other pieces are nondescript fragments of mamallian longbones.
Hope this helps.
Beautiful specimen.
Thanks for the info, know I can look-up pics of these animals!
I have some mastadon bones I found in a peat bog. So well preserved there was still strips of pliable meat on the bones.
Actually found the whole mastadon. A cow and a baby laying on their backs. Landowner gave the find to a college, but they never found that femur, rib and vertebra. : )
One of our guys recently found a mastadon tooth in a different part of the state, but only about a third of the size of the one in the previous pictures.
The tooth on the far left in picture one looks more like a plesiosaur tooth to my eyes. I’ll see if I can find a picture.
I did find a similar pic like this and that’s what I thought it was, I almost tossed it away because I just thought it was a rock.
Could be. Hard to tell from the picture.
Can you tell us approximately where you collected them? It would help to know the age of the nearby rocks.
And, be careful about collecting vertebrate fossils on public land because there is a new law restricting it:
http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/prog/more/CRM/paleontology/fossil_collecting.html
What you have found is a thanatocoenose assemblage Pleistocene fossils. Check out the University of Texas, Dr. Ernest L. Lundelius and his research at the University of Texas. He has several reports on this same assemblage of Pleistocene fossils.
The one looks like the K9 of a large cat. The vertebra pieces indicates a medium size animal.
A young Saber Tooth or something from a smaller species?
I am sure that is a fragment of a deer antler.
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