Monday, February 28, 2011

Weird bone report

Andrew McKenna-Foster, the Natural Science Research and Education Director at the Maria Mitchell Association found this weird bone in their collection a few weeks back. Any guesses as to what it is??



It is very rounded and smooth; no identifying tags or location clues besides being here on Nantucket (which can be a red herring with all the trade and travel initiated by the whalers).

While I was looking around the web for some clues to this mystery, I came upon this site and really liked it, so I thought I would share it with you: http://www.neatorama.com/tag/fossil/

Lots of fun fossils on there, one of my favorites is a member of a family of giant armored turtles called meiolaniid which can be seen at the Smithsonian Natural History museum in DC. If you are ever in the area,  check out some of our greatest national treasures, the various free Smithsonian museums (19 at last count) on the Mall in DC:

4 comments:

  1. It's a White-Tailed Deer antler. Looks like a few years old.

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  2. I would have to agree. Antlers come in all shapes and sizes. Without seeing it in-hand, I would go with antlers also.

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  3. thanks guys, very helpful!! makes sense once you think of that

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