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Help Identify This Fish Bone

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NJFish85

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On ‎1‎/‎21‎/‎2018 at 5:23 PM, NJFish85 said:

Need some help identifying what this bone is. Looks like it could be a bone in a shark tale. You can see the circular shape in the middle that looks like a socket where another bone would connect too. What do you think? Found it on the beach in NJ this morning.

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sure ain't a fish bone,looks to be  maybe a shoulder bone.

sharks don't have bones

HH

Edited by Roddy

An armed man is a citizen,,,an unarmed man is a subject,,,,,,,,

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  • 3 years later...

I wasn't sure if this was ever resolved so I figured I'd respond. This is the right pelvic bone of a juvenile cow. The socket you see is called the acetabulum and the sawed off portion is part of the pubis of the pelvis. Based on the shape of the lunate surface within the acetabulum, this is a cows pelvis, and based on the pelvis being unfused this is a juvenile animal (also, knowing this is a cow, the small pelvis size also confirms this bone is from a calf). So someones dinner ended up on the beach.

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16 hours ago, Vela99 said:

I wasn't sure if this was ever resolved so I figured I'd respond. This is the right pelvic bone of a juvenile cow. The socket you see is called the acetabulum and the sawed off portion is part of the pubis of the pelvis. Based on the shape of the lunate surface within the acetabulum, this is a cows pelvis, and based on the pelvis being unfused this is a juvenile animal (also, knowing this is a cow, the small pelvis size also confirms this bone is from a calf). So someones dinner ended up on the beach.

How can u tell the difference between a cow or a horse or a deer??

 

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1 hour ago, PSegnatelli said:

How can u tell the difference between a cow or a horse or a deer??

 

The socket you see in the photo above (the acetabulum) has a smooth surface on the inside called the lunate surface. I've attached a diagram highlighting the lunate surface in blue for reference below. 

R.2431f9715df89bcc8354bb01465b704b.png.967487fbca8d8253cb162f16a1ad9d47.png

Based on the shape of the lunate surface, you can determine which genus this bone belongs to. Genus is the first half of binomial nomenclature and is essentially how we designate animals to their closest species (We are Homo sapiens: this is our binomial nomenclature. Homo is our genus and sapiens is our species. Homo Neanderthalensis aka Neanderthals are the closest species to us).

I've attached a reference below of lunate surfaces of different genus's from one of my textbooks. This bone belongs to the Bos genus (you can see this in my textbook reference) which is the genus of wild and domesticated cattle. You can then look at different Bos species to see even more nuanced differences between species if you'd like, but we already know this is a cow. This bone is from a recent animal based on its lack of weathering, and there are butchery marks via the sawed off pubis which indicates this cow was eaten. All cow species today are domesticated cows or the descendants of domesticated cows so this was just a regular cow. Since you asked about horses and deers: horses belong to the Equus genus and deer belong to the Cervus genus which are to the left and right, respectively, of the Bos lunate surface reference shown below.

 61acd92e383c1_lunatesurfacereferenceSchmid.jpg.275c265d7e23fd008bafa434a350af85.jpg

In this case the bone is easy to identify due to the pelvis being a very species-specific bone with most of the bone present with little to no weathering. In the cases of there being part of a long bone like a femur of some domestic animal like a cow, pig, or horse, it's much more difficult to get to species just by eye due to domestic animals having very similar features with a large range of size from selective breeding. Although in these cases, and in the cases of very fragmented or weathered bones, different chemical processes can be done to determine the bone and species.

Hope this was helpful!

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