found vertebrate fossil

Howdy, sionix, and welcome to A2K.

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fossil pic

its extremely wonderful how the pic wont display, but if you right click the undisplayed pic and view properties, then copy the url and put it in your address box, you see the pic. its a nifty skull, i bet it was mean whatever it was :-D or not... there are more posted though that i can throw up if anyone is even the slightest bit interested. sorry i cant make it easier and just have the pic display properly.....

Whatchya got going on there is an extra "http://" in your image link:

The way it is in your post:

Note in the above, the "http://http://www.imagestation ... "

It should look like this:



which gives you this:

so, anyone have a clue as to this creatures origin and such?????

many thanks to timberland for his assistance as well!!!

Yer weccum. I haven't a clue about the critter remains you found (though to my eye it looks sorta like some sort of more-or-less unremarkable rodent), but I do OK when it comes to tech stuff - mosta the time; I do get the occasional Sparks-and-Smoke error message ...

awe, dont belittle rodentia :-D id be happy to have a few million year old rodent skull fossil! the most ive ever found are fossilized shells in limestone along side roads cut into mountains (abundant shells there!) and fossils that i "found" in a gift shop. so finding a rodent fossil, something rarer than a shell, is awesome to me :-) good suggestion though, makes sense. has a fitting nose structure for a rodent.

just wanna get it on my desktop so I can look at the pix. How many pix are there? The one I saw was so blurry I couldnt tell if it was a skull or a backplate from a LIMULUS Crab

wouldnt let me in to see number 2 but, the last shot with you holding it, looks like the "hole" in which the vert is ascending. BUT, the first one looks like the underside of a crab plate. I see no evidence of any dentition and the last one has like "little wings" on the sides of the end. This is common in the Cancer genus on the tail end. They also have a small central opening at the venter. If the pix were better wed look for a sinus and eye orbits, as well as teeth. Otherwise you could have a HMMMM Texas, beach. Id say a Part of a chelicerate from sometime in the last 60 million years. Ifwe could id the part with a key, we could pretty much tell the age.
The fossil looks like its almost a jasper like material, is it translucent?

PS the Gulf coast basin from the Mexia fault on down is pretty much Jurassic and younger. Look at a geologic map of the area you found it and post it on the thread (or a URL to the map with general area)
Im betting that its a marine chelicerate of more recent vintage like Eocene to Miocene. Just wish the pix were clearer

yes, the back definitely has a hole for the spinal cord and vertebrae. a vague triangle outline is all that made in into the pic but a hole is there filled with sandstone (of sorts) as well as an upside triangle under that making something like this: <> except going up/down, not sideways. with two small holes in the lower triangle and one larger hole with a triangle above it. it does have strange little wings on it as you mentioned, i figured they were more boney guards perhaps protecting the eyes or something. the pics are blurry, i wasnt familiar with the camera but ill work on getting it to do what i want it to do. if dentition is a reference to teeth, i definitely see no remains of where teeth were, but that area is a little broken up with the fragments embedded in the sandstone that rests on the underside as it was evidently partially crushed at one time or another. there are definitely holes that could be sinus cavities (symmetrically located in the central area around the furthest extended portion on the front just shy of the jutted out point in dead center) parts of the boney armor plate are bordering on translucense but only at the furthest edges and only to intense light (a 100yd laser pointer manages to peek through slightly) its mostly just black and then brownish around the front inside some holes. you sound informed :-D

specifically, i found it between quintana and surfside beaches. about 35 miles south of galvestion in all actuality. any good site for a geological map that i could use?

just google in the terms
Geology map of County name and texas. Something will come up.

If its a rodentia it will have spaces for two central incisors and then a gap with several pair of proto molars after the space behind the incisors.
Yeh itd be great to get some clearer pix one of the back with its top up and another from the front same , underneath the protuberances are broken sections you say? they seem to have fused in fossilization.

Just checkin' in here, sionix. IMO, ain't nobody on this board better qualified to intelligently deal wth your question than farmerman - that boy do know what he's talking about, paleontology-wise. Ain't too shabby at physics, either.

well i got the flash to turn off so the cam didnt blind itself, but its still only a 2.0 megapixel digicam so rez aint so hot. any better?

A suggestion, sionix; if the camera has a macro mode, use that, or, if it doesn't, get more space between the object and the camera. A 2MP resolution oughtta be more than sufficient to provide enough detail to help farmerman figure what that's likely to be, as long as the subject itself is in focus, even if its size in the imge is a little smaller.

i will fully admit to being camera illiterate :-)
and i will look up that macro mode thing...