propped up on sea glass. click it for a bigger view.
notice the ridges on the small wings as well as their recurved shape. perfect for anchoring muscle although i wouldnt have realized such without farmerman's clue :-D
crabplate? no crabplate :-)
fused joints are slightly visible as hairlines on the underside of the cranial cavity.
see that larger wing on its left side, well it has a boney little formation raised from the rest of the bone as though muscle was securely anchored down. i can try to get a foto of the wing itself and hopefully better illustrate the formation. other large "wing" is pretty much gone.
here one can see a fair sized scratch deep into the muscle anchor wing, perhaps an attack that killed the animal given that it doesnt appear inflicted upon the fossil, but rather on the bone before the fossil came about.
well thats a nifty little hosting site. i hope you can all see my photos now. as soon as my cars out of the shop, ill be going to the local museum that DOES have a paleontology dept for further investigation. it appears that the "wings" were indeed for anchoring muscle though, but i wouldnt actually expect it to be anything rare.
Hey now. Are you anywhere near Rice University? Their library has a complete set of the "Treatise of vertebrate Paleontology " as well as the treatise on invert paleo. The keys to identifying the fossil are there. However, I agree with stuh , and you should get it Xrayed to see the skull makeup just to make sure that its not a recent skull. They can quantitate the Calcium flouroapatite and itd be a relative "dating" technique, The amounts of flouro apatite would correlate with other fossils from the same region if it were a fossil. The flourine dating technique is a relative thing. It only lets you know that your fossil is of an age that is similar with other fossils that the Museum or the U has in its collection.
Then, when you find out the relative age, go to the :"Treatise" and, if you have any teeth, use the dentition pattern to see what type of animal you have. Then , if you dont have any teeth, look at the sinus and optic orbits. These are keys in the taxanomic determinations.
OR , just ask a paleontologist and let us know (well, at least Ill be very interested)
i live a little south of houston, tx. the local museum isnt the greatest one in the world but i guess as a next step, it will suffice. i hadnt gone yet as i dont have my car right now and i didnt want to go in totally ignorant either. now that i have some ideas and things to talk about, ill just be waiting for my car before i go. but to farmerman, can you see the pix? could this honestly be a relatively recent skull? looks like an obvious fossil to me but i must admit my generalized ignorance...
my imageshack.us pics are showing for everyone, right? this newest one shows what i believe to be evidence that a muscle was once firmly attached to this boney wing like structure. that ridge to the far right of the pic, about mid level, is something similar to what ive seen on saaay chicken wing bones where muscle attached. i looked up multituberculates and there definitely isnt much info, although apparently itd be better if it had teeth because those seem to be of particular interest when studying this family(?) of mammalia.
so what say you, Farmerman?
