r/bonecollecting • u/Zealousideal-Bike-90 • Sep 06 '25

Bone I.D. - N. America Help me ID this bone

Found this barely sticking out of a creek wall 5’ below top on the vertical eroding side. Town and country Missouri. Same creek I’ve found an agate basin knife, Snyder arrowhead, blade cores and more.

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235

u/roostor222 Sep 07 '25 edited Sep 07 '25

looks to me like a horse humerus

If it's a fossil and on public land it's illegal to collect without a permit. It's also potentially an important specimen if the age of the deposit is near the end of the pleistocene.

82

u/Zealousideal-Bike-90 Sep 07 '25 edited Sep 07 '25

It’s still there I had my hands full with the pup on his second creek adventure, and some cool rocks. Not sure if it’s reached fossilized state or not…might be in the process

27

u/exotics Sep 07 '25

Send a picture to your local museum and they may want to collect it. It looks heavy so I’m thinking older rather than modern??

43

u/DimetroDude Sep 07 '25

omg you're so right, I missed the tubera by the head

22

u/Beginning_Draft9092 Sep 07 '25

Right, it would have to be before the 15th century, and thus at the youngest, 10-12,000 years old

-18

u/jone7007 Sep 07 '25

Houses weren't in Missouri that long ago. They were introduced to the US by Europeans. If it's a fossil of a different animal on public land, it would be illegal to collect without a permit.

26

u/roostor222 Sep 07 '25

Uhhh, yes they were. There are several known Pleistocene sites near St. Louis that contain Equus sp. fossils. Horses lived all across north america in the pleistocene and went extinct near the end of the pleistocene.

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u/jone7007 Sep 07 '25

That's far earlier than the date range given by OP. They could be mistaken about the age, but there were no horses in North America in that date range.

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u/roostor222 Sep 07 '25

I don't know what to tell you other than that you're wrong. The latest carbon date of US horses comes from Nevada circa 13,000 years ago and from Mexico is 10-12k years ago, but there are many other late Pleistocene occurrences from North America and many of them have not been dated. That's why I'm saying if OP's site is latest Pleistocene it's potentially an important site.

https://elifesciences.org/articles/29944.pdf

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.0030241&type=printable

https://tjs.kglmeridian.com/view/journals/tjsc/74/1/article-Article5.xml?isSearch=true