Cretaceous Ungual Bone

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  • #5786
    Daniel Peters
    Participant

    This is a Bladen County North Carolina find from 3 months ago, Donoho Creek formation, late Cretaceous. Companion finds are Deinosuchus, Hadrosaur species, Dryptosaur, numerous turtle species etc. My knee jerk ID was a (very) juvenile hadrosaur ungual but it isn’t typical to the larger hadrosaur unguals I’ve seen. Would love to hear some opinions!

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    #6070
    Eleanor Gardner
    Moderator

    Hi @daniel-peters – sorry for the delayed response! Perhaps Walter Stein (@walter-stein) can weigh in here? He does a lot of dinosaur work. What do you think, Walter?

    #6387
    Eleanor Gardner
    Moderator

    poke poke – @walter-stein – we’d love your input on this! 🙂

    #6398
    Walter Stein
    Participant

    Wow that is a weird one! Sorry for the delayed response. I am in the field, busy busy, and had difficulty with my password and resetting my password to get onto the site. My first reaction is that it is not a dinosaur and not an ungual. I suspect that it might be a worn vertebra missing the neural arch. Not sure on species yet, but its size and shape are not consistant with a young hadrosaur ungual. Lookis like a reptilian centra except for the “anterior” end. I have a couple days off around the 4th and can look into it further then. Love a good mystery!!!

    #6399
    Daniel Peters
    Participant

    Thanks for taking a look Walter. When I found this I initially thought it was an incomplete vert of some sort as well but leaned towards an ungual after taking a good look at it. The “bottom surface is worn but does appear to have some of the original surface. The anterior end looks (to me) like most other reptilian unguals I’ve seen online; we don’t see many of these in NC so an expert I am most certainly not. I did have the paleontologist at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences take a look at it and he felt it was an ungual but didn’t have any idea as to a species.

    Thanks again for your time and any further info you might have  would be greatly appreciated!

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