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I heard about a lick test sort of thing. Is this false? I washed my fossil and dried it, and then proceeded to lick it. My tongue sort of stuck a little bit. Did I do something useful, or did I look like an idiot who just picked a rock?

The lick test is an unscientific test of the porosity of your specimen- if it sticks when you lick it, it is porous. Bones typically have a porous structure, and hence a positive lick test is correlated with bone. However, not all bone fossils are porous and not everything that is porous is bone. Personally, I think that makes it a poor test, but just my opinion. Your picture does look like a piece of bone, or even the root of a tooth, but it is very eroded and doesn’t have very many diagnostic features.

Thanks! So yeah, I kinda was an idiot who was licking a fossil. It seemed kind of sketchy, but I found it on reliable websites so I guess that’s what convinced me. But thanks again for telling me that it was indeed a fossil.

Do you have an idea of what it could have come from?

there’s no way of telling what the bone came from when it is that eroded, unfortunately.