Bruce MacFadden
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Hi Paul–Thanks for your Forum post. I am sorry that it has taken me a few days to respond.
I always like to learn about new discoveries of fossil horses. Yes, the tooth that you found is of Equus. It is an upper molar in moderate wear, meaning that it was from an advanced adult (not juvenile or senior citizen).
Fossil Equus teeth are not surprizing for North Carolina, but any new discovery adds to our knowledge base. If you have photos of it with a ruler (for scale) and upload it to our FOSSILS gallery, it will contribute new knowledge to science through this occurrence. Do you know if other fossil horses, or other Ice Age mammals have been found at the same locality? This would be interesting as well.
I really appreciate your interest in this fossil and wanting to connect with us via this forum! I’d be happy to correspond with you more about this.
Hi Joe–The fossil horse limb that you found is very nice. It has the hoof and side splints. Unfortunately, it is difficult to tell for sure without the wrist or ankle bones–which are indeed very diagnostic as to front or back. The central metapodial (top center) does not look right–its end should be rounded with a central ridge. For the placement of the sesamoid boes, we would need to look at a vet anatomy text or a paper by Camp and Smith 1942 (Univ of California Publications Geological Sciences)–I do not know if these are digitally available on-line.
Bruce
Yes, this looks like an Equus incisor to me.
Wow, that would be great! I will keep you posted. Thanks Bruce
I agree that any new land mammals would be very interesting! Please keep us posted. Thanks!
@erscott, @david-butler, @lcone, @vperez, @llundgren, @egardner
This paper compares very large on-line”cloud” databases that contain fossil and modern Equus occurrence records from museum catalogs and field observations. I found that there are 125,000 records of Equus in these databases and these can be used to understand and track the location of this horse in space and time. This is one aspect of the future of paleontology–to harness big data to further knowledge about fossils.
This paper is open access, and can be freely downloaded at:
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/pab.2016.42
Hi Tara @taorminalepore – Please tell me more about policy violations.
This still baffles me. I’ll keep looking. Your photos are very clear and they are very helpful. If I find something out, I will let you know.
I have now consulted textbook of veterinary anatomy (Sisson and Grossman) and read the sections about skeletal osteology. There are no reports of accessory chevron bones in the caudal vertebral series. Are you sure that the extra bone in question associates with the tail vertebrae, or could it be from another source, like a fragment from elsewhere in the fossil?
Hi–
The skeleton is beautiful and the chevron bones are interesting. I am not aware about reports of these. Let me do some hunting and looking at references. I will let you know if I find something. Is it OK with you if I cut and paste your photo(s) and send them to someone who is a better anatomist than I am?
From the entries above, there is lots of interest in your Guardian article.
If you are available for questions, please enter here and let the forum-folks know.
So I will ask one–What proactive things can professional societies do to promote diverse early career women in paleontology?
A former PhD student of mine, Catalina Pimiento, now a postdoc at the University of Zurich, recently published a piece in the Manchester Guardian (UK) about Women in Palaeontology. If you are interested–
Belgrade has fossils everywhere. You should be fine. I do not know of a single publication concerning the fossils, but the 1979 US Geological Survey Bulletin 1457-F is a good intro to the sediments and age. Look at section # 20, which is the Belgrade quarry. You can download the pdf on-line at no cost, I think. Good luck hunting.
