Thank you for tagging me @smudge-smith ! Greetings @christy-olsen ! I concur the @smudge-smith that this is not a fossil. It does look like sandstone or a similar clastic rock that has been weathered into a unique by the current of the river. It does posses a pleasing aesthetic value, so I would at least keep it for that reason.

@christy-olsen it’s a method lots of fossil hunters use to identify fossil bone. It tells you if there is an internal bone structure of the fossil meaning it’s bone. It’s called the lick test.

Greetings @christy-olsen ! Your specimen appears to be a metamorphic rock. With Bryson City occupying the Crystalline Appalachians of NC, fossils will be practically impossible to find since they almost exclusively appear in sedimentary rock. The geological forces which created the Appalachians will have destroyed or extremely distorted any…[Read more]