Natural Science Forum / Biology / Paleontology / March 2006

tbut...@gmail.com wrote:
(snip)

(snip)

Skull, no.
Here in Mount Isa we spend a lot of time extracting Oligocene-Miocene
fossils from limestone with acid, then sorting out the pieces -
anything from splinters of bone to partial skeletons of marsupials,
crocs, snakes, lizards, fish, and birds.  A lot of bits are quite hard
to identify, and it's a good rule of thumb (and only partly a joke)
that if it looks REALLY weird it's probably bird pelvis.
Bird pelvis! - something quite large, but I don't know what (first
guess - do they hunt ducks in Harris County?)
The real giveaway is the structure of the underside, where a whole
series of vertebrae are fused together into the 'synsacrum'.  Next time
you eat roast chicken, you'll find this just under the stuffing (but
may have to dig a bit).  Also low down on the side, the round socket
(acetabulum) for the head of the femur.  The upper surface does look
rather like the top of a mammal skull (e.g. opossum, pig, large dog
etc.) where the jaw muscles meet along the midline on a dorsal crest,
but here that's the bird's thigh muscles doing the same thing.
Lucky you didn't shell out for a book on identifying skulls, I suppose.
Cheers,
John

I don't think that is a skull.  I think it is part of the pelvis of a
quadruped.  There are obvious tail vertebrae running on the interior side
and femoral sockets (the sockets for the femur or upper leg, also called
the acetabullum) on either side. It's not a skull.  Hope this helps.

George