A couple weeks ago while giving a tour at the Hill Annex Mine State Park (MN) This Link
i found a fossil that was very rare at this Park.
As a tour guide i would normally help tourist find a fossil that i spot but this being a Geology club full of amateur and professional Geologists and Mine Engineers I collected the fossil and it will then belong to the park.
This is the Bone i found HERE
This fossil is now at the Science Museum of Minnesota being researched.
Just thought someone here might want to throw in a WAG or 2 before i get an answer back.
There is a program at the SMM called Object ID where anyone can bring in an item for research for free, however the field staff from the SMM has been collecting at this State Park all summer and were on site again today.
This Material the fossil was found in was removed from the ore body 100 years ago. The material was under a layer of surface overburden that ranged from 50 to 150 feet deep and is told to have been the sea floor on the per-historic seas that covered much of the continent and for many years the mine processed this low grade Hematite ore thereby shipping a high grade Concentrate very fine ore to the steel mills.
The Park has been holding fossil hunts for over 30 years.
It looks awfully familiar. My first guess was it was part of the femur of a theropod, but it would have had to be a pretty small one (unless you have abnormally large hands). My next guess would be one of the metatarsals (long foot bones) of a larger theropod.
I sure hope you are right and this is a theropod. With all the hype about the Spinosaurus today why wouldn’t i want this to be??:rolleyes:
Anyway, i have only a preliminary WAG from the field staff as Dr. Ericson has not given his determination and that is my fossil may be a flipper bone from a Plesiosauria
As can be seen from the skeletal image there are a large assortment of bones in the flippers. Close to 100 similar bones.
But to the SMM field staff this is a very significant find because the goal is to find Vertebra species.