I was on a very cold stroll today - on the Connecticut Shoreline - with my wife when we happened upon this vertibrae…I said it was from a seal or a dolphin, she thinks it was from a fish of some sort… Could someone help us out here.
Thanks a bunch.
dolphin vertebrates.
Not particularly relevant, but it’s bugging me: A single spine bone is a vertebra, multiple such bones are vertibrae, and a vertebrate is an animal that has them.
Very true - I’ll have to look into the editing command, I have not ventured there yet. This example is two sides of one vertebra…
Uhh, isn’t that a quarter?
Yes. And a complete dolphin spine is worth around $15 
I believe fish vertebrae are solid throughout, and they grow like rings on a tree (so you can possibly age the fish). Mammal vertebrae have a “spongy” core, surrounded by a more solid envelop. Yours looks mammalian, but I don’t have the experience to know that is dolphin. The ones I just looked up on google, don’t quite look like that.
I’ve always wondered about that. I’ve got some kind of fish vertebra that I found on the beach – where does the spinal cord go?
Yeah, I was going to ask, what makes us believe it is dolphin and not cow fallen in the ocean (or any other mammal, of course). What are the distinguishing features?
A quick google image search of ‘bovine vertebra’, ‘sheep vertebra’ and other similar terms seems to suggest that the vertebrae of land mammals are very different (more complex and angular) in shape to this specimen
This specimen was definitely a cetacian - I think - I’m just wondering which variety. We have Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphins off our coast, could be one of those.
Is Colibri anywhere to be found?
see below
If the animal that this was from has a backbone similar in design to a human, then you have found a cervical, i.e. neck, vertebra (since the spinous process - the part sticking up towards the quarter - is bifid, and human cervical vertebrae are bifid in that way). The space for the spinal cord is rather small which, to my WAG, suggests a non-quadruped (four limbs would require more circuitry and thus space).
If it’s from a dolphin, then this site suggests it might be from a bottlenose since other dolphins cervical vertebrae are fused together, but not the bottlenoses’ (i.e the specimen you’ve found is single, not fused).
Hmm - so it looks ot be a bottlenose dolphin vertebra. Any chance it’s from a seal I wonder? There are quite a few grey seals and harbor seals in the area…
If you look at this cite, and scroll down a little, you’ll see dolphin vertebrae…which don’t resemble what you’ve got there hardly at all.
As to what it actually is from…I got nuthin’.
My first impression is that in the first picture, the vertebral surface seems to be sliced in half with a sharp instrument, showing the interior of the bone. Is this surface in fact flat? This implies to me that it is from a domestic animal. What you may have there is a soup bone.
I agree with the two docs, however, that it is mammalian rather than from a fish.
A soup bone on the beach? It does appear sliced… But what kind of mammalian domestic bone would be that small and sliced like that? Deer maybe.
I’m not sure. It is quite small. Lamb? Is there a curry shop in the vicinity? Perhaps suckling pig?
Is this a public beach or other area where picnics might take place, or is there one in the area from which this might have floated?
Since it’s only half a vertebra, that may explain why it looks so “simple.” Some of the articulations and other structures are missing. I don’t really have the resources here to identify it to species, especially from a photograph.
It’s a private beach, in Long Island Sound. We do get a lot of tankers and such going by…but they are at least 12 miles offshore. No butchers or other such things in the area. I’ll chaulk it up to happenstance I guess. Someway, somehow this vert. found it’s way to this beach…
In a mammalian bone, the neural arch is fused to the body of the vertebra, or centrum. That arch is what you see above the cavity for the spinal cord above the centrum. In many fish vertebrae, the neural arch may not be firmly fused to the centrum, so all you find is a bare centrum. (Actually the centrum may have a hole for the notochord, but this may not be readily apparent.)
See here for an example of fish vertebrae. The delicate neural arches here would likely break off.
