Fossilized Horse Conch bugle or not.

[IndianRiverSonrise]

I started to put this in the string on fossil shells, but I thought it might derail that string so decided to post it in this post.


How can you tell if a shell like those shown above are fossilized? I don't know how to tell for sure if a shell is a fossil unless I know that it has been extinct for x number of years or it shows crystalization or something very obvious.

I have a shell, which I posted on the Pre-columbian artifacts forum because I noticed it had some work done to it. To me it looked fossilized because it has a white chalky appearance unlike most shells you see on a beach, yet it is a Horse Conch, so as far as I know it could be a recent shell.

After the slot cut into the bottom of the shell caught my attention, I also noticed that the top was removed and it works very well as a horn. What I don't know is if it is fossilized, or old, or not. Can you tell me if there is any way of telling if it is old or not. Thanks for any help.

[Harry Pristis]

Some of these South Florida taxa are still living, so they are fossils only when you know they were buried long ago (as with the shell pits in Sarasota County).

The fossils remain calcitic or aragonitic in composition, unchanged from the living shell (though they MAY have lost the surface luster).

I can't tell much from your image, but the kerf looks too uniform to be from an Amerindian effort.

[allen]

neat find !!

[mikusek]

I found a conch shell along the Des Moines River near Madrid, IA. It was near an old Hopewell settlement. It has a hole in it, not sure if the hole is damage or was done by Indians. Yours looks old, no shine anywhere, same as mine. Mine looks bleached and leached. I will take a photo next time I dig it out. The Indians were no slouches when it came to drilling rock and shells, or at cutting it. Dead ironweed stalk makes a good drill for a bow drill set up, they used sand to help cut faster. Sand and leather will work to polish rock. Their way and their tools may not have been modern, but they had the tools or they wouldn't have been able to do what they did.