Unidentified Fossilized Objects - more info

["Gavin Rymill" <gavin@gavinrymill.com>]

> It would help to know where you collected this material?

I collected it from a battered, sort of white-ish cardboard box. I think it
was a shoe-box.

I'm being facetious of course... But its true. I have nothing to go on aside
from the material. Hence I am asking the list.

I helped in the clearout of a centuries-old disused priest college. One of
the largest buildings in the UK, so I'm told. On one of the top floors there
was a VERY dusty private museum with a few smashed display cabinets
containing Roman coins and semi-precious gems, plus boxes and boxes of
unlabelled things. They were filled with dozens of ammonites and coral and
fairly mundane things but one box was labelled "Misc - Plesiosaur?"

The bloke I was helping said that as a sort of thank-you I could nab a
little something so I took a bit which looked unusual.

It seems to be embedded in slate, as far as I can tell.

The matieral appears to contain four criss-crossing cylindrical rods all
roughly 0.8 cm wide and 0.4 cm tall. The longest is 6.5 cm. Their widths are
consistent along their lengths. i.e. no tapering.

The cylindrical features contain none of the structure I associate with bone
and no growth rings. (I'm not familiar with the level of preservation of
growth rings.)

The material is a light tan-colour. The rock in which its burried is light
grey.

Do I conclude from the fact that I've had 66 visitors looking at the
object - and only one suggestion - that it IS confusing/interesting, or is
it simply too boring/difficult to comment upon? Or is the photographic
quality too poor? I intend to get some higher resolution shots taken if
anyone thinks its worth a closer look....

Again, any comments would be appreciated.

Gav

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