Family thinks this is a sting ray jaw bone ( NC OBX )
Posted by AustinsOasis@reddit | marinebiology | View on Reddit | 9 comments
Found about 100ft from the shore. My family thinks it's a jaw bone from a sting ray (mainly because we saw about 100 of them in the water). Found at the outer banks in North Carolina.
Zo_Xan_Thella@reddit
I could see it being a ray jaw bone. But I’m not an expert just an ocean lover lol.
AustinsOasis@reddit (OP)
Yeah, I looked you what a ray jaw looks like doesn't look like it to me but idk I just try to take videos of them 😅
Zo_Xan_Thella@reddit
Thanks. My bad. I forgot how harsh Reddit can be.
Professional-Thing73@reddit
Woah, what did I miss? I was gonna come back to reply to op but saw ur old comment got deleted. I liked the info you provided what was the problem?
Zo_Xan_Thella@reddit
All the downvotes made me feel like I was a pos for just hypnotizing. So I thought best to delete since it was deemed a worthless comment 😔
derpy-_-dragon@reddit
As others pointed out, stingrays are cartilagenous fish, meaning they don't have bones.
You might be able to get an ID on this over in the bonecollecting subreddit, they commonly get asked to identify pieces like this, and I know there are a few users that seem to specialize in aquatic anatomy.
If anything, they'd at least be happy that it isn't a bird pelvis that the poster thinks is a skull.
derpy-_-dragon@reddit
Throwing my 2 cents in, I think it's likely part of an atlas vertebra. It seems to have the articulation surfaces to form a joint with either another vertebra, or the base of the skull.
(It's been 5 years since I took any anatomy class, so my guess may be totally wrong. I'm just doing it for fun, take it with a grain of sea salt.)
Crustaceous_Cam@reddit
I would use iNaturalist to see what reef-dwelling fish in NC have a bottom jaw similar to that size. You can do this by searching Actinopterygii on iNaturalist, then selecting an area of the “observations” map, and finally setting the desired result from “observations” to species and switching to grid view.
twoblades@reddit
Stingrays, like all other elasmobranchs, don’t have bones.