Turquoise ps. after Fossil mammal bone (ice age)

Item Description

This incredibly well-preserved fragment of a fossil mammal bone from the Pleistocene Ice Age deposits of Nevada is now writ in turquoise. The flattened piece looks to be a rib bone. These trickle out of the desert from time to time, found in handfuls by the lucky prospector. What happened is that copper-rich solutions flowing through the fossil beds, from nearby copper deposits, altered the bone, or the fossilized bone, to turquoise. These replacements are generally complete all the way through (not in this example), and are invaluable to researchers as they preserve superb bone detail internally as well as externally. This is a highly representative example (of a marmot-like rodent, I am told), and the aesthetics are good. Very rarely seen on the market, and usually valued at around $1000 per bone in matrix when I have seen them