Hi Aurélie
Not formic acid, as your experiment showed. Also not formic acid for the reason that dilute formic acid is one of the favoured methods of cleaning calcium carbonate concretions off bone. The bone apatite resists that, and other, organic acids.
I think your marks have the same form as those illustrated by Soren Blau as Fig. 4 in Palestine Exploration Quarterly, 138, 1 (2006), 13-26.
https://app.box.com/s/hoqadunmg8t8i57d9uwokevk59rh8jzc
She joined with Huchet et al Journal of Archaeological Science 40 (2013) 3793-3803, where such holes were described as 'unique' but attributed to some species of dermestid beetle.
I hope you, myself and Christian can now wake up in the early hours of the morning without wondering about holes in bone!
Richard
-------- Original Message ----------
Hi Christian,
I liked your idea of ants. The picture in Gauthier isn't very well
defined (in my version of the paper) so it's hard to say if it's the
same as my mystery traces. So I went and fetched some formic acid, and
tried to put it on some bones and.... nothing. Like, really nothing.
The bone has just absorbed the acid, like it was water!
So for now the mystery remains. I'm now trying to contact a forensic
pathologist, maybe they'll have an idea.
Do you (or anybody else) have a pdf of Proschwitz 2002 that you could
send me?
I'm still listening for any other suggestions!
Until then,
Cheers!
Aurélie
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Le 26/04/2015 17:26, Christian Küchelmann a écrit :
Dear Aurelie, dear Richard, my last mail was written as a first
impression from abroad without being able to check my literature. I
checked the examples of chemical corrosion I could find in the
references when I was back in my lab , but I could not find anything
that resembles your traces. There are some good examples of digestive
acid corrosion (e.g. in Andrews 1990 amongst others) but these traces
of liquid corrosion always affect complete areas of bone surfaces and
do not produce distinct marks like the ones on your bones. So Richard
is most probably right in dismissing my suggestion. Following up
Richards suggestion of insect feeding traces I came across Gautier
(1993, 515, fig. 2.3), who shows traces of what he assumes to be made
by ants. In the picture of a turtle carapace these are much denser
than on your bone and more like ditches but might be worth
considering, especially because ants use acids, which may be an
explanation for the rounded edges of the marks that caused my initial
doubt towards the traces of the more mechanical action of other
insects mandibles. Kaiser (2000) for instances discusses insect
feeding traces which he attributes to adult insects mandibles. They
look different from your marks. Probably unlikely because of the shape
of the marks, but what about snails... (see von Proschwitz 2002). Like
Richard and Jean-Bernard I am curious about the final answer of the
riddle. Best Christian References: # Andrews, Peter (1990): Owls,
Caves and Fossils, London # Gautier, Achilles (1993): Trace Fossils in
Archaeozoology. – Journal of Archaeological Science 20, 511-523 #
Kaiser, Thomas (2000): Proposed Fossil Insect Modification to Fossil
Mammalian Bone from Plio-Pleistocene Hominid-Bearing Deposits of
Laetoli (Northern Tanzania). – Annals of the Entomological Society
of America 93, 693-700 # von Proschwitz, Ted (2002): Tierknochen als
Kalkquellen für landlebende Mollusken. in: Falkner, Margit / Groh,
Klaus / Specht, Martin C. D. (eds.): Collectanea Malacologica,
519-524, Hackenheim
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