Tracking - cold case - old bones

[British Red]

Out for a bimble today with Lou1661 & Bushbaby

On the way back from the pub and having consumed green beer (don't ask ), we came across the following

There were maybe half a dozen bones in the 6-8" size range. Some had clearly been cracked and the marrow consumed.

They were well into an arable field (maybe 20 yards form the road border) on footpath area crossing spring wheat,

Any speculation on the victim, killer and consumer?

Red

 

[Mesquite]

Muntjac as victim, car as the killer and badger or fox as the consumer?

 

[British Red]

Ahhh - no munties round here!

 

[Kerne]

Colonel Mustard, in the library, with a candlestick...

 

[Roibeard]

Old decayed bone does get very brittle once it has lost its collagen and breaks like in your pictures quite easily, even without intervention from animals.

If there was that number of bones together, it might suggest the site isn't that old though.
Ask me in a year and I might know!
(I will be studying animal bone identification next year in college!)

 

[robin wood]

Colonel Mustard, in the library, with a candlestick...

 

[Nyayo]

Top one looks like a tibia from a lamb or a sheep younger than, say 18 months, bottom one looks likes a humerus from same. Both look as if they've been in the ground for a while, but the bottom bone has a fairly new break in it.

N

 

[British Red]

Tibia yep. There were also fibia and fragments of pelvis.

The field though is an arable field and no chance (at all) of old sheep bones being buried and turned up by the plough


I think Mesquite was probably on the right track..but substitute Roe (maybe a young one) for Muntie.

However these bones aren't new. Cold they weather that mch in a winter (the last time that field was turned)?

What would crack bones and consume marrow in that way in the UK (or do we think fox on road kill and plough to scatter the bones)?

Red

 

[rivermom]

Frost will split a bone. Worms, ants, and slugs will hollow it out. that's what I rely on to get bones for craft work.

 

[Chinkapin]

I think it is clear that the victim was Bilbo Boggins - - that is obviously one of his thigh bones, and it is self-evident that Col. Mustard did in fact, do him in, in the library, with a candlestick just as Kerne suggest.

Much as I hate to raise the ugly spectre of cannibalism, it is well known that Col. Mustard has had a "fondness" for marrow ever since that incident on the upper Zambesi involving the missionary. But I digress. . . .

 

[British Red]

Frost will split a bone. Worms, ants, and slugs will hollow it out. that's what I rely on to get bones for craft work.

Indeed. My puzzlement is that a large collection of them should be, in the middle of a field that had been ploughed a few months before. On a grass verge and weathered over time I can get. But theres no way that animal died in that location (I know I walk it regularly) or was turned up by the plough.

I can only assume road kill on a nearby road and a leg or two was dragged into the field by a fox?

Red

 

[jimford]

Unlicensed pig slaughter remains?

Jim