Pleistocene Fossilized Horse Mandible with Molars, Equus caballus

Western Europe, Germany, Worms, Rhine River gravels, Pleistocene era. A substantial section of fossilized horse lower jaw, Equus sp., preserving a full row of cheek teeth with their enamel crowns and folded infundibula still visible. The bone has mineralized to a warm tan, the tooth enamel darkened to near black, a coloration typical of specimens recovered from river gravels. Toward the front of the jaw a small tooth remnant survives in the bone cavity. Wild horses ranged across the cold steppe of Ice Age Europe in large herds and were among the animals most often hunted by Paleolithic people. Specimens like this one generally come out of the Rhine as dredge finds: gravel barges working the river bed near Worms and Mainz have brought up Ice Age bone for well over a century, alongside mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, bison, and giant deer. The bones are reworked, meaning they were washed out of older deposits and redeposited, so an exact age usually cannot be assigned to an individual piece beyond the broad Pleistocene span. Item # 205064

Estimate:$300

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