Bone splinters

While fossils can be preserved as immaculate and perfect pieces of transformed bone (or other organic materials) free from distortion, breaks, damage or really changes of any kind, these are of course the exception. You can also get hideously broken and deformed and ruined specimens. Here is a photo of what happened to an apparently well preserved piece of bone (if nothing else look at how dazzlingly white it is) that crumbled at the slightest touch with, as you can see, devastating results. There are quite a few bones preserved like this at Bayan Mandahu and they look fantastic but are incredibly hard to extract. Even if you apply lots of glue to them they then just stick to the surrounding matrix and while are then less likely to fall apart, they are also incredibly hard to extract from the matrix they are now glued to. Just another small irritation that occurs during fieldwork when you have finally found something that actually is bone and then it falls apart instantly before you can collect it.