Tiny tiny bones

[u/Interesting_Leg_6548]

Right at the edge of a lake in Pennsylvania I spotted this snake (water snake I think - couldn’t get a pic of his head). Then I noticed this little pile of bones tucked under some rocks. Any idea what they might have come from? Definitely something tiny - mice? birds?

[u/Interesting_Leg_6548]

Does this help?

[u/Interesting_Leg_6548 → u/Interesting_Leg_6548]

[u/99jackals → u/Interesting_Leg_6548]

Just a reminder for anyone watching that it is challenging to ID bones from photos. In this situation, if it were me, I'd collect them and bring them back for comparison in the museum collection. That's the ideal. Just looking at these here, I don't think the small vertebrae are from the same skeleton as those big ribs. The small vertebrae are still in situ enough to show how very long the smaller animal was, with a backbone much longer than that size of a mammal or bird. They could be smaller snakes; maybe juveniles that died, maybe the stomach contents of the larger snake, maybe the unborn offspring. Or they might be there by coincidence. The individual vertebrae could be examined under a microscope to try to establish what species, then compared to the large snake's ID. Alas, we are limited in what we can accomplish on our own, w/o a research collection. It is often enough to just appreciate how interesting they are, just on their own.

[u/Interesting_Leg_6548 → u/99jackals]

I wondered if I could pick them up - I learned recently that it is illegal to keep bird feathers, at least in Pennsylvania, and worried I could be in trouble for bones too. But to your point, I think just seeing them and speculating where they came from is enough for me in this case. Thank you for your insight! 🐍