Featured Kudos to anyone who knows what this is made from!

I have had this pendant for a couple of years now and have never known what it was. However, while at an antique store I stumbled into another similar piece and it was revealed to me what it was! My pendant is wrapped in 10k gold. Does anyone want to guess what it might be?

 

some animals tusk..?

 

What komo said, or claw or horn. Something organic rather than mineral.

 

A plectrum ... or maybe an ancient burnishing tool? In the past I have used a bone burnisher when assembling a stained glass panel.

 

Is it a filed down and polished animal tooth?

 

Despite the colors, I'm hoping it's not tortoise shell.

 

Tortoise or turtle?

 

Agree with organic
A big bird’s beak?
Ostrich nail?

 

Mookaite jasper?

If not, can we have a little more information please? Is it cool to the touch? Any hint as to vintage? - things you could tell about it before you were told what it is.

 

Bezoar stone!?

 

elk tooth

 

I'll go against the grain, as I don't think it's shell, tooth, or tusk. But, it doesn't look like a mineral. Just a wild guess, but it looks like something solidified by heat, a by-product of some process or other.

But heck, what do I know?

 

Ambergris?

 

Not ambergris for certain. Something organic though. Not amber. Fossil of some sort?

 

Good guesses but it turns out to be fossilized walrus ivory. Mine is yellowed from the age of it! https://fishcreekalaska.com/products/walrus-ivory-slice-earrings-1

 

well, that's pretty much a tusk...then
but I have my reservations...

AND.... how would you add any more age to a fossil ?

 

I considered fossilized walrus ivory, but it doesn't look quite right to me. The center of your piece looks simply pitted, rather than the characteristic crystalline appearance of walrus ivory.

 

I have the same reservation.



I know it is the term used, but I also have reservations about calling material like this 'fossilized', as to me that means once living tissue has been replaced by minerals or left an impression in a soft material that became hard over time. Fossils are rock. Material like this has been preserved by natural processes involving some combination of cold, dryness, protection from oxidation & exposure to a natural preservative, such as tannin. To my way of thinking, if you can recover DNA from it, it ain't fossilized.

 

I have that same feeling also. Possibly if it were sliced so as to show almost none of the center, which has often been described as looking rather like oatmeal. But the normal slice for any walrus ivory is straight across, and shows a lot of that crystalline-looking center part, which as several have noted, yours does not.
Looks to me more like some other type of "fossilized" ivory, such as mastodon - which is in itself a double misnomer, as that material is neither mastodon nor truly fossilized - it is usually just very old wooly mammoth ivory.
But what do I know.....