Please Help ID African bone sculpture

Hello
I just bought this large bone piece that measures 50 cm tall. It is scultpted on two sides: perhaps a funerary stela. Can anybody tell me of what African ethnicity this sculpture and what animal is the bone: I thought it may be a scapula of a large mammal.
Thank you for your help

 

Welcome!

 

I'm thinking generic South African tourist item.
Likely cow bone.

 

I do not think that it is a bone of cow that measures 50 cm of height, 20 cm of width and 6 cm of thickness.

 

so maybe elephant bone..or some other type of bone..

 

View attachment 55235

View attachment 55235 View attachment 55235

No bones of the elephant skeleton correspond

 

Well then, what type of bone do you think it is ?

 

There are very few elephants in South Africa and this sculpture comes from West Africa. It is also not an item for tourists because for this type of item one does not use rare materials like elephant or mammoth bone.

 

I'd need to see the flat base of it, then I'll know.

 

Here are photos of the flat base with close-ups

 

Hmmm, concave on one side, convex on the other, honeycomb polygonal marrow structure; those together being unmistakeable and unique characteristics the

 

Thank you for your reply but it seems that it misses part of the sentence...

Perhaps the convex and concave aspects are the result of the sculpture

 

Yeah, I shoulda put (tbs)

 

Which animals have bones with honeycomb polygonal marrow structure?

 

Could be an old Giraffe bone. Note the convex/concave cross-section in 2nd pic down. Somewhere I had read that the Giraffe was designed (or gradually modified) so it could move around with a huge skeleton that wasn't excessively heavy.

http://www.britishblades.com/forums/showthread.php?190363-Giraffe-bone-all-the-way

 

Indeed it could well be the scapula of a giraffe. I did not think about it. Thank you very much. Another question: do you think it is a fossil bone according to its structure?

 

If fossil it would be stone-hard and probably shiny like flint, cold to touch, and it doesn't have that look to me. If you can scratch it easily and deeply with a knife it isn't fossilized.

 

I did the test: it is not fossil.