I have been almost exclusively been drilling beads this winter but took a break to finish two new bead materials to me. The first is fossil whale bone from California 46 x 15 mm , 2.5 mm hole. A small amount of this rough can look very much like top quality Utah- Colorado dinosaur bone but the vast majority of the rough is similar to this , earth tones within bone that has been disrupted , compressed in this case.
The second bead is fossil dinosaur bone from Morocco , rough that seems to be on the market in fairly large quantities. It is a hardish limestone and all the colors in all the rough I have seen have been earth tones , at times with good contrast. This bead is 40 x 11 mm with a 2.5 mm hole. It will be interesting to see if the Chinese bead industry uses this rough which tends to be a bit problematic.