Anatomy of the tibia

Ed Conrad claims that EC96-001 is a portion of the shaft of a human tibia. This is a diagram of a tibia, and as can be seen it is not a simple rod-like bone, but has a very stereotyped and detailed anatomy. A fossil is not required to show all the crisp detail of a fresh bone (although many do show an impressively complete state of preservation!), but you would expect some evidence of these anatomical characters to be found somewhere in his large collection.

I count 10 specific, labeled bumps and ridges and surfaces on this one diagram of a tibia. If Ed showed us one specimen with just 3 or 4 of these elements clearly recognizable, I wouldn't hesitate to call it a tibia. Look at EC96-001, his premier exemplar of a "fossilized human tibia": you won't find a single one of these features present. Why do all of his fossilized long bones so conveniently lack their ends?

(This image scanned from a textbook, Basic Medical Anatomy, by Alexander Spence (Benjamin/Cummings 1990). Any anatomy text can give you this information with greater or lesser detail, and it has been readily available to the public since the 18th century.)