Friday mystery object #545 answer(ish)

Last week, I gave you an object from the Dead Zoo that presents a genuine mystery:

This premaxilla and fragment of maxilla came to light from beneath one of the cases, which was being dismantled to allow furniture conservation work to take place to support the redevelopment of the building.

The narrow tip of the premaxilla and small size immediately put me in mind of a small browsing antelope species that might daintily pick a new growth leaves from thorny scrub.

That shape is quite distinctive – allowing multiple species to be discounted, but I’ve been struggling to find anything that quite matches this piece of skull.

Joe Vans made a similar comment, referencing the small size and Duiker-like proportions, but different details of this object.

Frustratingly, many of the resources that used to be available online that offered well identified antelope skulls for reference and keys for identification seem to no longer exist (e.g. the Mammals of Tanzania and Animal Diversity Web), and the various AI search algorithms that seem to be all that is now available seem to have deteriorated in quality to the point that they can no longer find niche websites with sufficiently detailed scientific content, preferring instead to route searches to Etsy, Pinterest and Amazon.

So it looks like I’ll need to track an identification for this specimen down by using more time-intensive old school methods, like checking comparative specimens (something I sadly don’t have much opportunity to do these days as my role has become more managerial and my opportunities to work in the collections are almost non-existent).

Of course, that doesn’t mean there aren’t still great resources out there – John Rochester’s Flickr is a constant source of great quality images for reference, and I was delighted to discover a new one the other day, in the form of the Skull Index, so maybe there is still hope for online osteology, but none of these cover small African antelope species just yet.

Grumbles aside, I’ve managed to rule out Suni, Oribi, and most species of Duiker and Dik-dik. There are some Grysbok that need further consideration and Steenbok isn’t off the table, so at least I may have been able to narrow down the search. Of course, the best way to refine it more is to hear what from other people who may recognise something, so if you have an idea of what this might be from, then please do leave a comment below!

Friday mystery object #544 answer(ish)

Last week I gave you this little critter to have a go at identifying:

It was a genuien mystery object, as I found it scuttling around on my arm as if searching for prey of some kind.

My inital thought was a ladybird larvae, but it was far smaller and lacking in the colour patches that are present in the larvae of any species I’m familiar with.

However, as I noted in my comment last week, insects have different appearances at different stages of their lifecycle, and I have to admit that I forgot that the early instar larvae of some ladybird species don’t necessarily have the colour patches the the later instars present.

Fortunately, everyone was quick to support the ladybird larve identification, with a reminder about the different larval instars – so thanks for that!

Joe Vans made a specific suggestion of a 10-spot Ladybird Adalia decempunctata (Linnaeus, 1758) larva, which seems plausible. After a lot a searching, I’ve not managed to find anything to confirm or contradict that. The early instar Harlequin Ladybird larvae can lack colour patches, but they seem a bit broader (although maybe the mystery example just needed feeding up a bit?)

I suspect that this is one of those mysteries that can’t be answered without rearing the larvae until it’s grown enough to start disp[aying some more characteristic features, which isn’t possible as I returned it to the great outdoors. So that’s a lesson learned!

Thanks to all of you for your input on this – it’s great to be reminded that sometimes there isn’t always a specific answer available, and keeping an identification broad is just fine. Moreover, keeping it general means you’re less likely to confirm something incorrectly – and I think that’s probably for the best!

Friday mystery object #544

This week I have a genuine mystery object for you to have a go at identifying:

I found this little critter hitchhiking on my arm, so I thought I’d see if anyone could help me work out what it is.

Insects aren’t my strongest area of knowledge, as there are just soooo many species, and they even have different appearances at different stages of their lifecycle, so your help would be appreciated!

Any ideas about who my little friend could be?

Friday mystery object #543 answer

Last week I gave you this mystery skull to have a go at identifying:

I suspected this one wouldn’t be too much of a challenge, and I wasn’t mistaken.

There were some great cryptic clues, ranging from Chris Jarvis’ references to a charming Jill Tomlinson book, to Adam Yates’ reference to the genus name and some possible members of that genus with names reflecting their habits/habitats:

Well when it grips its prey it certainly has a tight toe, but does it hang out in agricultural storage buildings or among the Poaceae?, I cannot say.

With “tight toe” being Tyto and the options being between Barn Owl and Grass Owls. This is one that hangs out in agricultural buildings – the Barn Owl Tyto alba (Scopoli, 1769).

Barn owls have a distinctive headshape – longer than other owls, with a little bump on their forehead. However, I have to admit that I’m not familiar with the skulls of any of the Tytonidae species, and I’ve found it tricky to find good reference material online. If you know of any resources out there, I’d love to hear about it!

Friday mystery object #542 answer

Last week I gave you this skull to try your hand at identifying:

It’s not the easiest of tasks, as there are quite a lot of birds in this general size range and with this general shape of skull, so the overall outline from the top only helps narrow things down a little. It is worth noting that general proportions all suggest some kind of Passeriform.

The exact length of this specimen is 49mm, but as with all species, there is a bit of variation depending on subspecies, age, sex, quality of diet and other environmental factors. I suspect this one is a little on the small side for the species.

The side view offers another perspective on the bill morphology, which is looks quite generalist, perhaps a little on the gracile side, but not overly skinny. Given the size that puts me (and many who left a comment) in mind of something in the Thrush family.

It’s also worth noting that the bill sheath, while not very apparent, is still present (if it wasn’t you’d see small holes along the side of the bill, which are the blood vessels that supply the tissues that secrete the keratin of the bill sheath). This is a big clue, as the bill sheath is yellow.

For me that immediately put in my mind a very specific type of Thrush – the male Common Blackbird Turdus merula Linnaeus, 1758.

This can be checked with reference to the excellent Skullsite resource, which provides a fantastic range of bird skulls with images from several different angles. Take a look at the underside of this specimen:

The posterior region of the palatine bones have quite a distinctive shape – flared and with a broad shallow notch at the posteriormost margin. If you compare this to other skulls in the genus Turdus, you’ll notice that the notch is almost absent in the Redwing, it has a much sharper outer angle in the Songthrush, it’s a lot deeper in the American Robin, it’s deeper and sharper in the Fieldfare, and so on. The important thing is that the palatine of the Blackbird on the Skullsite is still consistent with that of the mystery object.

While this feature takes a while to get familiar with, it can be quite helpful when narrowing down similar skulls like these. I hope that pointer proves useful!

Finally, I offer up congratulations to Adam Yates who not only got the correct identification, he also left a great cryptic clue to share that information. Bravo!

Friday mystery object #541 answer

Last week I gave you this leggy mystery object to identify:

As I suspected, it wasn’t a difficult challenge in terms of working out the species, since it is one of the most common examples of its type. To make it a bit more interesting I also asked for you to keep the answer cryptic for extra points.

Chris Jarvis was first to the party referencing “stone” – part of the common name of this species. Adam Yates gained some extra points by cleverly working in a reference to the species name “forficate”, and Joe Vans managed to work a rhyme into his correct response.

This is, of course, a Stone (or Garden, or Brown) Centipede Lithobius forficatus (Linnaeus, 1758). It’s a very widespread species, ocurring across Europe as its natural range, but also now widespread in North America – even occurring on the Hawaiian islands and with records from Colombia.

These centipedes live in leaf litter and hunt small invertebrates with their venomous front legs (which are called forcipules).

These centipedes can actually be quite difficult to definitively confirm the identification of, as they share a lot of similarities with other Lithobius species, such as the larger Lithobius pilicornis Newport, 1844, so a proper key is really needed (the British Myriapod and Isopod Group have some very useful resources) and specimens are essential for any surveying work that takes place, to allow checking of detailed features under a microscope – such as the forcipular teeth.

This is why specimens are an important validation resource for confirming species identifications, and appropriate lodging of these specimens in collections is important, to allow observations to be checked and confirmed.

Thanks to everyone for playing – let’s see what mystery object I’ll stumble across for next Friday’s challenge. Have a lovely weekend!

Friday mystery object #540 answer

Last week I presented this mystery object for your identification delectation:

While this is such a heavily processed piece of skin, with most of the diagnostic features removed, an additional close-up image provided a clue:

People in the comments section and on Bluesky recognised that this is the skin of a member of the Batomorphi (AKA the Rays). While there were some differences in opinion on the species, there is one term that came up several times in several ways, but in the words of Chris Jarvis:

Much to my chagrin I think I might know what this is?

This is of course a reference to the material shagreen, which is a type of leather (often dyed green) with rough dentine inclusions that are polished to create “pearls” embedded throughout.

Shagreen used on a Japanese personal dining set, featured in Mystery Object #25 (all the way back in 2010)

There are several species of Ray – and indeed some sharks – with skin used to make shagreen. One is called the Shagreen Ray, but I suspect that this is not an example of that species, despite it occurring in Ireland (there’s a very helpful guide to the Skates and Rays of Ireland if you’re interested).

I think this mystery object might be a Cowtail Stingray Pastinachus sephen (Forsskål, 1775), since that species has been extensively harvested to supply shagreen in the past, and the object is lacking the distinctive denticle patterns that can be used to help distinguish between the Shagreen Ray and other similar species.

It could of course be another species, and if anyone knows of a definitive set of features visible on this specimen, I would love to know what they are. So I would like to congratuate everyone who mentioned rays and shagreen!

Friday mystery object #539 answer

Last week I gave you this sad scene with a mystery victim to try to identify:

I thought it might be an interesting one, because when I first saw it my mind took me around the houses thinking about what it was.

My first thought was actually that it had some features I associated with a European Stonechat:

Male European Stonechat Saxicola rubicola image by Ron Knight, March 2013 CC-BY-2.0

But on closer inspection I realised that the bill was surrounded by red feathers rather than black, and the “black” feathers were probably not originally black, and were as a result of staining from the products of decomposition.

A similar sized chat that’s more commonly encountered in the area fits the “bill” more closely – or more to the point the feathers around the bill fit its plumage more closely. The European Robin Erithacus rubecula (Linnaeus, 1758).

Male European Robin Erithacus rubecula with a mealworm. Image by Philip Heron, July 2008 CC-BY-SA 3.0

So well done to Hilary, Chris and Joe who all saw through the feather discolouration and recognised the bold and beautiful bird that this sorry specimen started out as. Now all remains is to do the CSI work to figure out if this gruesome death was the result of a cat, a car or a window – three of the most common terminators of urban birds…

Friday mystery object #538 answer

Last week I gave you this mystery skull to try your hand at identifying:

It wasn’t quite as easy as it might at first seem, and it led to a great discussion in the comments section.

Several people were initially taken in by the shape, perhaps without considering the scale, as this looks very similar to our old friend the Tasmanian Devil:

Skull of Tasmanian Devil.

However, the mystery specimen is almost half the size of Tasmanian Devil. The similarities do offer a good clue of where to look for alternative identifications though. The Dasyuridae is a family of Marsupial carnivores that includes the Tasmanian Devil, a variety of small mouse-or-shrew-like forms (which a smaller with more pointy snouts that this), plus the members of the Genus Dasyurus – the Quolls.

The comments moved on to the Quolls quite quickly, with some discussion around whether this was the Spotted-tailed (or Tiger) Quoll or if it could be the Western Quoll. In the end, Kat Edmonson noticed a feature of the nasals to help distinguish which it was, and Adam Yates noticed a useful feature of the angular process of the lower jaw:

In the mystery specimen those processes that project inward on the mandible are “pronglike” but the Spotted-tailed Quoll they are more triangular.

So well done to everyone who worked out that this is the skull of a Western Quoll, Dasyurus geoffroii Gould, 1841. I hope you enjoyed the challenge!

Just to note, I’m currently at the Ulster Museum for the NatSCA conference – my annual opportunity to connect with other natural science collections and one of the highlights of my year! While I’m here I may see if there are any interesting obects I can find to use for future mystery objects – let’s see what I can find!

Friday mystery object #538

Before I share this week’s Friday mystery object, I’d like to just take a moment to mark the 100th birthday of Sir David Attenborough.

I think it’s fair to say that he is a national hero in the UK and the source of inspiration for generations of naturalists, thanks to his documentaries. I’ve been fortunate enough to meet the legend himself a couple of times, and he was even generous enough to lend his Elephant Bird egg to an exhibition I was involved in at the Horniman Museum over 10 years ago.

So here’s wishing a very happy century celebration to Sir David!

With that said, here is a nice skull for you to have a go at identifying – I’d love to hear your thoughts on what it might be:

Let me know what you think in the comments below, and I hope you have fun working it out!

Friday mystery object #537 answer

Last week I offered up a fossil specimen from the collections of the Horniman Museum & Gardens for you to have a go at identifying:

The type of preservation here is quite distinctive for those familiar with fossil Lagerstätten (sites of exceptional fossil preservation or concentration). This silvery sheen on a piece of dark slate is immediately recognisable as the type of soft-bodied preservation I expect to see in specimens from the Burgess Shale.

The Burgess Shale is an incredible fossil locality in the Canadian Rock Mountains, that preserves animals from marine ecosystem that was rapidly buried around half a billion years ago. The rapid burial and some factor that created a hostile environment (low O2 or perhaps a hypersaline seep) prevented the decay of the soft tissues of the animals that were buried and created conditions that preserved soft parts of the animals present, rather that just preserving hard parts,

This unusual set of conditions means that rather than just seeing shells of animals like brachiopods and carapaces of trilobites, we get a much more accurate snapshot of marine life at the time, including a variety of bizarre worm-like animals and creatures with forms that aren’t recognisable as being from types of animal alive today.

This particular specimen is not all that strange in comparison to some of those organisms that diversified in the Cambrian explosion (a name we use to describe the apparently sudden diversification of multicellular life around 540 million years ago).

Artistic reconstruction of the Cambrian (Drumian) Marjum biota in the House Range of Utah, USA, including radiodont components. Credit: Holly Sullivan (www.sulscientific.com) 19 January 2021.
Used in Pates S, Lerosey-Aubril R, Daley AC, Kier C, Bonino E, Ortega-Hernández J. 2021. The diverse radiodont fauna from the Marjum Formation of Utah, USA (Cambrian: Drumian) PeerJ 9:e10509 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.10509

The mystery object actually doesn’t look too much different from some of the living Polychaetes, such as the pelagic Gossamer Worm:

Planktonic polychaete worm in the genus Tomopteris. Image by uwe kils, 2005

However, there are several different Polychaete worms recognised from the Burgess Shale, so it does take a bit of close investigation to work out which it’s likely to be.

Adam Yates took a good look and while his first response of Canadia spinosa Wallcott, 1911 matches the label with the specimen, he updated his answer. Looking at the setae structure, I think that Adam is right in rethinking this. In Canadia spinose the setae appear more flight-feather-like, with longer leading bristles and a more swept-back appearance:

Smithsonian specimen of Canadia spinosa. Image by Bruce Martin, 2015. Source https://collections.nmnh.si.edu/search/paleo/?ark=ark:/65665/3c7b58e5ae22a4a34b6587ec5cfc46b49

The setae of the mystery specimen appears a bit different, with bristles of a more similar length that stick out in more separated tufts. This makes me concur with Adam, in that we may be looking a Burgessochaeta setigera (Walcott, 1911):

Burgessochaeta setigera USNM198705. Image from Parry et al. (2016) The impact of fossil data on annelid phylogeny inferred from discrete morphological characters. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/view-large/figure/15125348/rspb20161378f01.jpeg

I hope you enjoyed that little journey into the distant past as much as I did. Learning about the Burgess Shale was a highlight of my undergraduate days, as it offered a glimpse at both the lost diversity of the past, and a hint at the unfathomable depth of time through which life has persisted, adapted and evolved.

Friday mystery object #536 answer

Last week I had two bony elements from the same skeleton for you to have a go at identifying:

I suspect either one would have been enough, but it’s nice to be able to share a couple of elements so they’re online and available for reference to help with future identifications.

Adam Yates offered up a great clue in answer to this particular mystery:

This puzzle gave me a heap of trouble. I eventually settled on the villainous goblin-creatures from Middle-Earth, particularly the laage species

As a huge fan of Tolkien I appreciated this reference to Orcs (although the spelling is of course different to the kind of Auks we’re looking at here). The little anagram of “aalge” was also a nice touch – as that’s the species name for this particular type of Auk – the Common Murre or Guillemot Uria aalge (Pontoppidan, 1763).

Common Murre /Guillemot. Image by Andreas Trepte, 2011

This is actually a species I’ve had on the blog about 10 years ago – although that was from a different individual and I only had the sternum that time:

Friday mystery object #286 answer

The specimen I used this time is from a more-or-less complete skeleton in the Dead Zoo’s comparative avian osteology collection:

I love this resource, as it provides a great tool for zooarchaeologists and comparative anatomists to check the identifications of found bones, or to consider the proportions and structural features relating to locomotion, behaviour or whatever else piques their interest.

These days I rarely get a chance to look through the collections, and most of my time is spent in meetings or dealing with emails or other admin, but every now an then an opportunity arises to open a couple of draws to remind myself of how I got into the museum world, and it’s always a pleasure.

More mysteries next week – assuming I get a chance to open a drawer sometime soon!