This week I have a very mysterious object for you to identify:
Any idea what this lump might be?
As always, you can put your thoughts, questions and suggestions in the comments section below.
Zygoma
Adventures in natural history collections
This week I have a very mysterious object for you to identify:
Any idea what this lump might be?
As always, you can put your thoughts, questions and suggestions in the comments section below.
Zygoma 
I think I have seen something like this before. Is it to help a particular type of animal not fall over ? Does it sound like something Santa might have ?
Nope! This is something rather different!
Oh bums.
Language! 😉
Something fishy about this? Does it begin with ‘H’?
That’s sort of what I was thinking.
Not this time!
Looks like crispy duck from China town to me
Mmmm…
I wish that scale indicated if it is mm or cm (or something else) rather than just, rather uselessly, ‘metric’ 😦
The major divisions are cm, so it’s a reasonable size.
Deepfried moth pupa on a stick? 🙂
Wasp related?
Nope.
Looks like the lump of smoked cod’s roe I bought recently to make taramasalata. Some kind of foetus?
Nope, no kind of foetus – nor egg.
An avian air sac? Or mummified toe??
Nice ideas – but neither is right!
Internal or external?
Internal.
Lavaed (sp?) bird OR sweet potato
A little scared now that those two things look the same to me
That’s the joy of a good amorphous lump, it can look like lots of things and then you start seeing how unrelated things can look alike. But it’s not either!
I’m guessing it’s some bony element?
Part of the skull of something, like a beak of a bird?
One of the closest suggestions so far, but still not quite there.
Bird foot — deformed/diseased?
Not footy and not birdy…
Is it one element of the workings inside something’s ear? A large mammal like an elephant?
Nothing to do with ears, but otherwise you’re getting warm.
Oh, is it an olfactory bulb? I read about a chap having one removed recently, so that some of the regenerative cells in it could be used to repair nerve pathways in his spinal column.
Nope, it’s not anything nosey either…
hmmm, a large mammal’s ‘something vesselly’. This could take some time…
There are only so many bits on a large mammal 🙂
is it a section or ureter containing a kidney stone (hence the drill sample hole) ? Removed from… *plumps for some large mammal* – a wildebeest?
that should be ‘section of ureter’
Nope!
Is it a swollen artery or vein?
Nope, but in the right general area…
oh…so, is it a heart?
No, but it relates to a pathology.
Cancerous gall bladder – mammal
It is from a mammal, but it’s not a pathology in its own right…
Something that gets removed like an appendix or tonsils?
Nope, this is something that should stay put!
(she says realising her knowledge of elephant pathology is minuscule)
Spleen?
Pituitary gland – elephant
I was going to say it looks a bit like a calcification on an arm or leg bone, maybe after a break?
Definitely along the right lines!
It’s a headless, legless rubber chicken. Which has been burned in a fire some great time ago.
It certainly looks that way…
The preserved lung of a monkey with a pack-a-day smoking habit 😉
Certainly looks like it could be, but no 😉
Pathologic or physiologic?
How was the specimen prepared?
Physiologic response to pathologic… no preparation needed.
darn! I just stumbled apon the braincast of a troodon, and it looks almost the same, But now I read in the comments it isn’t a bird and it isn’t a brain.
or is it?
No. it’s neither 😉
Now this is a good one! Is the right terminal end an epiphyseal plate?
Nope
don’t know the right name but this bone is in the throat of Merganser species
It is found in the breastbone and has to do something with breathtaking if I am not wrong.