As I’ve mentioned a few times, I have recently started a new job as Curator of the Grant Museum of Zoology at UCL. If you’ve never visited, you should pop by, and if you have visited then why not vote for us in the Time Out Love London Awards, preferably right now, since voting closes today. I’d love it if we could beat our heavyweight neighbour, the British Museum!
Moving on to the real subject of the blog, I have finally had a chance to start hunting for specimens in the Grant to see if there are any unidentified items tucked away that might make good mystery objects – and my new colleague Tannis knew just where to look:
This bag-o-bones came to us from the Royal Free Hospital and was completely sealed up, making it hard to see inside. For those of you who like a challenge I’ll leave you with just this image, but if you’d like a slightly less tricky image to work from, you can see the single most distinctive part of the specimen here.
Do you have any idea what it might be? It’s pretty easy if you check out the distinctive bit, so please keep your answers cryptic if you can!
Oh, and if you like skulls, you might be interested in my first Specimen of the Week on the Grant Museum blog.
Zygoma 
It’s some kind of big cat?
Could be…
Your job is my dream. Congratulations on the new gig! Also, of course I’ll go for a vote.
Thanks! It’s a pretty amazing place to work – still learning the ropes for now, but can’t wait to really get to grips with the collection!
Large predator in Africa? Living in pride?
In the right area, but I don’t think this specimen would’ve had much pride.
no pride? must be one of those lazy cats that lounge around in large trees.
carnassial sin… ok i confess for this second post i checked out the additional piece of evidence. nice tooth!
I went straight to Specimen Uncovered. Agree with Joe about the carnassial. So guess, given the size of the specimen that this beastie doesn’t change its shorts (a little Pratchett reference there)…
OK, I’m going to hedge my bet: the depth of bone there suggests to me a different one of the feline branch of carnivores. Does it have a great sense of humour?
Not really…
Ta.
Looks remarkably like a specimen I have from a large local feline (local being California) so I doubt it’s that. They cross major freeways but not oceans! I’ll keep looking.
Well I am a rookie at this but I am going to guess large feline , but that’s as close as I can pin it down.
I would say this is a cat with some color.