This week I’m mixing things up by throwing an insect into the mystery object mix:
This dusty critter turned up in the Dead Zoo (of her own volition). Any idea of the species?
Have fun!
Friday mystery object #411
Zygoma
Adventures in natural history collections
Zygoma 
Wood you believe it? A sight for saw eyes! Shame we can’t see the head markings under that dust -it might have a face like a camel!
In my plodding fashion, I see diptera. With an ovipositor?
Just looked up sawfly, cunningly taking my cue from the others’ clues. The blasted thing isn’t even a true. Note to self: never pretend to know insect identification.
A true fly, that is.
How much wood would a sawfly saw if a sawfly could saw wood? I’ll make giant guess.
Comment on the discussion so far. The overall appearance of Paolo’s deceased guest is definitely fly-like: hence Palfreyman’s initial suggestion of the fly and mosquito order, Diptera. But, as he also noted, it has a prominent ?ovipositor? (not being a real entomologist, I couldn’t tell an ovipositor from some other sort of tail-spike, but this sounds like a plausible identification). Now, such structures seem … uncharacteristic … of Dipterans. The Wikipedia article on the order has photos of 18 different members of the order, representing different sub-taxa, and NONE show a tailspin like this. Chris Jarvis and James Bryant seem to be hinting at an insect which looks fly-like enough to have “fly” as part of its common name, but which in fact belongs to a different order, Hymenoptera: about as far removed from Diptera as any holometabolous insect is! (To preserve my amateur standing, I’ll limit myself to what I can be confident about: Arthropod. With a spikelike telson?)
Arthropod? Ha ha ha. I think you can be bolder and go as far as insect.
Almost definitely a hymenopteran, though not of the wasp/bee/ant sort.
Oh, all right: Insect if you must. The wings are pretty much unmistakable, and Insects, so far as I know, are the only Arthropods to have evolved wings. As for Hymenopteran… that seems to be the suggestion, but insects are tricky: lots of taxa “mimic” others to which they are only distantly related. As an amateur, I’m not going to stick my neck out!
Sirex juvencus perhaps?
Looks like a woodwasp to me .