Last week I gave you this detail of a specimen from the Dead Zoo to identify:

I don’t think anyone nailed the identification to species, but several of you get very close, with a trend towards the ursine.

This is the mouth of a Polar Bear Ursus maritimus Phipps, 1774 and even more precisely, it’s the mouth of the Polar Bear shot by Irish explorer Leopold McClintock in April of 1851 on the pack ice between Bathurst Island and Byam Martin Island, in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.

As I understand it, this particular bear was tracking McClintock’s group on the ice, and was shot by McClintock to protect the party (and provide some fresh meat). However, the specimen has several bullet holes, which suggest that more than one member of the group took a pop at the bear.

Regardless, McClintock is identified as the collector and the specimen was presented to the Royal Dublin Society by Erasmus Ommaney in December that same year. Ommaney was second in second in command of the HMS Resolute, the ship being used to on an expedition to discover the fate of Sir John Franklin, who was lost while attempting to discover the Northwest Passage.

So well done to everyone who managed to recognise the toothy grin of this enormous predator – the animal reputed to give the Arctic its name (“Arctos” meaning “Bear” in Greek – although that probably refers to the constellation Ursa Major or Ursa Minor, which are key navigable features in the northern sky).