Last week I was in the lovely city of Edinburgh, catching up with many of my wonderful natural history colleagues from around the world at the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) conference. While I was there, I spotted this object and thought it might pose an interesting mystery object:
Interesting perhaps, but clearly not very challenging, since I think everyone managed to figure out what it is, despite the unusual viewing angle. Well done to Wouter van Gestel for being the first to comment.
Here’s an image of the same object from a couple of different (and somewhat more common) angles:
The large size and that very distinctive lower jaw, where the two halves of the mandible meet and run parallel for over half the length of the jaw, are unmistakeable (as noticed by Adam Yates). This is the skull of a Sperm Whale Physeter macrocephalus Linnaeus, 1758.
Nearby, I noticed a much smaller version of this specimen, housed in a much smaller version of the National Museums Scotland, which definitely deserves a mention:
The teeth of a Lego whale are probably not as efficient at keeping hold of a squid as the robust curved teeth of the real animal, and the skull is a bit less impressively huge, but it certainly has charm.
If you get a chance to visit Edinburgh I definitely recommend a trip to National Museums Scotland – not just for the Sperm Whale and the Lego, but also for one of the most impressive taxidermy dioramas I’ve ever seen. Here’s a small section to give you an idea:
It’s been a fantastic opportunity to catch up with natural history colleagues from around the world and to learn what everyone has been busy doing over the last few years. I also got to see some fantastic specimens held by NMS and I thought I’d set one of them as this week’s mystery object:
Do you have any idea what this might be?
As ever, you can leave your thoughts in the comments box below. Have fun!
Last week I tried something a bit different for the Friday mystery object. Instead of giving you a few different views of a skull or whole animal, I offered just a small detail:
I hope the challenge proved fun for everyone who tried to figure this out. There were quite a few correct answers, although I think it was quite a challenge.
In fact, it was a challenge issued to the 5th class of St. Laurence’s National School by the Sallins Biodiversity Group in their excellent #MapOfLife2022 project.
Here’s what Gavin Brangan has to say about it:
For many children, the Dead Zoo is their first experience of being struck by the wonder of nature up close and in person.
In #MapOfLife2022 wanted to bring as many facets of that experience to the school and local community. On Wednesday, 5th Class in St Laurence’s had a video tour and workshop given by the education department of National Museum of Ireland – Go Extinct!
Joanne Murray, a local artist, based her art workshops with Senior Infants and 3rd class in the school on the specimen drawers containing insects. To cap it all, we’ve invited the children to find Paolo’s mystery object on the ground floor of the virtual tour of the museum.
If you’ve been following this blog for any length of time, you’ll know that one of the reasons I’ve kept it going for so long (this is its 13th year!) is the community that has developed here and the opportunities the blog offers to help people engage with objects from the natural world and the stories they can tell.
In this case, I thought sharing this beautiful feather pattern would help me tell the story of an extremely rare visitor to Ireland – the Great Bustard Otis tarda Linnaeus, 1758.
This particular bird is a female that somehow ended up in Castletown, Berehaven, Co. Cork in the winter of 1925. At this point in time the Great Bustard had been extinct in Britain for over 90 years and was not to be seen again until they were reintroduced to Salisbury Plain around 2007, so it couldn’t have come from Ireland’s closest neighbour.
It’s more likely to have come from France, Spain or Portugal, meaning it was off course by over 1,000km. I haven’t found any records of particularly big storms in the winter of 1925, but often it will be something like that which brings a migrating bird so far off track.
These birds like dry open grassland, with plenty of insects to feed on. Ireland is probably too wet for them to become established, although with a changing world climate that could possibly change in the future.
This is the interesting thing about nature – it changes constantly. What we think of as being normal is actually just what we’re used to seeing in the span of our lives. This is why it is so important to understand biodiversity over time – to see how it’s changing and to work out why it’s changing.
Museums like the Dead Zoo have specimens collected by people over the last 250 years and the activities of community groups doing projects like #MapOfLife2022 can help feed into that preserved knowledge and add a new level of understanding of the natural world today.
I think it’s especially important for young people to have an opportunity to get involved with this sort of thing, since they will be our future naturalists, life scientists and museum curators. This is why the efforts of people like Gavin, and teachers like Ms Hennessy and Ms Scott are incredibly important and deserve recognition.
This week I’m going for a slightly different approach to the mystery object. Normally I give you as much information as I have available to let you figure out what you’re looking at, but today I thought I’d give you a snippet from a specimen that I think you’ll find distinctive, but which might offer a bit of a challenge.
All of that being said, here’s this week’s mystery object:
Any idea which animal this pretty pattern might belong to?
As ever, you can leave your observations, questions and suggestions in the comments section below. Happy hunting!
Last week I gave you a Blaschka glass model from the Dead Zoo to have a go at identifying:
As you are probably aware from some of my previous posts on these rather fascinating objects, there can be quite a big difference between what the specimen was sold as in the Blaschka catalogue and what we might call the species today. In fact, this is a fairly common theme with many of the mystery objects, given the relentless progress being made in taxonomy since many museum collections were established.
In the case of Blaschka models this can cause a lot of confusion, since in some collections the names have been updated to match modern taxonomy, whereas in others the original name is still used. Most confusing is where the taxonomy was updated historically (and badly) so it no longer bears much relation to either the original name or the current name. That’s why the ordering numbers used by Ward are so useful, as it allows specimens to be tracked back to the catalogue (as long as the original number has survived).
As identified on Twitter by Ann Lingard and in the comments by Cam, the mystery object is of course Gosse’s Stomphia Churchiae or more recently Stomphia coccinea (Müller, 1776).
This is one of those times when it’s a real shame that the species has been synonymised, since Gosse named the species Churchiae in honour of Miss Anne Church, who had sent him a written description and figures of the species after recovering a specimen from a turbot net in Loch Long, Scotland. Thanks to Ann Lingard for sharing a link to an interesting blogpost on “The anemonizers of Scotland” touching on this (see also p.233 of Actinologia britannica).
Finally, with the original name, the number from the Ward catalogue comes easily, which in this instance is Nr.108.
I hope you enjoyed this diversion into the world of the Blaschkas – no doubt there will be more to come in future as I’ll be talking about them at a glass conference in a month’s time.
It’s been a while since I shared one of the Dead Zoo’s Blaschka models, so I thought it might be time to bring out another:
The usual Blaschka rules apply – for those of you who aren’t familiar with what that means, you get full points* for the name and order catalogue number used by the Blaschkas (the catalogue can be found here) and bonus points for the current name for whatever this model depicts (if the taxonomy has changed). There may be extra points if you find some additional information about this model – I’m sure someone will be able to surprise me!
last week I gave you a slightly misleading mystery object to identify:
The European Sprat Sprattus sprattus (Linnaeus, 1758) was the obvious object in the image, but I was actually interested in the parasite attached to its eye:
Friday mystery object #287 Lepeophtheirus hippoglossi (Krøyer, 1837) from the Grant Museum of Zoology, UCL.
If you can remember that far back, you may remember that fish parasite was a member of the Copepoda, which is a group within the Crustacea. Most (although not all) copepods that parasitise fish are members of the Siphonostomatoidae and this week’s mystery object is part of that same Order.
For this particular specimen you don’t really need to get too bogged down in the taxonomy to work out what it is, especially if you recognise the host fish. A quick web search for “Sprat eye parasite” will take you straight to the correct species, although if you search for “fish eye parasite” you’ll eventually find it, after trawling through some fascinating information about the body-snatching eye fluke Diplostomum, which alters its host’s behaviour to make it less, and then more likely to be eaten by predators. And who wouldn’t want to take that informational detour?
So as most people figured out, this is charmingly named Sprat Eye-maggot Lernaeenicus sprattae (Sowerby, 1806).
While we’re taking informational detours, I thought you might appreciate the initial species account for this delightful critter:
Last week I gave you a mystery object from the Grant Museum of Zoology, UCL, with this old photo from my time as the Curator there:
This is one of those species that I have a bit of a soft spot for, due to the general weirdness of the skull. That does however make it quite recognisable as a specimen, even in a photo that hasn’t been taken for the purposes of identification – like this one.
Everyone who commented recognised that this is some sort of turtle, and thanks to that very flat skull with all the features towards the very front end, most people worked out that it’s a from a Mata-mata Chelus sp. Duméril, 1806.
Any extra information is useful when trying to identify fish, since there are so many species, but sometimes a bit of familiarity is what you really need to start narrowing down options, which makes the Zygoma community a helpful resource when dealing with an identification like this. And you did not disappoint!
Tony Irwin, jennifermacaire and Wouter van Gestel all came through with excellent observations on the species. This object is a neurocranium (we’ve talked about these before) with a very pronounced supraoccipital crest (the big fin-like crest on top), which combined with the overall shape of the neurocranium suggests it’s a member of the Sparidae (the family containing the Porgies and Seabreams).
Knowing this, and having the Fishbase list, makes it much easier to narrow down the likely species. Unfortunately, there is no single resource to make comparison easy, but a lot of trawling through a variety of images of skulls and neurocrania will yield results (Flickr has some useful images for example).
Image by Paula Burdiel, 2022
From my searches, the shape of the supraoccipital, vomer/prevomer (the beaky-looking bit) and that impressive set of supraorbital crests (those frills of bone above the eye sockets) suggest that this mystery object is probably the species suggested by Tony Irwin – the Gilt-head Seabream Sparus aurata Linnaeus, 1758. I’m not 100% sure of this identification, but it’s the best fit I can find.
Thanks to Paula for sharing this object and thanks to eveyone for your thoughts on this specimen – it’s always valuable to get your input!
This week I have another guest mystery object for you to have a go at identifying, this time it’s from Paula Burdiel, who found the specimen in summer 2020 while beachcombing in Islantilla, Huelva (Spain):
Image by Paula Burdiel, 2022
Image by Paula Burdiel, 2022
Image by Paula Burdiel, 2022
Image by Paula Burdiel, 2022
Image by Paula Burdiel, 2022
Image by Paula Burdiel, 2022
With this fantastic array of images and clear locality information, I’m hoping that we can figure out which species we have here. Let’s hear what you think it might be in the comments below – between us I think we can identify this fishy mystery object!
Last week we had a second guest mystery object from Rohan Long, who is based at the Harry Brookes Allen Museum of Anatomy and Pathology at the University of Melbourne.
The teeth tell us that the mystery object is from one of the Cercopithecidae (Old World Monkeys) since there are only two premolars instead of the three that you find in the Platyrrhini (New World Monkeys). That helps a bit, but there are still over 150 species in the Cercopithecidae to consider.
Some can be ruled out fairly easily, such as members of the Papionini, like baboons and macaques, which have adults that are more prognathic (their jaws jut forward) that this specimen. This is less true for juveniles (jaws jut more as the animal grows and matures), but we can ignore that here, since the mystery specimen has well-fused sutures and visible wear on the teeth, so we know it’s an adult.
Image by Gavan Mitchell, 2022
One thing that can be useful to consider when trying to identify primate skulls is the shape and position of the nasal opening. This can vary within species and it can be a feature sensitive to the angle at which a photograph is taken (making it more difficult to assess from images), but overall it can help narrow down possibilities without having to get into too much fine detail early in the identification process.
Image by Gavan Mitchell, 2022
The Mammalian Crania Picture Archive has well standardised images, including a reasonable variety of primates with males, females and animals of different ages represented. They also provide some measurements for each specimen, that may be useful when making comparisons. The primate page is here in case you’re not familiar with this very valuable resource.
Over the last week I’ve taken a look through a wide variety of skulls from different primate taxa and I’m confident that the mystery specimen is from the Colobinae. I think the position of the nasal opening (especially the top part of the opening in relation to the eyesockets) is helpful in distinguishing possible species within the subfamily. This makes sense when you consider that a third of the genera in the Colobinae are in a group known as the “odd-nosed monkeys”.
In this specimen the nasal opening forms a shield shaped hole with a flat top that starts quite high in relation to the eye sockets. In most species it starts lower, sometimes well below the line of the bottom margin of the eye socket. The Red Colobus is superficially quite similar, but when you look at other features it doesn’t look right – for example, if you look at the underside of the skull it has several different features, include a differently shaped incisor arcade and the pterygoids (the wing-shaped bits of bone that spread to either side, just behind the palate) are a different shape.
However, I did find a species which matches much better, so I am tentatively suggesting that the mystery object may be a Black-crested Sumatran Langur (AKA Mitred Leaf Monkey or Sumatran Surili) Presbytis melalophos (Raffles, 1821). If not that species I think the mystery specimen will be in the same Genus. There will undoubtedly be additional species with similar skulls that I’ve not seen, but within the limits of the resources at my disposal I don’t think I can do any better than that.
My thanks to everyone for your suggestions and many thanks to Rohan for sharing this mystery object. It’s been an interesting one and has reinforced my conclusion that primate skull identification can be REALLY difficult!
This week we have another guest mystery object from Rohan Long:
Today’s mystery object is another item from the Harry Brookes Allen Museum of Anatomy and Pathology at the University of Melbourne. In contrast to our last offering – a partial skull with most of the diagnostic features frustratingly absent – this is a full skeleton of a small primate. We have many classroom sets in our collection comprising complete, disarticulated skeletons of mammals, mostly marsupials and primates. The primate sets overwhelmingly consist of macaques (Macaca sp.) which I presume were lab animals from the University. Additionally, there are sets of a few baboons, a few chimpanzees, and one Sacred Langur (Semnopithecus entellus). Then there’s this one.
Image by Gavan Mitchell, 2022Image by Gavan Mitchell, 2022Image by Gavan Mitchell, 2022Image by Gavan Mitchell, 2022Image by Gavan Mitchell, 2022Image by Gavan Mitchell, 2022
I had originally described it as, “large macaque”, but after cataloguing dozens of macaque skeletons, it stood out as something different. It kept bugging me, and I had committed myself to giving every specimen in our comparative anatomy collection a proper identification. I had found some previous blog posts by Paolo while researching how to identify primate specimens, and that’s what prompted me to initially get in touch. In regards to provenance, our comparative anatomy collection was mostly amassed in the early 20th century, and many specimens are associated with Frederic Wood Jones, Anatomy Department Head from 1930-1937. Wood Jones and his colleagues had strong international networks, and there are species in this collection from all over the world.
As ever you can leave your observations, thoughts and suggestions about which species this might be in the comments section below. Have fun with this one!
Last week I gave you this taxidermy specimen from the Dead Zoo to have a go at identifying:
It turned out to be easier than I suspected, because an image of this specimen just so happens to be used on the Wikipedia page for the species. This was a bit of a give-away for anyone who even got close to the type of animal this is. So let’s figure out what general type of animal we are dealing with.
First of all, it’s fairly clearly a rodent when you look at those incisors. I suppose incisors like that could be found in one of the lagomorphs (rabbits, hares and pikas) but they all have much larger ears in relation to their bodies (even the relatively shorter eared pikas have much bigger ears than the mystery specimen).
There are a lot of rodents, but this one is quite large, which helps narrow things down. The majority of large rodents are either semiaquatic (like Capybara, Beaver and Coypu – and it’s not one of them) or spiky (a variety of unrelated porcupines from the Old and New Worlds). Then there are the maras, agoutis, and pacas (plus relatives), but they all tend to have almost absent tails and quite long legs compared to the mystery object.
There is another group that has some moderately large members though – the hutias. There are 10 species living on various Caribbean Islands, with a relatively wide variety of adaptations thanks to island effects. In particular their tails vary from being almost absent to being quite long, thick and prehensile. Checking tails should pretty much seal the identification. Of course, it’s much easier to spot when there’s a photo of the same specimen, on it’s quite distinctive base, with a label:
So well done to everyone who figured this out that this is the Bahamian Hutia Geocapromys ingrahami (J.A. Allen, 1891), especially if you didn’t spot the Wikipedia entry!
Last week we had a guest mystery object from Rohan Long, Curator of the Harry Brookes Allen Museum of Anatomy & Pathology at the University of Melbourne:
Image by Gavan Mitchell, 2022
Image by Gavan Mitchell, 2022
Image by Gavan Mitchell, 2022
It is not an easy one. This part of the mammalian skull contains very few helpful diagnostic features – as pointed out by Kenny Travouillon:
But that is the part of the skull with the least amount of diagnostic character. That’s just mean!
Plus this is from a juvenile animal, and we all know how that can cause problems when making an identification.
Thanks to everyone for your comments – Rohan was keeping and eye on them here and on Twitter, so I’ll hand over to him to wrap this one up:
Well, it’s been a week, and many identifications for the mystery skull were offered on Twitter and in the Zygoma comments. Some suggestions were silky anteater, marsupial mole, pangolin, armadillo – but the focus quickly turned to marsupials. On Twitter, mammal curator Kenny Travouillon said it was not peramelemorphian or macropod, zooarchaeologist Jillian Garvey said that it could be macropod. Early on, biology lecturer Robin Beck said that it was definitely a phalangerid, and that it was probably a juvenile common brushtail possum (Trichosurus vulpecula). Robin identified the specimen as phalangerid based on the restriction of the mastoid exposure to a ventral strip on the occiput, and then narrowed down to trichosurine, rather than a phalangerine, due to the relatively flat dorsal profile of the skull. The bone texture indicates a juvenile specimen. (Richard came to the same conclusion in the Zygoma comments.)
I went digging around in our comparative anatomy collection to investigate this and then clouded matters a bit, as I found a partial skull of a juvenile common ringtail possum (Pseudocheirus peregrinus) which was superficially similar to the mystery skull. I thought this was the real identity of the skull, but Robin pointed out that the ventrally restricted mastoid exposure, more recessed stylomastoid foramen, and a well-developed pterygoid fossa all point to Trichosurus rather than Pseudocheirus.
I think this partial skull is conclusively identified to genus. I have already identified a number of (less ambiguous) Trichosurus specimens within the comparative anatomy collections. Although it would take more work to definitively ID the species, I think it is likely to be vulpecula – a very common and widely distributed species in Australia. As you may have noticed from the original images, the specimen has sand grains adhering to it. Based on this, I’d say that this was collected in the field, probably by Frederic Wood Jones (or members of the McCoy Society for Research and Investigation, which he founded) in the 1930s.
Thank you all for your suggestions and discussion!
Finally, I’d like to add my thanks to Rohan for giving us this mystery object to mull over. If anyone else fancies doing a guest mystery object, please do get in touch.
This week I’m delighted to have a guest mystery object for you, presented by Rohan Long, Curator of the Harry Brookes Allen Museum of Anatomy & Pathology at the University of Melbourne (who is on Twitter as @zoologyrohan) and photographed beautifully by his colleague Gavan Mitchell:
This is a skull from the Harry Brookes Allen Museum of Anatomy and Pathology at the University of Melbourne. Although the focus of our museum is on human anatomy, we have a significant comparative anatomy collection, which comprises hundreds of specimens of vertebrate animals – skeletal material, skulls, and potted specimens. Occasionally, I’ve encountered animal specimens that are very difficult to definitively ID, and this partial skull is one of them.
Image by Gavan Mitchell, 2022Image by Gavan Mitchell, 2022Image by Gavan Mitchell, 2022Image by Gavan Mitchell, 2022
Our comparative anatomy collections date from the earliest 20th century and are predominantly native Australian mammals and domestic animal species. However, the academics at the University have always had international networks, and there are species represented in the collection from all over the world. Many have been prepared in a lab for class specimens, many have been collected in the field. The latter are assumed to have been associated with Frederic Wood Jones, a British anatomist with a fondness for comparative anatomy and island collecting trips who was head of our Anatomy Department from 1930 to 1937.
Do you have any ideas what this portion of skull might be from? I don’t think we need cryptic answers for this one. Rohan will be keeping a close eye on the comments, so do feel free to ask questions.
Last week I gave you a nice skull to have a go at identifying:
It proved to be more tricky than I thought, but I think that may be because there is a skull image on Wikimedia that may have misled people searching for a comparative skull of this species.
This is the skull of the humble Guinea Pig Cavia porcellus (Linnaeus, 1758), but if you tried searching for Guinea Pig skull, you may have seen this image:
Clearly this is not the same species as our mystery object – the incisors alone are an absolute give-away, with their striking orange enamel and the their much greater size. Those big incisors also bed deeply into the mandible, creating a pronounced ridge at the base of the mandible that props the entire skull at an angle. This one is the skull of a Coypu, regardless of the Guinea Pig identification given on the Wikimedia page.
There were also quite a few suggestions that the mystery object might be a Capybara, or one of several other South American rodents. The size suggests it’s not Capybara – I suppose a very young Capybara might just about be small enough, although they would certainly have less pronounced muscle scars and more open sutures.
There are plenty of other South American rodents, but most of those of a similar size and overall shape have a much more V-shaped exit to the nasal passage in the palate, rather than this very open and U-shaped structure.
For this week’s mystery object, I’ve decided to go back to skulls. Any idea what this one belongs to?
I’m sure several of you will recognise this, so please keep your suggestions cryptic, to keep the game fun for people who are less familiar with this kind of critter. Enjoy!
Zygoma 