This week I have a nice little skull for you to identify. Any idea what this is?
As usual, you can put your suggestions, comments and questions below and I will do my best to answer – although it may take me a while as I have a NatSCA meeting for most of the day. Good luck!
As promised, here’s a quick answer to last Friday’s mystery object:
The big nuchal crest (ridge running along the back of the skull that meets the sagittal crest) points to this being a carnivore.
The large auditory bullae (the bulbous bits on the underside of the skull which relate to hearing) and very rounded notch in the occipital condyles (the bit of the skull that attaches to the atlas vertebra of the neck) suggest a cat, since dogs have a more V shaped notch and smaller bullae.
This is the back of the skull of a Leopard Panthera pardus (Linnaeus, 1758), in fact it is part of the same specimen as mandible F from last week.
Although last week I hinted that I may stop the mystery object, I’ve decide to try out a different system. Rather than give an extended answer on Monday (a time-consuming business) I will simply provide a very brief answer. Hopefully this will free up some time to do other things.
This week I present you with another partial piece of skull that I recently reunited with the rest of the specimen it came from. There’s no scale bar to keep it challenging!
Any idea what this is?
As usual, you can put your suggestions, comments and questions below and I will do my best to answer. Good luck!
Friday was the 100th mystery object and I am considering making it the last one, since I’m finding it hard to come up with new objects every week. Moreover, I find that I don’t have time to keep up with all the other things I want/need to do.
However, I may keep FMO running for a bit longer with a slightly different format for the answer (since they’re what take the most time to write). So here’s the quick answer to Friday’s object, or should I say objects.
From top to bottom: A, B, C, D, E, F
From the top, the specimens belong to:
So congratulations to everyone who had a stab at identifying these mandibles – since all of you got some of them right.
If you have any thoughts on the continuation of the Friday mystery object, please feel free to let me know in the comments section below. Perhaps I should do a monthly mystery object or have them in a more ad hoc way as I find interesting objects? Your input would be of great help.
Many thanks!
It’s the one hundredth mystery object and I’ve decided to give you a challenge that I had to deal with at work this week.
I found a box of mandibles with no data, I identified them and checked them against their respective specimen types in the Horniman collections (that I’ve worked hard to organise for such a purpose).
The whole process took me half a morning and 5 of the 6 specimens were successfully reunited with the skulls they were separated from over 70 years ago – a satisfying outcome for a curator (our fun is cheap).
Now it’s your turn to identify the mystery mandibles (click image for bigger version):
From top to bottom: A, B, C, D, E, F
Put your suggestions and questions in the (newly organised) comments section below and I’ll do my best to respond.
Best of luck!
On Friday I gave you this rather cool skull to identify:
There was no doubt that this was a carnivore of some sort, given the sharp canines and the massive carnassial teeth. Most of you spotted that it was the skull of a juvenile or subadult, given the partially emerged teeth and the unfused sutures. Most of you also spotted that it was a canid of some sort, given the overall shape and the tooth arrangement.
The correct identification was arrived at in short order by David Craven and many of you concurred with his neatly veiled answer of
Could I paint you a picture of this animal?
This answer is a reference to the name of an African carnivore, the Continue reading
This week I have something pretty cool for you to identify:
Any idea what it is?
As usual you can put your comments, questions and suggestions below and I’ll do my best to answer. Good luck!
On Friday I gave you this skull to identify:
Everyone spotted that it was from a monkey, perhaps unsurprisingly since monkeys have a very characteristic appearance, with a globular braincase and forward-facing eyes. The orbit is enclosed by a solid bony ring and there is a post-orbital wall made up of the sphenoid and ethmoid bones, that produces a cup-shaped eye socket.
But there are a lot of different monkey species – around 286 if you include the Apes (as you should). We can see that this specimen belongs to the Catarrhini clade (the Old World Monkeys and Apes) since it only has 2 premolars instead of the 3 premolars you’d expect in a New World Monkey (N.B. some extinct Catarrhines known from fossils have 3 premolars, so this useful distinction doesn’t actually help define the clade).
The size of the skull and the the shape of the nose region and the mandible isn’t quite right for an Ape, or a typical Cheek-pouch Monkey (like Macaques or Baboons), leaving us with the Colobinae (which includes Colobus Monkeys, Doucs, Langurs, Leaf Monkeys, Proboscis Monkeys, Snub-nosed Monkeys and Surelis).
Once we get this far it becomes rather more tricky to identify what species we’re dealing with (and it doesn’t help that the names are applied somewhat inconsistently), so I must offer congratulations to Jake, jonpaulkaiser, curatorialtrainee, henstridgesj, carlos grau and Steven D. Garber, PhD – all of whom suggested perfectly possible candidates amongst the Langurs and Snub-nosed Monkeys.
This skull is actually from a Continue reading
This week’s mystery object may be a bit harder than usual, but I’m sure that someone will get what it is:
As usual, you can put your questions, comments and suggestions below and I’ll respond as best I can – hopefully better than I managed last week, when I was in Ireland without ready access to the internet…
Good luck!
Apologies for the lack of response to questions last Friday, I was travelling and had limited access to the internet.
Excuses aside, I was impressed by the overall accuracy of the answers received about what this skull belonged to:
Everyone spotted that it was a carnivore and most of you identified this as being the skull of a mustelid, but no-one seems to have got this identification spot-on (perhaps my stinking clue was a bit too vague). Suggestions ranged a fair bit and uncertainty was rife, as shown in this word cloud of the comments:
Perhaps unsurprisingly given the clue, Skunks were suggested quite a lot as were Civets and Polecats/Ferrets (which are indistinguishable from each other on the basis of the skull, since Ferrets are just domesticated Polecats).
This suggestion of Polecat is pretty much there, although the specimen is not the standard European Polecat Mustela putorius rather it is an African mustelid known as the Continue reading
This week I have a tricky mystery object for you to identify. It’s from a group with a number of members that are a similar size and shape, which makes identification a bit tricky. Any idea what this skull belongs to:
I’ll try to answer any questions, but I can’t guarantee I’ll have access to a computer, so apologies if I don’t respond for a while (that’s why I’m a bit late posting this morning).
I was going to give you a clue about what this animal might be, but the only clue I could think of was a complete stinker, so I’m afraid it falls to your abilities to identify this animal. Best of luck!
On Friday I gave you this specimen to identify:
It’s from one of two boxes labelled NH.83.1, which between them contained twenty unidentified skulls from a variety of different animals, ranging from fish to birds and mammals – several of which have been used as mystery objects in the past.
These boxes have been in the Horniman collections since the 1930′s and there is very little information available about the specimens, so it falls to me to make identifications. The comments I receive when using these specimens as mystery objects is always useful – it makes me double check my identification in light of the suggestions that you make – a form of review that I find very valuable. So thanks to everyone who attempted an identification, your thoughts have proved really useful!
From the outset the suggestions made were along the same lines as I’d been thinking – Prancing Papio FCD suggested a Maxwell’s Duiker, which is of similar size but has a narrower skull, smaller braincase and horns set far back on the skull, rather than originating just above the orbit like this one. This difference in the horn position and the relative size of the braincase rules out all of the Duikers in fact.
Jake suggested Dik-dik using a cryptic clue that I totally misunderstood – but this skull is a fair bit bigger than that of a Dik-dik’s and it has much longer nasal bones (Dik-diks have a bizarrely truncated nasal region).
Stephen J Henstridge suggested Steenbok, which is what I had originally thought it might be, since it’s almost identical, but a few little details of the palate, the horn orientation and the post-orbital process make me think that Stephen’s follow up suggestion of Continue reading
Today was the long-awaited Rapture, at which:
…the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
Unfortunately, the centuries of squabbling between various Christian sects has muddied the waters about what being ‘in Christ‘ actually entails, resulting in a poor attendance at today’s big event.
Barry Higgins of 24 Lamarck Road, Kent. Sole ascendant during the Rapture
Despite finally being predicted correctly by Harold Camping (after a previous miscalculation that placed it back in 1992) and regardless of a flurry of pre-Rapture preparations by Christian fundamentalists around the world, it seems that the only person who actually ascended to meet with the Lord was Barry Higgins of 24 Lamarck Road, Kent.
Barry’s wife Margaret was surprised when her husband suddenly started floating as they walked to their car following an afternoon shopping at their local Lidl.
‘At six o’clock we were carrying the shopping back to the car, when he [Barry] suddenly said he felt a bit light-headed. I thought he might be having one of his turns, but instead he floated out of his brand new Clark’s slip-ons and started rising. It was quite slow at first, but then he started gaining speed until he vanished into the clouds.
He was a lovely man and treated me well until he left me there with all that shopping to get home – and I’ll never get through this lot on my own. I bet his Life Insurance won’t pay out a penny either, since he’ll live forever and it’ll count as an Act of God. His shoes should sell on Ebay though, especially since I got some photos of him floating off with my camera phone as proof.’
Apparently Barry was a quiet, gentle man who enjoyed a few glasses of beer and liked gardening. He didn’t attend any church and kept his religious views to himself, although when pressed he would apparently say that he was ‘probably a humanist‘ and that he ‘liked some of what Jesus taught’, but thought ‘most of the stuff in the Bible is a bit far-fetched‘ he also reportedly once said that the God of the Old Testament was a ‘bit of a nutcase‘.
It is now in question whether the Battle of Armageddon will go ahead on October 21st as planned, after such a poor turn-out for the Rapture. It seems likely that Jesus may want to wait a bit longer to build up more support, since Barry Higgins is reported as being ‘rubbish in a fight‘ by his younger brother Thomas. We await confirmation of this decision by Jesus’ self-appointed booking agent on Earth, Harold Camping.
This week I have an object from the mysterious box NH.83.1 for you to identify:
What do you think this skull belonged to?
As usual you can put your comments, questions and suggestions below and I’ll do my best to answer.
Good luck!
Since Friday was the 13th I gave you a mystery object inspired by the theme of superstition (at the suggestion of the @museumgeekgirls). I asked you to identify what this specimen was, where it was from and what powers were attributed to it:
As it turns out you all did a great job of identifying what these severed feet belonged to and there were some fantastic suggestions about the possible uses of these rather macabre charms.
Dave Hone immediately spotted that these were the paws of a Continue reading
It had to happen; a mystery object on Friday the 13th – a day reputed to be unlucky. So with the theme of superstition in mind I have an anthropological object for you to identify:
I admit that this doesn’t look much different to the usual mystery objects, but this one is reputed to have certain powers. Can you work out what these powers may be and where in the world this superstition comes from? Of course, the first step will be to identify what the object actually is.
As usual you can put your suggestions, observations and questions below and I’ll do my best to answer.
Good luck!
On Friday I gave you this cranium to identify:
Jake got in early with the suggestion of a seal of some kind (based on his experiences at the University of Dundee), which Manabu Sakamoto agreed with. Dave Godfrey developed the seal suggestion and arrived at a correct identification, which was supported by Carlos Grau, David Craven, cromercrox, Neil, Jamie Revell and Zigg. This is the cranium of the Hook-nosed Sea-pig, more commonly known as a Continue reading
This week I have a specimen from the Horniman stores for you to take a shot at identifying. It’s missing some teeth and the mandible, which might make it a bit harder than usual, but the shape is very distinctive, so I expect someone will get it pretty quickly:
As usual you can put your questions, comments and suggestions below.
Good luck!
On Friday I gave you this skull to identify from the Balcony in the Natural History Gallery at the Horniman Museum:
I must say that I was very impressed with the response – diet was quickly identified by Rosa Rubicondior, Will Chapman and Carlos Grau then Stephen J Henstridge spotted that this was the skull of Bandicoot and Jack Ashby, cromercrox and Jamie Revell all dropped hints (or blatantly stated) that this was the skull of a Continue reading
This Friday I’m giving you a mystery object that’s on display at the Horniman Museum:
[EDIT length = 8.5cm]
Any idea what this skull is from?
As usual, you can put your suggestions, comments and questions below and I’ll do my best to answer. Good luck!
Zygoma 