This week I have an object for you that has a name with it, but I’m not sure I trust the identification:
I’m guessing it’s a little over a foot long (but it’s hard to measure). Any idea what this long, wrinkly, pink(?) thing might be? And please keep it clean!
Last week I gave you this mystery object to try your hand at identifying:
It was both a bit tricky and a bit easy. It was tricky because it’s the skull of a cat, and as I’ve discussed before, cats are a morphologically conservative group that are quite difficult to differentiate between, due to their relatively recent divergence as a group. It was easy because of the context provided by the previous mystery object, as commented on by Wouter van Gestel who immediately worked out what this skull came from.
This is the skull of a large male Clouded Leopard Neofelis nebulosa (Griffith, 1821). These beautiful, elusive and rare big cats from Asia have the longest canines in relation to body size of all the modern cats – making them an occasional comparison for the sabre-toothed cats of prehistory.
Clouded Leopard in Cincinnati Zoo, Charles Barilleaux, 2012.
Although they may look adorable, they use those long canines to take down a variety of vertebrate prey, including monkeys, deer and even armoured snack-beasts like Asiatic porcupines and the overly-put-upon pangolins. They are one of the few truly arboreal cats, able to climb head-first down trees and even scoot along the underside of branches, giving them an advantage as an ambush hunter in forest environments.
So well done to everyone who figured that the mystery skull belonged to this fantastic feline!
This week I have a skull for you that I’ve been hoping to be able to track down for a very long time and finally discovered it in the collections of the Dead Zoo:
You can leave your questions, observations and (preferably cryptic) suggestions below. Have fun!
Last week I gave you these teeth to have a go at identifying:
It was a bit mean of me to only show the incisors, but I thought it would be way too easy otherwise and I thought that some of you would manage to get it. I was not wrong.
Despite the sparse information, James Bryant, Jennifer Macaire, Allen Hazen, sallie reynolds, Michelle Tabencki, Kaitlyn, Rémi and a tentative few others leaned towards one of the sabre-toothed cats, with most people opting for Smilodon. That is indeed what these teeth belonged to and if you want to be specific they’re from Smilodon fatalis Leidy, 1869.
Reconstruction of Smilodon fatalis skull. Image by Bone Clones, 2000
The mystery specimen and I go way back as it’s the one in the Geology Department of Bristol University, where I did my undergraduate degree many years ago. It inspired me to do a project on Smilodon, which sent me around a variety of UK museums in search of specimens to measure.
That was the start of my behind-the-scenes experience in museums and I met some fantastic people, including the legendary Andy Currant at the NHM, London, who was so helpful, knowledgeable and welcoming that it left an indelible mark on my attitude to collections access and curation.
I still have a soft spot for Smilodon and of all the palaeontological questions that I’d love to see resolved it’s how their bizarre canines worked. I never considered the “Akersten canine-shear-bite” [opens as pdf] as being biomechanically plausible, not least because it requires the jaws to close during the bite, which would in turn require these incisors to penetrate the skin and some (or all) of the underlying tissue of the prey.
While these incisors are robust, they’re just not the right kind of shape for that type of action as the straight and fairly level row would dissipate force quite evenly during a bite, rather than allowing the high point loads well suited to penetration.
There are other, more plausible methods proposed (e.g. Brown, 2014), but without seeing Smilodon in action it’s one of those mysteries that may never be satisfactorily resolved. And who wouldn’t want to see something as terrifying as a gigantic, sabre-toothed feline in action?
Smilodon californicus and Canis dirus fight over a Mammuthus columbi carcass in the La Brea Tar Pits. By Robert Bruce Horsfall, 1913
This week I have a close-up of something to identify, that would be a bit too obvious if I showed you the whole thing:
It’s something I have a bit of a soft spot for, so I’m interested to see if it’s as distinctive for anyone else as it is for me! I hope you have fun with it.
Last week I gave you this funky fossil from the National Museum of Ireland to have a go at identifying:
Everyone in the comments immediately recognised that this is the fossil of something that flies, thanks to the slender bones. The general consensus from the outset was that it was Archaeopteryx, but I wonder how much of that is because this specimen is preserved in the same Middle Jurassic lithographic limestone from Solnhofen that preserves the first bird?
The Berlin Archaeopteryx
However, Allen Hazen noticed the long slender finger that marks the mystery object as something different, when he correctly suggested that it was a pterosaur, winning over palfreyman1414 and sallie reynolds. On Twitter, @Robertgagliano1 went one better and got the correct genus when he suggested Germanodactylus.
This is indeed a fossil of Germanodactylus cristatus (Wiman, 1925). These small Jurassic pterosaurs were about the size of a raven and it is thought that they may have fed on marine crustaceans and molluscs, based on their fairly robust teeth.
This particular specimen is currently on display in our Jurassic Skies exhibition (that I talked about a fortnight ago), as it helps represent the successful group of flying reptiles that were already in the air 150 million years ago, when feathered dinosaurs first took to the skies.
In an unexpected twist, research was published just a week after we opened the exhibition, describing the first evidence for feathers in pterosaurs. This was unexpected, although fur-like filaments had already been recognised in the group. This means it’s possible that feathers originated in a common ancestor of dinosaurs and pterosaurs – which may have even included the group that is today represented by the crocodiles.
This means it’s possible that the ancestors of crocodiles would have been feathered and modern crocodiles have lost this covering, possibly thanks to their specialisation for living in water. I find it quite interesting that a reticence to add feathers to representations of dinosaurs (in things like Jurassic Park) has been influenced in part by the scaly skin of modern crocodiles (the nearest living relatives to dinosaurs that are not birds), but now we find out that crocodiles may have had feathers and lost them, making prehistory a much more fuzzy place than we ever dreamed!
This week I thought it might be nice to give you a fossil from the collections of the National Museum of Ireland to have a go at identifying:
Some of you may find this too easy, others might struggle, so try to drop some hints about the species if you know what it is. Have fun!
Last week I gave you this squee squamate to have a go at identifying:
As usual the comments were insightful and bang on target, with a correct identification by Chris, jennifermacaire, sallie reynolds and Allen Hazen. In the comments there was even a link to a very useful paper provided by jennifermacaire and a mention of the value of the tail-tip shape as a way of distinguishing between species of flying gecko.
Unfortunately the end of this specimen’s tail was hidden behind a label, so it wasn’t visible in any photos, but if it was it would show that this is a Common Flying Gecko Ptychozoon kuhli Stejneger, 1902. Distinctive tail-tips aside, the comments also picked up on some very interesting points about gliding replies. As Allen Hazen mentions:
… So gliding with a patagium along the side of the body (not supported by the arms and legs as it is in typical mammalian gliders) has evolved at least FOUR times in reptiles (reptilia sensu very lato): these guys, Draco, Kueneosaurus, and another fossil form I can’t remember the name of. …
Which is both interesting and pertinent to the main reason I picked this object, as it’s one of the specimens I selected for the temporary exhibition Jurassic Skies we just opened at the National Museum of Ireland at our Collins Barracks site, which is about the origins of flight in dinosaurs (i.e. birds).
Gliding lizards don’t have much to do with the origin of birds directly, but the high frequency with which they seem to pop up is a good indicator that there’s a clear benefit to being at least partially air-worthy.
Escaping predators, reaching inaccessible food and exploiting otherwise hard-to-reach habitats can all play a role in tempting animals into the air. The interesting thing that I’ve realised from doing this exhibition is that we’re currently in a bit of a dull patch when it comes to flying critters.
In the Jurassic the pterosaurs dominated the skies, with birds arising and finding a niche despite being newcomers to the aerial scene. By the Cretaceous both birds and pterosaurs were very diverse, with giant Quetzalocoatlus pterosaurs the size of a small plane and toothed and toothless birds living in a variety of habitats.
The K-T boundary mass extinction seems to have wiped out a huge amount of vertebrate diversity in the skies and despite the huge number of bird species alive today, the diversity of forms seems lower than it has in the past.
If you happen to be in Dublin before 24th March 2019 I suggest popping over to the Collins Barracks museum site to take a look at the exhibition. It’s free and it offers a chance to see some of our specimens that have never been on display before, plus a rather lovely new model of Archaeopteryx that we commissioned for the show.
This week I have a charismatic little character for you to have a go at identifying:
It has some pretty distinctive features, so I expect it won’t be much of a challenge, but I like it and I hope you do too!
Last week I gave you this impressive insect to have a go at identifying:
No scale for this, but it’s probably safe to say it’s bigger than you’d be comfortable with.
By not giving the scale I was being a bit mean by holding back a useful clue. This fly (as recognised by palfreyman1414, Richard Blackmore and joe vans) is around 45mm long, making it one of the biggest of its kind – its kind being one of the Asilidae or robber flies.
The species is from Australia and it’s called the Giant Yellow Robber Fly Blepharotes coriarius (Wiedemann, 1830). They’re active hunters that prey on other insects, grabbing them in flight and carrying them off to a perch where they suck out their victim’s internal organs. Nice.
Apologies for the short answer this week – I’m just in the process of installing an exhibition and this specimen is one that is going on display to represent the Diptera. Hopefully I’ll be able to share some images of what I’ve been working on next week.
Last week I gave you this mystery skull from the Ulster Museum to have a go at identifying:
If you’re a regular follower of Zygoma then you may have seen some of my previous posts talking about the skulls of the various smallish carnivores like mongooses, mustelids and viverrids. Generally though, mongooses have a more domed region above the eyes, while mustelids have a shorter snout, so this is most likely one of the viverrids.
It’s a difficult one to get down to species, since it’s from a group of carnivores that have have a fairly uniform skull shape, so it takes some detailed investigation to work out exactly what we’re dealing with. However, as I have talked about before (and as palfreyman1414 remembered), there’s a very helpful identification guide developed by some French researchers which summarises some of the most useful characters to use in identification.
Most useful to my mind is the matrix of characters that allows you to narrow down the possibilities until you’re left with the most likely species (watch out, the security certificate has expired). Once you’re down to a few possibilities based on those specific characters it can help to check the specimen images on the Animal Diversity Web which lets you get a better idea of overall shape and things like tooth form.
As it turns out, my 270th mystery object also provided a useful image for comparison:
The reduced upper second molar (or M2) and the shape of the M1 in this specimen from the Grant Museum of Zoology is remarkably similar to the Ulster Museum specimen and it turns out it’s also from a species that made it to my shortlist using the matrix. So I’m fairly sure that this is an Abyssinian Genet Genetta abyssinica (Rüppell, 1836).
To give you an idea of what they look like, here’s a Common Genet in Wrocław Zoo by Guérin Nicolas, 2008
Well done to everyone who worked out we were dealing with a genet, but particular props to palfreyman1414 who was spot on when he said:
I’m wondering if, … this is related to the Abyssinian thingy you spent hours checking on from a complicated table of characteristics across 27 species…
Well remembered palfreyman1414, well remembered…
Last week I had the good fortune to visit the collections of the Ulster Museum in Belfast with the National Museums Northern Ireland’s Curator of Vertebrates Angela Ross. It’s always a valuable experience seeing other museum stores and it was a real pleasure to meet Angela and talk about our shared experiences with collections.
As you might expect, as with every museum in the world, there are one or two specimens that have lost labels or that have never been identified, so I was fortunate enough to be get some photos of one such example for today’s mystery object. Any idea what this skull was from?
It has similarities to specimens I’ve featured in the past, and in the answers to those I’ve provided links to identification resources. If you have a rough idea of what this is, it may be worth your while using the search box in the top right corner of the blog to look for more information to help you narrow it down.
Have fun hunting for an identification – I know I will!
Last week I gave you this flouncy fish to try your hand at identifying:
It proved a tricky one, because it seems that based on genetic data it may be a species that has undergone convergent evolution with another type of fish to produce something very similar morphologically, but not actually closely related.
The similar fish would be the Sea Robins in the family Triglidae, as several of you opted for, but Wouter van Gestel and Rémi were a little more accurate in their cryptic suggestions of Flying Gurnard Dactylopterus volitans (Linnaeus, 1758).
These fish don’t really fly and only a few sources suggest that they can get any kind of glide going. Mostly they stick near the ocean bottom in shallow waters, using those oddly leg-like front fins to manage their more pedestrian movement and using the wing-like large fins to ‘fly’ underwater.
This particular specimen has lost its colour, thanks to the process of being preserved in alcohol, but when they’re alive they’re very colourful, with electric-blue spots on the fins. Perhaps more interestingly, this specimen was collected by Sir Frances Leopold McClintock, who achieved renown for his polar exploration and who was stationed in the Royal Navy’s North America and West Indies station as Commander-in-chief between 1879 and 1884. Since this specimen is from Jamaica, it seems likely that it collected in that period.
More mysteries next week!
This week I have something fishy for you to have a go at identifying:
It may prove a bit easy for some of you as it is quite distinctive, but that makes it all the more interesting! To avoid spoiling things for the non-fish fans please try to keep your comments cryptic.
Have fun!
Last week I gave you this striking specimen to try your hand at identifying:
It’s the skeleton of a species that I’ve spoken about before and one for which I have a bit of a soft spot.
Several of you thought it was some kind of galliform (the group of birds including pheasants, quail, chickens, etc.), but although the size and general appearance of the bill is about right, it’s not one of them.
A few of you did however know what it was. Wouter van Gestel was first to recognise this as a Hoatzin Opisthocomus hoazin (Müller, 1776), with James Bryant and Cindilla Trent dropping some nice clues to show they were also in the know.
As it turns out, the original name for the Hoatzin was Phasianus hoazin because it looked so much like one of the Galliformes – and not just in the skeleton:
As you can see, these birds are quite striking, with colours and a crest that wouldn’t be out of place on a pheasant, but a lot of genetic and morphological research suggests that the Hoatzin is in a unique group, which diverged from the rest of the modern birds 64 million years ago, just after the non-avian dinosaurs went extinct.
Personally I think they are fascinating, with their clawed young that scramble around in dense vegetation, their limited ability to fly as adults and their unusual (for a bird) folivorous diet (that’s leaves) with associated bacterial fermentation tank crop. In fact, if any animal was on the road to becoming fire-breathing I think the Hoatzin may be it, with its ready access to methane and hydrogen sulphide belches – in fact I wonder if some spontaneous Hoatzin combustion due to these gasses gave rise to the myth of the Phoenix?
This week I have a bit of an easy object for you – it’s a species I’ve talked about before, but this is a complete skeleton rather than a single bone:
Any idea what this is the skeleton of?
As usual you can put your thoughts, questions and suggestions in the comments below. Enjoy!
Last week I gave you this mandible from the collections of the brilliant Trinity College Zoological Museum to try your hand at identifying:
It’s quite a distinctive jaw, so I wasn’t too surprised that many of you recognised it, but I was hoping the relatively small size might have caused a little confusion – after all, it’s from a juvenile.
The robust bone and undifferentiated teeth scream “marine mammal” and the scarcity of those large teeth and that long and well-fused mandibular symphysis (the bit at the front where the two halves of the mandible meet) mean that we’re dealing with something that has an unusual approach to eating.
As Wouter van Gestel, Richard Lawrence, Rémi and palfreyman1414 spotted, it’s the mandible of that infamous oyster (and clam) devourer, the Walrus Odobenus rosmarus (Linnaeus, 1758). I’ve talked about these huge pinnipeds on the blog before (many moons ago now) but since then we’ve learned more about how they feed.
One of the most interesting elements of their feeding, apart from the use of suction to remove the soft parts of molluscs from their shells, is the use of their front flippers to create a vortex in the water that keeps the sediment that gets disturbed by their snuffling hunt through the mud from impairing their ability to see. Useful if you want to avoid predators like Orcas.
You can get an idea of what this looks like in this video:
This week I have a mystery object for you from one of Dublin’s hidden gems, the Trinity College Zoological Museum:
It caught my eye when I was studying some of their Blaschka models for a project I’m involved in and I thought you might like to have a go at working out what this jaw might be from.
Have fun!
Last week I gave you this skull to have a go at identifying:
I was deliberately mean and only provided a lateral view, since I reckoned that many of you would be able to work out what it was from that.
I was not disappointed, although it definitely made things a bit more difficult.
The bill shape is fairly long and fairly thin, which is often characteristic of birds that feed in water or wet mud, but there a lot of birds which do that. This one is somewhere between a mud-probing and worm-catching wader like a Redshank and one of the stabby-faced-fish-catchers, like an Egret. However, there are a couple of things that make the skull different to things like either of these – unlike the herons it has an inferior angular process (that bit that sticks down at the bottom of the mandible near the articulation with the cranium). A lot of birds don’t have this, although many of the charadriiforms (waders like the Redshank) do, although theirs is a different shape – tending to be broader, rounder and generally less well-defined.
This combined with the size (around 75mm) and the bump in the upper part of the bill near the junction with the cranium leads us towards a more secretive bird that does a bit of stabby-faced-fish-catching and a bit of worm-catching. As ably hinted at by Richard Lawrence, Wouter van Gestel, salliereynolds and joe vans, this is in fact the skull of a Water Rail Rallus aquaticus Linnaeus, 1758.
These odd birds are omnivorous and well-adapted for skulking through reed-beds, with a narrow profile and high-stepping gait. As with most birds of dense habitats, they have a loud and distinctive call referred to as ‘sharming’, which they will do while they are feeding – which may contribute to their vulnerability to introduced Mink, which follow their sound and ambush the birds while they’re preoccupied with feeding themselves.
Tune in next week for another mystery object!
This week I have a mystery skull for you to have a go at identifying:
I’ve made it a bit more tricky by only providing one view, but I think it should be identifiable from this.
By the way, I hope you like the NatSCA scale bar – the most useful swag I’ve ever received in a conference pack. Hoping to get another one at the Caring for Natural Science Collections one-day conference in October – really looking forward to geeking out about conservation of natural history collections!
Enjoy the mystery object!
Zygoma 