Friday mystery object #301 answer

Last week I gave you this mystery tooth to have a go at identifying:

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There were a variety of answers, but the first few took this as a worn canine tooth, presumably due to the respectable size and robustness. However, consensus shifted to this being an incisor, meaning it would have to be from a large animal – which is spot on. Moreover, it’s a large animal that was once resident in Ireland.

After that there were a variety of ideas brought up, from all manner of beasts including Sheep, Badger (or perhaps Pine Marten since a cryptic M.m. from the Irish fauna could be either Meles meles or Martes martes), Cave Bear, Coyote, Wolf and even Human. There was one just correct identification however, by Tony Morgan who recognised it as a Hyaena incisor.

It is in fact the lower left third incisor (or i3) of Crocuta crocuta (Erxleben, 1777) – the tooth you can see in this (very gnarly) Hyaena mandible, although it’s much less worn:

Hyena mandible

Hyaenas have an incredibly thick enamel layer on their teeth which creates a distinct neck on the incisor where it stops, which is further defined by the root of the tooth bulging laterally below – presumably to help deal with the forces of prey capture and perhaps the Hyaena’s impressive bite strength.

The robust skull of a specialist bone-crusher

You probably don’t think of Hyaenas as being native to Ireland, but until 39,000 or so years ago they ranged right across Eurasia, including those parts of Europe which were to be cut off by changing sea levels to form Ireland and Britain.

It’s strange to imagine a species normally associated with the African savanna strolling around the Emerald Isle, but it’s worth remembering that the world is a constantly changing place and wildlife moves around to cope as the environment alters. Borders and boundaries are very human concepts and other species only pay attention when you have a genuine barrier, like an ocean, a mountain range or (if you’re a Dormouse) a break in the tree canopy.

That’s one of the problems with current climate change compared to past climate variations. The speed of change is so great that some species don’t have time to move into new habitats and there are fewer suitable habitats available, because humans have cleared them for farming or building. Meanwhile, some other species can find suitable habitats and are able to move – but they will then often be considered an invasive pest. Now the chances of Hyaenas returning to Ireland are pretty slim, but if they did I expect most people wouldn’t be too pleased, although you never know…

Kevin Richardson kisses hyena. Image by Kevin Richardson, 2007

Friday mystery object #301

This week I have a toothy object for you to identify, that I took some photos of for comparison against an enquiry I received from a colleague:

mystery301b mystery301a

Any idea what this is from?

As usual you can leave your thoughts, questions and suggestions in the comments box below. Enjoy!

Friday mystery object #300 answer

Last Friday I gave you this new acquisition to have a go at identifying:

When it arrived on my desk in an decorative box, with bundles of bone wrapped in blue tissue and tied with gold ribbon, it had a small label saying:

Skeleton of Mongoose, Africa.

Now, I know that having the continent would have been of help for the identification, but I didn’t want my 300th challenge to be too easy.

So how was that initial identification of Mongoose? It was certainly up there in the first of the comments, with Ric Morris (expert on British mammal bones, whose book I am eagerly awaiting) providing a beautifully crafted suggestion. Unfortunately it isn’t right, as the ~~mongooses~~ ~~mongeese~~ Herpestidae* tend to have a better developed post-orbital process (that’s the pointy bit on top of the skull, behind where the eye would be) and a corresponding process on the zygomatic (that’s the cheekbone), with the two sometimes meeting to form a post-orbital bar. They also tend to have more robust teeth.

Another (very) cryptic clue came from jennifermacaire who suggested that it was a civet (which can either be a type of viverrid carnivore or a French game stew). This suggestion was supported by henstridgesj and it’s closer than the mongoose suggestion, as the specimen is indeed from a species in the Viverridae. This was noticed by herpderpatologist who provided a handy tip for spotting the difference between mustelids and viverrids:

The split auditory bulla is a clue! It’s something I associate with viverridae;…

If we know that this is a viverrid, it narrows it down to one of just 38 species… which is still quite a lot. But by trawling through the images of viverrid specimens on the University of Michigan Animal Diversity Web it becomes easier to start narrowing down the likely group within the Family.

In this case it led me to the genets.

There are quite a few genets, with the Subfamily Genettinae containing in the region of 16 species. Distinguishing between them isn’t entirely simple, as they all look pretty much alike, but there is an excellent French resource that has detailed anatomical characters and images of specimens to help distinguish between genet species.

Working through this I found that the two best options were the Common Genet and the Cape Genet and distinguishing between them is not simple. I’m leaning toward the Cape Genet (or Large-spotted Genet) Genetta tigrina (Schreber, 1776), based on the spacing between the tympanic bullae (the bulbous bones under the skull that house the ear bones), the reduced lingual cusp on the P3 (that’s the tiny bit that sticks out towards where the tongue would be on the upper third premolar) the form of the upper first premolar (P1) and the shape of the maxillary-palatine suture (that’s the junction between the bone of the palate and the part of the upper jaw that supports all the teeth except the incisors).

That’s quite a lot to take in, but by getting your eye in and scanning through images it’s surprising how quickly you can narrow down options by rejecting images where you can see clear differences in the tympanic bulla configuration or cusp pattern on the P3 to leave a couple that need more careful consideration.

And just for the sheer squee of it, here’s what a Genet looks like when it’s alive:

Common Genet, by Peter 2011

I hope you enjoyed the challenge of the 300th mystery object!

*N.B. the plural of mongoose is “mongooses”.

Friday mystery object #300

Another milestone for the Friday mystery object – the 300th I’ve shared since it started in July 2009. That means I’ve posted either an object or answer every single Friday for almost 8 years.

The FMO has allowed me to share collections from three fantastic museums: the Horniman, the Grant and now, Dublin’s Dead Zoo – plus a few more random objects ranging from beach finds to pub chairs. It’s also helped bring together a community of people with a shared interest, which is the main reason I’ve kept the blog running for so long. In particular a blog post by Jake McGowan-Lowe about what he’s learned from Zygoma (written 100 objects ago now) makes me feel that the time I put into blogging is totally worthwhile.

This week’s object is an acquisition that’s been waiting for a while to be curated, since the Dead Zoo had been without a Zoology Curator for five years, before I started in December.

The specimen appeared on my desk wrapped up like a gift:

and of course, given my love of bones it was the best gift I could have hoped for – an unidentified skeleton:

mystery_gift_3 - Edited

I got out the Paraloid B-72 (an adhesive we use in museums) to secure in place the loose teeth and detached epiphyses (they’re the ends of the long bones that haven’t fused on to the main shaft of the bone because the animal was young) and I put the specimen in a more appropriate box, but not before taking some photos of the skull to help with the identification:

Do you have any thoughts on which species this skull might have come from? I have my suspicions, but I’d love to hear your thoughts.

As usual you can put your observations, questions and suggestions in the comments below. I hope you have fun with this one!

Friday mystery object #299 answer

Last week I gave you this cute critter to try your hand at identifying:

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I thought the presence of fur would make it easier than usual, but of course, hair hides a lot of rather useful diagnostic features that you can find more easily in the bare bones.

However, you managed to pick up on a couple of the key features that gave this specimen its name: it looks like a lagomorph (one of the hares, rabbits or pikas) or maybe a larger rodent and it looks like a macropod (one of the kangaroos, wallaroos or wallabies). Several people wondered about it being a Kangaroo-rat, but that distinctive back foot, with its big central toe and then the skinny little side toes (you have to look carefully), tells us that it’s the other way round and this is a marsupial that looks like one of the placental glires (that’s the group containing the rodents and the lagomorphs).

The marsupial identification was initially spotted by palfreyman1414 and tenaciously defended by Rebecca, who was on the right track when she veered toward it being something in the Potoroidae (the rat-kangaroos, potoroos and bettongs), a suggestion that was put forward in a more cryptic way by jennifermacaire.

This is in fact a Rufous Hare-wallaby or Mala Lagorchestes hirsutus Gould, 1844, which marsupial wrangler Jack Ashby spotted with ease:

@PaoloViscardi looks like mala or a faded hare wallaby of some other kind. Are you really asking or is this a pop quiz? Got pics of tail?

— Jack Ashby (@JackDAshby) March 3, 2017

I should say that it is indeed VERY faded, after spending over 100 years in a glass ceilinged gallery.

These small macropods live on a few islands in Western Australia, but their original wider range has been dramatically reduced by changing land use patterns resulting from the breakdown of the relationship between the Aboriginal people and the land, caused by encroachment and systematic persecution by European settlers. It’s not onlyhumans who suffer when people treat each other badly.

Friday mystery object #299

This week I’ve decided to give you a mystery object that has its skin and fur, so in theory it should be really easy to work out what it is. In theory.

mystery299

Any idea what species this adorable little critter belongs to?

As usual you can put your thoughts, questions and suggestions in the comments section below. If you find this too easy then maybe you can try to find a cleverly cryptic way to let me know.

Have fun!

Friday mystery object #298 answer

Last week I gave you this bony mystery object to identify:

There was a request for a side view from jennifermacaire, so here you go:

The suggestions were all suitably cryptic, with some nice puns thrown in for good measure, but the gist of all of them was clear that this is the sternum of a bird. After that point, the suggestions started getting a bit more varied, including reference to marine birds.

Responses on Twitter were a bit more varied, ranging from ‘part of a human face’ to an essentially correct answer (admittedly after a bit of Q&A).

If you’re a regular reader you may recall that I featured a sternum a few months ago from the Grant Museum of Zoology, that had a disappointing answer, but nonetheless an answer that provided a number of sternum images that may have helped with this object.

In particular this specimen may have helped:

Chicken

The long lateral trabeculae (the mystery specimen is upside down, so they’re the side bits that point upward on either side) with a deep gap between them and the carina (the central keel area) is very distinctive to the Galliformes, as you can see in this Chicken sternum.

Sadly, there is no comprehensive repository of sternum images available online (if I’m wrong please correct me!), so expecting a species identification on this one was a big ask. Instead I’ll just tell you that it’s from a Hazel Grouse Tetrastes bonansia (Linnaeus, 1758) and this one was collected in Russia and accessioned by the Dead Zoo in 1929.

Hazel Grouse, by kallerna, 2009.

These secretive birds occur across Eurasia, from Japan to as far west as eastern parts of France. They live in coniferous forests and feed on plants and insects, like most of their pleasantly pheasanty family.

Friday mystery object #298

This week it’s back to bones. I’ve had a couple of very helpful work experience students photographing some specimens from the Dead Zoo comparative osteology collection and here’s a distinctive bone for you to identify. The Order should be easy, the Family simple enough, but the Genus and Species may prove more difficult:

mystery298

So if you think you know what this is please put your suggestions in the comments below. Have fun!

Friday mystery object #297 answer

Last week I gave you this shiny green beetle with white spots (and apparently a penchant for making balloon animals) to identify:

mystery297

I thought it might offer a bit more of a challenge, but I forgot about Google. It turns out that a Google Image search using the key distinguishing features provides some useful images to compare, making this easier than I expected.

As palfreyman1414 correctly recognised (followed by many others), this is the Spotted Flower Beetle Stephanorrhina guttata (Olivier, 1789).

Of course, when dealing with historic museum collections things are never quite that simple, so the specimen on display is actually referred to by the genus name Ceratorrhina which isn’t recognised today. Ceratorhina was synonymised with Cyprolais, which is a subgenus (containing the Horniman Beetle) that’s in the genus Eudicella.

Of course, that means that this specimen may have been named incorrectly in the first place, since I’ve seen nothing to suggest that Ceratorrhina has been directly linked to beetles in the genus Stephanorrhina which sometimes carry the synonym Aphelorhina in older collections information.

It would be interesting to work out how the incorrect name was applied to this display specimen, but I have an inkling that there was once a rogue curator who just liked to cause taxonomic trouble…

Friday mystery object #297

Happy Friday everyone! Once again it’s time for the mystery object and once again I’m in a different country and am relying on a photo I have on my phone to supply you with a specimen for identification. That means the photo isn’t ideal, but it does mean I have something a bit different from the usual skull or bone:

Any idea what species this colourful insect and its less lovely larva might be?

As always you can put your questions, observations and suggestions in the comments section below. Have fun!

Friday mystery object #296 answer

Last week I gave you this lovely little shell to try your hand at identifying:

mystery296

It’s a specimen that was given to the Dead Zoo recently by a regular contributor to the collections and it’s particularly interesting because it might be the first record of this species in Ireland (this is currently being researched for publication by the donor, so I won’t give away too much detail).

What I will say is that this is one of the reasons species identifications can be very important, since our understanding of how species move around has implications for various aspects of society and you don’t want to make decisions based on bad information. If you don’t know what I mean by that, I’ll give you some examples.

Zebra mussels arrived in Ireland in the 1990s from the Black and Caspian Seas and they’ve bred prolifically. They altered freshwater ecosystems by filtering out plankton that other species depend on for survival and they form hard-to-remove clusters that foul boat hulls and block drainage and cooling pipes. They’re in North America too, and in 15 years they are estimated to have cost hydroelectric and water treatment plants somewhere in the region of $267 million to remove or defend against. It’s cheaper to defend against them than to remove them and fix the problems they cause, so you need to know what you’re dealing with.

Retrieval of zebra mussel-encrusted Vector Averaging Current Meter near Michigan City, IN. Lake Michigan, June 1999. Photo by M. McCormick, NOAA, Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory

Signal crayfish are another freshwater invasive species, this time from America, that have caused havoc in Europe because they are linked to the dreaded Crayfish plague (I kid you not). The American crayfish are resistant to this fungal(ish) disease, but they act as hosts and carriers. Ireland is the last country in Europe to be free of the invasive crayfish, but are constantly alert to the dangers they can pose to the native species.

Signal crayfish by David Perez, 2009

I should say that the many introduced species aren’t actually all that problematic. I’ve not heard that Little Owls (introduced by the Victorians for the cuteness) or Ring-necked Parakeets (escapees from aviaries) have had any significant impact in the UK. Still, it’s interesting to know when species turn up somewhere, especially if it reflects a change in the environment that may have other impacts.

Little Owl by Arturo Nikolai, 2008

Noble False Widow spiders were a harmless addition to the UK fauna back in 1879, that were quietly tucked down in Devon until the changing climate gave them the conditions to move further north. Now they’re up as far as Liverpool thanks to our warmer winters. Similar patterns are seen for a variety of Mediterranean species, demonstrating how we can track changes in our environment by keeping track of where and when certain species are found – but if you don’t get the species right, you don’t have good data. That’s part of why we have museums in the first place, to lodge ‘voucher’ specimens of recorded species so identifications can be double checked in the future.

Steatoda nobilis, Forest Hill, London, by Paolo Viscardi, 2014

Noble False Widow

Of course, I’m sure that you all appreciate the importance of getting identifications correct, since here you are reading my blog which tends to be all about identification! For those of you who recognised the mystery object as a scallop of some sort I tip my hat, but to Daniel Jones I offer congratulations – this is indeed a Calico Scallop Argopecten gibbus (Linnaeus, 1767) which is, as Joe Vans suggested, a juvenile. Normally these are found on the Atlantic coast of America. Well done! I’ll let you know more about the specimen when the paper is published.

More interesting dead stuff to come next Friday…

Friday mystery object #296

This week I’ve been in the USA couriering a loan back from the stunning Corning Museum of Glass (I’ll write about that sometime soon). However, that means I’ve had limited access to specimens for this week’s mystery object and I’m restricted to what I’ve got on my phone. Fortunately, I have this non-vertebrate mystery object for you to try your hand at identifying to species:

mystery296

It’s quite a cool specimen and I’ll tell you why next week! Have fun!

Friday mystery object #295 answer

Last week I gave you a bit of detail about a particular collection at the Dead Zoo in Dublin, which we don’t have much information about. In particular I was interested in your opinion on this specimen:

mystery295

The general consensus was that it’s a parrot, which I totally agree with and the there was discussion of Lorikeet and Parakeet based largely on the size. Palfreyman1414 noted that the skull was longer than you normally see in a parrot – which is true, but that length is mainly coming from the bill, and you have to keep in mind that parrots have a weird hinge on the upper part of their bill, which allows more mobility. This specimen has simply been prepared with the bill in a slightly elevated position, creating a misleading sense of a length in the skull.

The morphology of the mandible is quite useful in distinguishing parrots, and to me this looks like it may belong to a Cobalt Winged Parakeet Brotogeris cyanoptera (Salvadori, 1891) although I’ve not seen a scale or for any other speciemens, I’m just basing it on the morphology of that distinctive mandible

So many thanks for all of the suggestions!

Friday mystery object #295

For many of you, last week’s mystery object answer was a little disappointing, since I was unable to pin down what the specimen was. Normally with birds it’s not so difficult, because of useful resources like skullsite.com, but the fact is that some bird groups are still quite poorly represented in collections and finding comparative material is difficult, especially online.

The most frustrating thing about last week’s object is that it did once have a label, but at some point in the past it was lost, so the only information with the specimen now is this:

mystery295_label

However, this label does offer a glimmer of hope, since it identifies the specimen as being from a particular collection and that can often mean there will be more information somewhere.

As it turns out, this specimen is one of several that were purchased in 1867 from an auction of the collections of Dutch anatomist Theodoor Gerard van Lidth de Jeude. This is helpful because auction catalogues can contain information like the species names of the specimens being sold. It is particularly helpful when you have the original catalogue with annotations about the specimens bought by your institution.

Fortunately, at the Dead Zoo we have the auction catalogues. Unfortunately we bought quite a lot of stuff, so working out which of the specimens our mystery object represents is still quite a lot of work.

However, if other specimens from the auction have their names and numbers, it should be easier to narrow down the ones that lost their labels. It also can also help to have an identification of the specimen to track back to the catalogue, which is why I was keen to get your thoughts last time and why this week’s mystery object is from the same collection.

So can you help me work out what species this skull belonged to?

No need for cryptic clues, but if you want to show off your taxonomic prowess you could always offer the 1860’s scientific name or the name of what you think it is in Dutch.

I hope you have fun with this one!

Friday mystery object #294 answer(ish)

Last week I gave you this particularly tricky mystery object from the Dead Zoo to have a go at identifying over Christmas:

It turned out to be far more difficult to identify than expected, with most people thinking of some kind of corvid, which it certainly looks like from the side. However, it’s too small for any but the smallest of the crows and from the top and bottom view, the bill isn’t the right shape for any of them – being too broad, with a long mandibular symphysis (which is where the two halves of the mandible fuse together).

I have spent a good deal of the Christmas week scanning through the images of skulls on Skullsite.com in an effort to narrow it down, but although I’ve seen a few families of birds that have some similarities, I’ve not found anything that matches all that well in terms of size and shape.

The closest species in terms of bill shape are probably in the Eurylaimidae, which are the Broadbills, but the specimens I’ve seen are still not quite right and all are smaller than this mystery specimen. I am wondering if a species like the Dusky Broadbill Corydon sumatranus (Raffles, 1822) might be a better match on size and shape, but it’s proving hard to find comparative specimens. I will keep searching…

Have a very happy New Year!

Friday mystery object #294

This week I have been delving into a drawer of unidentified bird bones in the stores of Dublin’s Dead Zoo to find a skull to use for this week’s mystery object:

It doesn’t seem very festive, but until we work out what it is, how can we tell? It’s something I will muse over with a belly full of seasonal treats.

Any thoughts, suggestions, comments or suggestions are welcome. Have a lovely holiday!

Friday mystery object #293 answer

Last Friday I gave you this unidentified specimen from Dublin’s Dead Zoo and asked you to help me work out what it was:

mystery293

The response was incredibly helpful and it was great to see that most of you were drawn by the morphology to make a similar identification to me.

The fact that it’s from the family Anatidae (the ducks, geese and swans) was immediately noticed, and from there the likely genus was quickly narrowed down to Branta, based on the morphology. This is the genus containing the ‘burnt’ geese (that’s what ‘branta’, derived from the Old Norse, means), which includes: the Brant Goose; Barnacle Goose; Canada Goose; Cackling Goose; Red-breasted Goose, and Hawaiian Goose.

However, the nominate examples of all these species (that means the ones derived from the type on which the species name is based) are either the wrong shape or a bit too large to have this skull, which you can see by checking them on the excellent Skullsite by Wouter van Gestel.

The closest species in terms of morphology are the Cackling Goose (B. hutchinsii), Canada Goose (B. canadensis) and Barnacle Goose (B. leucopsis), but it turns out that there are various subspecies of each and one (that was previously recognised as a subspecies of Canada Goose, but which is now considered a subspecies of Cackling Goose) is rather small, as flagged by the subspecies name minima.

This smallest subspecies seems to fit both the morphology and the size very well, so I’m quite confident to identify the mystery specimen as the Small Cackling Goose Branta hutchinsii minima (Ridgway, 1885).

A family of Small Cackling Geese, by Tim Bowman, USFWS, 2003

So thanks to you all for helping me to narrow down where in the Anatidae to start looking! More mysteries from the Dead Zoo next week.

Friday mystery object #293

This week I have the first of what I hope will be many mystery objects from my new job as zoology curator at the National Museum of Ireland:

I haven’t quite got myself a proper photographic set up yet, but I hope this photo of an unidentified skull in the collection will be good enough for you to be able to help me work out what species it belongs to.

As usual you can leave your thoughts, questions and suggestions in the comments section below. Have fun!

Friday mystery object #292 answer(ish)

Last week I gave you a final mystery object from the Grant Museum of Zoology to help me identify:

Part of the reason for that was because I knew I’d be starting my new job in Dublin where there is a great collection of comparative bird osteology that I thought I’d get a chance to look at in time to write this post.

Alas, I’ve had a whirlwind first week at Dublin’s Dead Zoo and although I’ve managed to take a look at a few sterna, I’ve not had much time to really think about them or consider the identification. I’ve also had limited opportunity to follow up on everyone’s very useful suggestions, although I have tried to use them as a guide to narrow down my perusal of the comparative collections.

However, I did get a chance to take some quick snaps of a range of bird sterna with my phone, so I’m going to provide you with a veritable feast of breast bones to compare the mystery specimen against:

Chicken

Gannet

Red-throated Diver

Great Cormorant

Manx Shearwater

Northern Fulmar

Lesser Black-backed Gull

Iceland Gull

Razorbill

Puffin

Brent Goose

White-fronted Goose

Grey Heron

Peregrine Falcon

Sparrowhawk

Marsh Harrier

Eurasian Eagle-owl

Blue-and-yellow Macaw

You can click on each image to see a large version – hopefully this will prove useful for future identifications!

None of them quite match the combination of having perforations near the straight and truncated bottom of the mystery specimen, which sports a broad triangular flattening of the lower portion of the carina or keel. This may be a feature of the particular individual, or it might be diagnostic – herein lie the problem with using strongly functional features for identification, as a juvenile or zoo specimen may have differences due to developmental progress of lack of use of a feature. To illustrate, this keel from a Griffon Vulture from the Royal Zoological Society of Ireland shows a significant asymmetry (although it’s hard to see the deformation in the image due to the shadow – I’ll see if I can get a better image):

Griffon Vulture sternum

It’s also worth noting that the Grant specimen has had the top of the sternum cut off, so the overall shape is a little misleading. From comparing the sterna of a variety of bird groups I’m in agreement with the emerging group consensus that this is probably from a pretty large bird of prey.

Thanks for your input on this – I will check some more next week when I have a zooarchaeologist looking at the comparative bird collection and I’ll get the chance to dig out some more material.

Cheers!

Friday mystery object #292

This week I have my last mystery object from the Grant Museum of Zoology, since I am starting my new job as Assistant Keeper of Natural History at the National Museum of Ireland next week. However, there is one specimen that’s been getting on my nerves the whole time I’ve worked at the Grant, as it says on its label that it’s from an Albatross, but I simply don’t believe it. Can you help me work out what this rather dusty specimen actually comes from?:

No need for cryptic clues I think, since it’s probably going to be a little bit of a challenge and some discussion seems likely – which will be easier if we all know we’re talking about the same thing.