Tag Archives for answer

Friday mystery object #140 answer

On Friday I gave you this skull to identify:

I thought it would be an easy one and I wasn’t wrong, although several of you seemed to second-guess my intentions and assumed that I was trying to trick you because it seemed too easy.

The small second incisors (or peg-teeth) just behind the big first incisors were a complete give-away for the group of animals this skull came from – the Lagomorphs, which Jake spotted immediately.

Henstridgesj, Jamie Revell, Debi Linton and Jake all suggested that it came from a  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #139 answer

On Friday I gave you this object to identify:

It didn’t prove to be all that difficult, perhaps since the skull is distinctive in having the general appearance of a ruminant (in particular it is missing the upper incisors), but it also has canines and is very small, with a skull height of just over 5cm. This slightly unusual mixture of characters suggests one of the more primitive ruminants.

Jake suggested it might be a Muntjac or Chinese Water Deer, but as Lena pointed out, Muntjac (and Chinese Water Deer) have a scent gland in front of the eye (called a preorbital gland) that is housed in a big pocket in the skull.  The skull itself is also a bit small even for a Muntjac.

Jack Ashby, Lena, Barbara Powell and Jamie Revell all managed to work out that this skull was from a member of the family Tragulidae. To be more specific it is from a  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #138 answer

On Friday I gave you this object to identify:

The idea was to provide a sense of how tricky it can be to identify bits of postcranial bone, even fairly characteristic bits like the humerus (which is what this is).

There were various suggestions, with sheep, goat and deer all getting a mention, but henstridgesj and Jake both got the same identification as the collector when they suggested  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #137 answer

On Friday I gave you this mystery object to identify:

Unfortunately I was unable to respond to comments on Friday, as my laptop had to go in for repairs and my phone has reached the end of its useful life as an internet device after 4 years faithful service. For the answer this week I had to drag out my old laptop, which has meant 2 hours of twiddling thumbs as the machine started up and dealt with various updates…

In some ways it was a good thing that I wasn’t able to comment, since it would have ruined the fun from the outset. Jake was straight in there, wondering if it was really as easy as it looked – and it was. Rachel, Jack Ashby and Barbara Powell also plumped for the right answer, while several others came very close when they went for a greedy relative. This is in fact the skull of a juvenile  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #136 answer

On Friday I gave you this skull to identify:

I think the oddly inflated and positioned auditory bullae make this look like Gary Oldman in his role as Dracula. Because of this characteristically odd feature the specimen was fairly easy to identify. Of course, that supposes that most people have seen the skull of one of these animals before…

Here is the skull in better detail (for future reference):

The front teeth were a good indication that it was a rodent (we’ve talked about that before) and with the big and upward pointing external auditory meatus (better known as ear-hole) it suggested a very big-eared rodent.

With a skull length of about 7cm the number of possible rodents decreased quite rapidly, as most are much too small to have such a big skull, so I wasn’t surprised when Barbara Powell and David Craven hinted that they had the answer. From then on I started getting cryptic answers about warm fur and cold faces as more of you worked out that this is the skull of a  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #135 answer

On Friday I gave you this object to identify:

I thought it might prove quite tricky, yet several of you managed to work out what it was and which animal it came from.

Jake spotted that it was from a young animal – as you can see from the unfused ends of the bone. He also noticed that it was a bit of a strange shape, a bit like a tibia, but actually a radius.

Barbara Powell suggested that it belonged to an animal built for power rather than speed and henstridgesj suggested one such critter – the Aardvark. Although that wasn’t right, or even close in terms of evolutionary relationships, it was very close from the perspective of functional adaptations.

After that it was a short step to the same answer that I decided on when I had to identify this piece of bone. Barabara Powell, henstridgesj and Steven D. Garber, PhD all converged on the answer of  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #134 answer

On Friday I gave you a very nice specimen from the Horniman Museum to identify:

I chose this partly because it’s a great mount and partly because I needed to check the identification, which was out of date.

You all did a great job of breaking down the various options – and there were a few. Jake made the comment:

Is it dippy or a bit ruff ?

This I took as a question about whether the specimen was a Kangaroo Rat (of the genus Dipodomys) or a Rufous Rat-kangaroo (Aepyprymnus rufescens). There was another interpretation that fit with the dippy clue – the correct Family name, which is Dipodidae.

Barbara Powell and Jamie Revell were in the right area and henstridgesj suggested J.j. which was pretty much there, assuming he meant Jaculus jaculus. It is in fact the skeleton of the  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #133 answer

Friday’s mystery object was meant to be a bit of a challenge:

Post-cranial bones can be tricky to identify, especially if you don’t have much comparative material available.

The first challenge was to work out which bits of bone are present – something that Rhea and Jake managed very well. This particular specimen is composed of a broken portion of right mandible (showing the coronoid process, condyloid process and angular process), the left ilium, and the first three cervical vertebrae (which include the axis and atlas bones).

Identifying the species was a bit more tricky using just these few bits of bone, but several of you managed to get there. Henstridgesj was the first to suggest  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #132 answer

On Friday I gave you these objects to identify:

I expected you to work out what these came from pretty easily – and you proved me right. In fact, I think this was probably the easiest mystery object so far, given that everyone managed to get a correct identification of  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #131 answer

On Friday I showed you some specimens that I had to identify in the museum last week, and I asked if you had any idea what they might be:

Perhaps unsurprisingly, several of you did have a very good idea.

They look a bit bony, but they’re not bone. They look a bit toothy, but they’re not teeth. They look a scutey, but they’re not scutes. They are in fact from an animal that doesn’t have bones, teeth or scutes.

Denis Copilas, Matt king, henstridgesj, Barbara Powell and David all managed to spot that these are the hooks from a very large  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #130 answer

On Friday I gave you this specimen to identify:

I thought that some of you might find it a bit tricky, since this is a shell from a group of animals that aren’t that familiar to most people.

Barbara Powell was the first to spot what this shell came from and her identification was supported by Dave Godfrey, Julie Doyle and henstridgesj. It’s a   Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #129 answer

On Friday I gave you this object to identify:

This type of bone can prove tricky to identify, and we often have queries about them on Ask A Biologist. With a large example like this one there will often be a suspicion that it comes from a human. 

However, this is in fact the humerus of a bird – the large flange at the proximal end (the bit nearest the body) makes it hard to spot the rounded point where it articulates with the scapula, coracoid and furcula bones that make up the shoulder joint. The flange itself provides a large attachment area for the tendons and muscle needed to power and control flight.

Here are some images of a (much smaller) goose humerus that show the general structure of the bone more clearly:

Once you’ve recognised the mystery object as the humerus of a bird, the length of about 45cm (17.7 inches) immediately narrows down the species it could come from.

Jack Ashby was the first to recognise what this humerus belonged to and he found support from Rachel, Carlos, Julie Doyle and initially Barbara Powell (although she later opted for another possibility). It’s the humerus of an   Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #128 answer

Happy New Year!

On Friday I gave you this piece of an animal to identify:

As expected, you managed to work out what it is in fairly short order.

Jake recognised it as skin, Denis Copilas as scales and Rhea as carapace – all of which are right at least in part. Henstridgesj and Barbara Powell’s friend Alison spotted that the section of carapace came from a Cowfish or Boxfish. There wasn’t really enough information available to identify it any further than that.

Fortunately this specimen had a label associated with it, so I can tell you that the section of carapace is from the  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #127 answer

Apologies for a somewhat belated answer to last week’s mystery object – Christmas and all that…

I gave you these two unidentified objects from the Horniman Museum collections, so you could have a go at identifying them:

I was not disappointed either – Jake recognised that they were upper molars or premolars from a grazing animal and Rhea identified the animal in this cryptic clue:

If the owner of these teeth could market and sell a coffee, would it be interested in a label with a *unicorn* mascot that comes in the sumatran or javan blends? Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #126 answer

On Friday I gave you a bit of a tricky mystery object in the shape of this partial skull:

I wasn’t expecting anyone to get it without some clues, but I underestimated my talented audience!

Jake spotted that it was a mammal based on the ear morphology and then worked out what kind of animal based on clues from henstridgesj who suggested seal and Julie Doyle, who managed to not only identify the species, but drop this lovely cryptic clue to convey that information:

Not a lot to phocus on, but……. I’m harboring an idea about who it might be. Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #125 answer

On Friday I gave you a bit of a tricky mystery object:

Jackashby spotted that the skull is from a bat and Rob Hinkley did a bit of research while on a trip to the Horniman and was able to identify what the specimen is labelled as. Apparently it’s a  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #123 answer

On Friday I gave you a genuine mystery object from the Horniman’s collections:

It had been highlighted as potentially being human in origin, but it’s very short, despite being fully fused (therefore from an adult) and the condyles (the bumps that make the top of the knee) are too similar in size – humans have a bigger condyle on the inside of the knee.

However, the general shape is quite similar to a human femur – the depth and orientation of the condyles and the groove between them is all wrong for a quadrupedal animal and the femoral head and neck (the articulation at the top that goes into the hip) are at an angle and shape similar to that seem in humans.

There were some great observations and suggestions and I was pleased that henstridgesj managed to get the same identification as I finally decided on, with Matt King making a very similar suggestion. I think it’s the femur of a  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #122 answer

On Friday I gave you this object to identify:

As I suspected, everyone spotted that this skull belonged to a member of the Cat family (the Felidae). However, cats are very conservative (as Julie Doyle pointed out) – their skulls all tend to look much the same, which made it hard to identify the species.

This skull is even trickier to identify than it might have been because it comes from a young animal, so it hasn’t reached the full size or development that you might expect from an adult.

Nonetheless, several of you suggested cats from the same genus and henstridgesj worked out that it was between two species. It is in fact the skull of a  Continue reading →

Friday mystery object #121 answer

Apologies for the late posting and brevity of the FMO answer today, I’m not feeling at all well.

On Friday I gave you something a bit more ‘taxing’ than the previous week’s mystery object:

Some of you spotted the clue hidden in my statement and Bubba, Carlos, Will, Neil, henstidgesj and Julie Doyle all implied or identified that this as the skull of Continue reading →